USER: "It has been almost 150 years since a catastrophic thermonuclear war devastated the planet. The war itself officially lasted for two days but the actual nuclear exchange itself only lasted for several hours. Of course, this was more than enough time for targets across the world to be completely obliterated. In the United States, the exchange reduced the country to remote holdouts scattered across the country. Any attempt to maintain a semblance of national unity collapsed with the onset of the "Long Winter" and the famine and chaos that followed. In the ensuing year more died of starvation and the cold than the war itself as the remnants of federal authority withered away. By the end of the Long Winter, 70-80% of the 235.8 million people that lived before the war died. Their bones were scattered across a country that disintegrated into hundreds of factions all struggling for influence. With modern society completely obliterated beyond recognition, a technological regression was inevitable. First to go were electronics, which were widely damaged by many EMP bursts. Furthermore, complex machinery such as steel manufacturing and oil refining, were targeted by nuclear weapons. Most modern technology was dropped in favor of more anachronistic ones. However a complete decline to a "neo-medieval" state as feared by many, never came to pass. Although countries throughout the southern hemisphere suffered a massive collapse in living standards, malnutrition, starvation, and civil insta...

USER: How stable is the Republic?

USER: "It[Answer must be under 1,000 characters.] Summarize "The latter months are ending as the sun hangs lazily between the clouds. All about are the sounds of commotion. Trains glide across crystal waters kicking up mist as robots roll between adobe houses and under splaying canopies and a broken sky. Turbine balloons float tethered above village communes as mechanics and whizz kids fiddle with prosthetics, tracing their hands across each mechanism's flowery reliefs. Refugees are shepherded beyond the great deserts that now swallow up much of the world, and in art nouveau palaces knights and reiters swear fealty to their handlers. Welcome back to the world of tomorrow stranger, though it's a bit different than how you remember. The year is 2173 AD. Almost a century and a half has passed since the Collapse Era began, though the exact time when it ended is in dispute, not that there's any global institution that could decide when that was anymore. While the "Collapse Era" is a broad term, beginning before the climate collapse itself kicked off in earnest, most historians set its beginning to the onset of the American War, a multi-generational conflict that engulfed the former United States and Canada between a panoply of pretender governments and post-American states of various kinds. The premature death of the world hegemon led to a discordant global period in which the major global institutions attempted to reorient themselves under the UN now based (mainly) out of Vienna. The new order was, in its own words, imperfect and reactive. The need to shore up faith in the global system, to ensure the protection of accounts, states, and economies reeling in the face of America's fall, and the pressure to balance the now more pronounced regional frameworks in Europe, Africa, and even the Caribbean meant that the post-American world was dominated more by an attempt to loot the great behemoth as it tore itself apart in order to keep itself going for as long as possible as opposed to creating anything enduring. In the midst of this other parts of the world began to pull apart at the edges. In the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia the Three Flags Army otherwise known as the Democratic Federation, tore through the region, even taking Mecca for a brief period of time. The outpouring of American refugees (which themselves presaged the larger refugee waves of the era) became a source of conflict as many nations especially in the global south fought over access to a new very skilled and cheap workforce that was up for grabs. China and peripheral nations jumped at the opportunity that had been almost 150 years since a catastrophic thermonuclear war devastated the planet. Thepresented and attempted to kitbash a Fifth Internationale, leading to a breakdown in relations with its former European partners, themselves attempting to recreate the once expansive American intelligence system by importing former members of the US Deep State into their new federal military framework. Meanwhile the war itself officially lasted for two days but the actualquickly broke out of containment, spreading outside the United States and requiring first the largest UN military mission in history, and later on the transformation of what remained of NATO into an occupying organ, seizing control of Canada to maintain stability only to find itself at war with its own people. Then at last the climate collapse itself hit in earnest. Alongside this, economic pressures from the declining energy returns on fossil fuels compounded the costs states were taking on, and uneven population growth and demographic shifts obliterated long standing institutions in developed nations and undercut nascent regimes across the rest of the globe. World powers became more desperate and reckless, escalating to the point of bringing Kessler Syndrome down upon everyone to deny other nations vital infrastructure and going beyond that to even the use of tactical nuclear exchange itself only lasted for several hours. Of course, thisweapons on their enemies and rebellious populations. The more humanity held on and the harder its grip became the more the future slipped out of its fingers until it was more thanall gone. Once again the year is 2173, the world population stands at just under 6.5 billion. A century or so is enough time to heal most wounds, provided one actually wants to do the healing. A casual observer or tourist to this world might be struck by how pleasant much of it looks. A view of the late 22nd century evinces a sense of a world painted in watercolor, something ripped out of a solarpunk moodboard or a Chobani commercial. Aesthetically and technologically speaking this is most certainly the case. It is a world of colorful adobe houses and limewashed buildings, of floating turbines, airwells, solar furnaces and pedal powered machines. A time of bionic and folk-craft motifs and stained glass opening up into rooms of optical computers and bio-forges. Of bacteria-phages and gmo molds and mushrooms breaking down the remnants of the old plasticene. Of consciously designed permaculture landscapes around communes on one end and flowing linear arcologies on the other. Socially though? Politically? That's a different story. The 22nd century is not a time of hand-holding, of positive psychology, utopian cosmopolitanism or down to earth anarchistic sentimentality. It is in many ways a return to form, a world emerging orthogonal from the past and its expectant future and containing bits of both on its own terms. It is a time of small states yet great empires, conservative communities, knightly orders and guild wars, at once an abandonment and refutation of the liberal and secular notions of the old globalized world in some cases and an attempt to race past them altogether in others. A time of close knit families and communes and bloody conflicts wiping out entire lands. Above all though it is a world that has abandoned the once popular maxim that "men are simply born for targets across the world tono reason". For in the 22nd century all men have an end that they know, be completely obliterated. In theit prescribed by their state, their community, their liege, their party, or their God. When the collapse came it was primarily those great global institutions and the social sentiments that had emerged alongside them which fared the worst. The United States, the exchange reduced the country to remote holdoutsNations, the internet, the global economy and so on, yes even air traffic control, all were dashed against the rocks. While states would return, communities would persist and dig deep roots, the idea of the liberal citizen, of the neutral state, of institutions that exist solely for the purpose of their own survival that would not. Those that survived the collapse and came to seize the 22nd century were those that were able to orient their societies towards specific ends, either that of a destined future or of building a kind of humanity and social order within their borders. The closest equivalent we might have is that of a "theocracy" though this is not entirely accurate. While many 22nd century states are oriented towards a kind of religious end or according to a specific cosmology, just as many are not, and many "secular" orders of the 22nd century (such a term being outmoded) in fact evolved out of the practical administrative structures of 21st century religious movements. Things are never quite so straightforward. The 22nd century itself is not even dominated by great powers in the way we would understand the word. For while one might look at a map and see a collection of states which contest land and people, the real powers of the era are different. As stated previously, the major multinational institutions and broader global framework of the 21st century did not survive, but there were some hangers on of the complex globalized society of the past that were able to maintain control and entrench themselves as modern superpowers by the 22nd century. These would turn out to be the descendants of the major charities and development banks, who having their own land, property, and people scattered across the country. Any attempt to maintain a semblance of national unity collapsedworld weathered the collapse and only became more powerful as the new order established itself. THE SUPERPOWERS AND KNIGHTS There are currently 12 (technically 13) superpowers or "orders" which dominate the world. They are the Society of Saint Joseph, Red Cross and Crescent, UNICEF, United Way, the Sravasti Viharas, Hare Khrishna, World Food Bank, Salvation Army, Nahdlatul Ulama, Tzu Chi Foundation, and both the African and Islamic Development Banks. The 13th will not be mentioned until later. With the exception of Saint Joseph which is based out of the Vatican (and formally a subordinate organ of the Catholic Church), none of the superpowers have any "home turf" as it were, instead contesting large swaths of non-contiguous land across the planet. There is not a single part of the world that does not see the presence of at least one of these powers. The origin of many of these powers is rather clear, though others are more particular. The Sravasti Viharas for instance are the descendants of a Western Tibetan Buddhist abbey turned Humanistic foundation which attained global prominence due to its interlinking with the onset of the "Long Winter" and the famine and chaos that followed. In the ensuing year more died of starvation and the cold than the war itself as the remnants of federal authority withered away. By the end of the Long Winter, 70-80% of the 235.8 million people that lived before the war died. Their bones were scattered across a country that disintegrated into hundreds of factions all struggling for influence. With modern society completely obliterated beyond recognition, a technological regression was inevitable. First to go were electronics, which were widely damaged bysimilarly minded Fo Guang Shan of the Taiwanese diaspora in the middle 21st century. Others are the amalgamation of many EMP bursts. Furthermore, complex machinerygroups over time, such as steel manufacturing and oil refining,the Society of Saint Joseph which was formed as a result of a papal decree merging the church's major foundations together under a new organization. The development banks are the "odd man out" in this regard, though their rise and persistence is for similar reasons, due to the massive amount of sway and resources that fell under such institutions' control as the global south themselves attempted and failed to beat back the collapse. These development banks would find themselves being transformed from multilateral institutions to the caretakers of their former patrons, and so emerged from the collapse in a position of prominence. What one most often thinks of when the global superpowers come to mind however is not the land they contest nor their immense amount of wealth and vassals, but their knightly orders. Professional standing armies were targetedone of the institutions that did not survive the 21st century in most parts of the world and are now the exception rather than the rule. While many states now have the potential to field standing armies again most do not due to institutional pressures against doing so that have become entrenched. Frankly speaking, most states view anything beyond a militia or at most a gendarmerie, to be a waste of time and resources. The superpowers are the notable exception to this, having the resources, funding, manpower, and reason to field large numbers of men at their command. The nature of warfare has changed however, and so have the kinds of men who fight. A big reason for this is technological developments in the past century and a half. In this world of bionics and organic technology one of the great shifts that would occur would be the (with caveats) victory of personal defense and armor over firearms. A great innovation of the modern era, organically grown heat regulating kinetic hardening foam has allowed for the creation of coats and breeches and other wearables that can deflect rounds with ease. Prohibitively expensive to be sure, but not impossible for the superpowers who have of course also locked down the process for creating them. Production costs limit the number of people that can be outfitted even by nuclear weapons. Mostthe wealthiest and most powerful bodies on Earth however. As such the superpowers rely on and use them to outfit small-ish professional corps of loyal soldiers, sworn to them for more or less life, to fight on their behalf. These form the basis of the modern technology was dropped in favor ofknightly orders. Your average knight for the global superpowers then is exactly that, a man wearing effectively bulletproof quilted armor, often in layers starting with long undershirts and ending generally in either a large greatcoat or medium length jacket with roomy elbow length sleeves. Attached to the front (or sometimes the back) of their person is a bio-mechanical "third arm" folded against their body with an integrated weapon meant flip out and blow off exposed body parts should they be revealed during close combat. Close combat is in fact the name of the game, for although it is true that organic armor is effective against firearms, that simply inspired men to find new ways around them. The monomolecular sword would be this workaround, solving the issue of organic foam armor by simply slicing through it. A quirk of such weapons however is that due to the van der walls force a clean swipe will immediately seal right up, so sword combat between knights is based around hacking and slashing their enemy apart, and if possible blowing them apart with one's prosthetic third arm should an opening arise. Large numbers of ordinary troops provide support and often operate drones and anti-drone weapons on the battlefield. As one can guess this means that knights require a lot of training, which makes them all the more anachronistic ones. However a complete decline to a "neo-medieval" stateof an investment that superpowers are desperate to hang onto. In many ways the knightly orders are an attempt to accommodate this, to give their fighting men not merely money but prestige and a kind of life and status that separates them from the hoi polloi. Knights are given great freedom in how they live their lives, access to land, and special exceptions to sumptuary laws. Knights are in many ways encouraged to take pride not merely in their work but in the symbols of it. This often takes the form of employing designers to create elaborate and specialized patterns and motifs on the outer layers of their armor and sometimes the insides of the coats and jackets too. There is no need to hide oneself after all, one might as fearedwell show off. Even calling them knights is intentional in this respect. Knights operate in fireteams or "lances" (equivalent to a squad of 8 or 10 men) headed by many, never came to pass. Although countries throughout the southern hemisphere suffered a massive collapse in living standards, malnutrition, starvation, and civil instability,an operator. An "operator" is both a lance-leader and an intermediary, denoted by their special implants. Operators have two implants, one in their skull and one in their jaw, the former which turns thoughts into transmittable information, and the latter which picks up transmissions and uses bone conduction to allow it to be heard as if it were a human voice. Operators are paired to "handlers" who have matching implants. Handlers are stationed outside of the battlefield, often with other handers at one of their superpower's local command stations, where through the use of drones, aerostats, and access to local infrastructure they were spared from the direct effects of the nuclear war. Furthermore, farsighted officials and surviving members of the intelligentsia all around the world meticulously preserved all kinds of knowledge from germ theory to basic forms of manufacturing. Although some knowledge was lost, such as impractical or specialized technology, the vast sum of human knowledge was saved. Nevertheless this did little to affect the situation in America and other heavily devastated regions across the world. Across the land, various warlords, roving gangs, emergency county governments, and self proclaimed Presidents fought amongsthave full view of the battlefield. Handlers and operators coordinate in battle and often develop a peculiar rapport with each other due to having access to each other's thoughts on and off the battlefield. Despite the attempts by the superpowers to keep a lock on their knights it is not unheard of for power. In the beginning they were often small factions, usually only controlling a citysome to go rogue, or a few towns, with larger factions few and far between. As the years went by, wars were won, and power consolidatedin the case where a superpower loses a region to another for knights of the losing side to use the opportunity to move into freelancing for local states. There are some benefits to going from being one knight among various regional powers, but these statelets usually collapsed as fast as they arose. For the first several decades after the war, this dynamic and chaotic situation repeated itself across America. This however was not a permanent state of affairs; the world was changing and America would be swept along. As the radiation faded and the climate recovered in the decades after the end, humanity's population finally began to grow again. With land routes largely destroyed or extremely treacherous, water became the preferred method of travel. The Mississippi river basin once again became a vital artery in America, but the biggest boon came from the sea. Built with 20th century technology and techniques, modern sailing ships began to sail the seas. The first merchants came from Mexico, who established a rudimentary trade network along the coast and sparked the reconnection of America with the rest of the world. The rest of Latin America came soon after; Venezuelans, Argentians and Brazilians fought, often literally, for the growing market, and the rest of the world. As it happened, the rest of the world sought contact and commerce. The world quickly got smaller again. The rebirth of global trade was revolutionary. While it was a far cry from the globalized world of the 1980s, it nevertheless allowed for the spread of "new" ideas, technology, and goods. Around the world coastal settlements and states became hubs of commerce. The remnant of California's state government in the north of the state was one such place. By the 2050s, the once sleepy town of Eureka, became a bustling port city with ships calling from all over the world. Luxury goods such as coffee and chocolate returned, much to the delight of local people. California bought weapons of all kinds, such as bolt action weapons, which the government used to expand and consolidate its rule. However the most consequential imports were Spanish books from the time of the Old World; the original copies were sealed away as great treasures. It didn't take long before copies of these books were widely distributed among Californians. These books describing the Old World fascinated the people of California; even if they couldn't read, oral stories still captured their imagination the same. The growing literate populations indulged themselves in literary classics, political tracts, and most importantly the history of the United States. By the 2060s, California was swept up in a craze for all things Americana from dress to cuisine to literature. This craze was most intense in the political sphere, where the idea of uniting the country first began to take root. As the story goes, in 2068 a general of California, by the name of Henry "Enrique" Santos received a vision from George Washington himself. The former President, who called him a distant relative, called upon him to reunify the chaotic lands and restore the United States. On a platform of general pan-Americanism, he swept the country's election that year. A man of mixed American and Mestizo descent, Henry was a charismatic and accomplished commander who already had many victories under his belt. He would add many more during his Great Crusade, although his diplomatic triumphs are as consequential as his military ones. By the time of his death in 2088, his Republic stretched from the Pacific to the Great Mississippi River. His son, Mark "Marcos" Santos would be the one to reach the Atlantic Ocean in 2103. There on the ruins of the old capitol, Marcos took the name of Washington and the title of Potus, and declared the unification of the United States of America as the Grand Republic. Today in 2133 AD, it's finally morning in America. The sun rises over an America in a strange new world, unlike anytime before. Since the Restoration, America has rapidly changed at a breakneck speed. A massive road stretching from the shores of the Pacific to the shores of the Atlantic, completed shortly after the Restoration. The first transcontinental road since the War, it allows anyone to travel across the country in less than 70 days, free from banditry or worse. While cars are only available to the richest, the common people ride government run caravans that travel across the continent. This sweeping establishment of security and order has brought the most radical change to the continent since it was reduced to ashes. From where there were once a dozen or so squabbing statelets now there isto being the only one state (theoretically) from sea to shining sea. The changeor two of your kind that a county or even after just a few decades is drastic. All along the Interstate, bustling cities have sprung up where they were only dirt a few decades prior and settlements linked by the road have boomed. These "modernized" cities are the heart of the Republic, from which its wealth, power, and influence emanates. Using relearned technology and techniques, the Republic built roads, canals, bridges, aqueducts, and other infrastructure for great cities. Even electricity is available, although it remains extremely expensive, and thus limited to important buildings. These important buildings not only included government buildings, but libraries, universities, and other civic works.Students across the country come to universities, where they learn Spanish, the language of business, and are taught about old techniques and technologies as well as about the glories of the old United States. The rise of a literate class has predictably led to a cultural renaissance, such as music, art and a growing print industry, who publish both old and new works. Other industries have sprung up next to rivers producing all sorts of goods from farming tools, to guns, to textiles. Merchants and other traders sell them in their travels to communities on the roads leading away from the Interstate. America is governed as a proud republic, with the authority of the Potus unquestioned across the realm. However once you start asking around,it turns out to be rather complicated. In theory, the Potus is freely appointed by and subordinate to the various cities of the Republic. In reality, the issues of communicating over the vast breadth of the Republic has led to power being centralized in Potus and the Senate. The Senate consists of representatives from states, who are elected to ostensibly represent the interests of their home state. They in turn elect the Potus, as they would like in an old parliamentary democracy. While Potus Marcos' word may be law, in his old age he has left the task of governing the country to the Senate. However it is an open secret that he wants his eldest son to be elected as the next Potus. The Washingtonians, supporters of the Potus and the Santos Line, back the move and are actively canvassing Senators for the coming election. Meanwhile the Republicans, their main opponents, are working to prevent the election of Marcos' son. Furthermore they are moving forward with their plans to replace the semi-hereditary nature of the Potusial title with a true republican structure centered around the Senate. The political drama continues. However not even the Senate's word is supreme throughout the Republic. Despite its claims over the entirety of the Old United States, the control the Republic wields varies significantly across the continent. The Republic's control is strongest around the lands near the Interstate, where the great new cities and an extensive road network allow the authority of the state to be easily enforced. These Core Territories were directly conquered during the Great Crusade and reorganized into various states for simple administration. However the farther away from the Interstate, the harder it became for the Republic to wield its authority. There is no hard border, but direct control eventually gives way to indirect control by tributaries and vassals. While these tributaries still have to follow some Republic laws and protect the Republic's lands, in return they are allowed a degree of self governance. Go even farther away from the Core Territories the Republic's influence slowly fades before you leave the Republic's political sphere entirely. Any discussion of the Republic shouldn't neglect the complicated and deep history with its southern neighbor, Mexico. The country was largely spared from the nuclear exchange, except for unlucky cities on the border with the United States, but it could not escape from the flood of American refugees, the fallout, or the nuclear winter. Government authority completely disappeared in most of the country and Mexico's government ruled with an iron first. In the end around 30-40% of Mexico's pre-war population died in the years that followed, compared to the much higher death rate to the north. Despite the collapse of social order, the Mexican government did not fully collapse. After only a couple decades, the national government reasserted its authority across the country and the population began to grow again. By the 2050s, Mexico cemented itself as a major power and one of the most developed countries in the Americas. When Henry began his conquests, he wisely decided to not provoke Mexico; Mexico for their part adopted a wait and see approach. It worked out, mostly. Today, Mexico and the Republic rest in an uneasy status quo. The border cities in the south where the sphere of Mexico and the Republic overlap, lie within a dual suzerainty under the two countries. While many in the Republic seek to directly control all territory held by the former United States, they know better than not to provoke Mexico. After all, Mexico supplies the majority of the oil to the Republic and Mexico is their main economic partner. Obviously its a really bad idea to provoke them." Can you write a full summary?small nation leans on."

USER: [Answer must be under 1,000 characters.]1,500 characters] [Use your own words] Summarize "Part #303: Chaos With Chinese Characteristics "JUSTICE FOR ANNAM NO SURRENDER TO AYUTTHAI THUGS REMEMBER GIA DINH! WRITE TO YOUR MCP! STOP THE KAREN MASSACRES WHAT DOES AMBASSADOR ZHANG SAY? Read more on Motext page 42K-112! Paid for by the American Friends of Annamese Freedom, fully authorised and registered campaign group, registration number AF10/86210" - Political poster seen on Gooch Street, Fredericksburg, ENA. Photographed and transcribed by Dr David Wostyn, October 2020 * (Dr Wostyn's note) Of course, I make no apologies for selecting my particular area of interest for the next lecture recording we have digitised. In this timeline, China certainly has a larger cultural impact on the western world than what we are familiar with, yet I would say it still remains neglected in relation to its vast population and history. Furthermore, our recent focus has been on largely European (and, I suppose, American or 'Novamundine' as they say here) descriptions of the Black Twenties period. But China, as we saw, played a crucial role in the outbreak of that conflict and the following plague. After the beginnings of the plague pandemic, our descriptions of China - and its neighbour Siam - were few and far between. It is high time we remedy that, and I have just the lecture... * Recorded lecture on "The latter months are ending as the sun hangs lazilyModern History of China, Part 3" by Dr Ambrose Renfrew and Dx Xu Jingyi, recorded October 16th, 2020-- It had seemed that the 1920s dawned auspiciously for the Chinese Empire, if I can be forgiven a rather stereotypical word choice. (Laughter) To recap, following the death of Xuanming the Great in 1905, his son succeeded to the throne as the Huifu Emperor. At the time, people both inside China and beyond it wondered how he could possibly live up to the example that his father had set. Xuanming's reign occupied the years of the Long Peace, which in East Asian terms comes between the clouds. Allend of the Second Sino-Siamese War in 1871, and the outbreak of the Pandoric War in 1896. This period is almost synonymous with what is called the Weixin or Reform period, in which Xuanming and his allies, such as Wu Mengchao, sought to modernise many aspects of Chinese society and industry.[1] China - or, I should say, then, merely Feng China - had shown its superiority over the fading northern remnant of the Beiqing, but had received a rude awakening from the modernising Siamese Empire. Feng Chinese forces had lost the naval battle of Qiongzhou Strait, as well as land battles against Siam which resulted in Siam regaining lands in Tonkin at the peace treaty. Emperor Xuanming's challenge had been to ensure that Feng China did not merely outstrip the Beiqing, but the Siamese - and stand up to Europeans and Novamundines too. This was not only achieved, but benefits of industrialisation trickled down to the common people, who obtained the use of China's Optel network (while Lectel was reserved for government use) and whose literacy increased as education was reformed and modernised. Under Xuanming, China also built a remarkable, but nowadays rather controversial, legacy: imperial expansion over the Himalayas into northern India. The establishment of Jushina, today's Panchala, as a Chinese vassal state is an act that has left echoes down history to today.[2] The great irony of Xuanming's tenure as Emperor was that he is sometimes seen, especially by outsiders, as being defined by the two wars at the start and end of his reign - but he was undoubtedly most active during the period in between. It was his patient peacetime modernisation which led China to reap the benefits during the Pandoric War, which there is usually described through its two component conflicts involving China - the Third Sino-Siamese War and the War of Chinese Reunification. Not only did Chinese forces defeat Siam on land and sea this time and gain practically all of Tonkin as Jiaozhi Province, but when Russia desperately forced the Beiqing to join the war to shore up their position against the Americans, China took the opportunity to swiftly reconquer the rotten husk of the Beiqing regime. After almost a century of division following the Three Emperors' War, China was finally reunified. As Ambrose said, that was a lot for the Huifu Emperor to live up to when he came to the throne, and yet he did. Like his father, he faced a great number of challenges as soon as he ascended to power. China suffered floods and famines in 1908, and with the removal of the Beiqing as a common enemy, there was much division among political theorists and scholars about are the sounds of commotion. Trains glidewhat direction the state should take. In the aftermath of the war, Huaqiao people - overseas Chinese - began to return. Some of them had never lived in China and only barely spoke Chinese, as a second language. Some returned because they saw opportunities in the new reunited China, but many also came because of catastrophe in their united homelands, especially as chaos and then Societism spread across crystal waters kicking up mist as robots rollthe Nusantara. These people were an unexpected and unpredictable element, a new spice in the bubbling stewpot of Chinese society, which was already reeling from the emergence of the Flippant youth subculture also seen elsewhere.[3] As in Europe, common people were also beginning to assert their voice anew, with technology and new kinds of urban civilisation meaning that they were no longer cut off from the corridors of power. There remained a profound difference, which has still not entirely vanished today, between adobe houses andthe cities and the countryside in China. Frequently, organised poor urban workers might start to gain a voice, while to the rural peasant, the only difference between him and his ancestors was that he could pay to borrow a coal-fired steam tractor for a day to supplement his water buffalo. This wasn't always true, of course, and some influential figures - especially artists and musicians - did escape the monotony of rural agriculture to leave their mark on China. But they did so by going to the cities. That's right, Jingyi. Well, if the New School Confucian conservatives and isolationists had thought Xuanming was radical, they would be appalled anew by Huifu. One of his boldest reforms was to rotate the capital city between Hanjing, Nanjing, Beijing and Xi'an every six months, a way of appeasing interests that had grown resentful about power being concentrated in the south. In time, there would be a counter-reaction against that as well, with the people of Hanjing and its surrounding provinces reviving and celebrating their Nanyue heritage, rather than regarding themselves as the true heirs of Han culture, as they had during the years of division. But that still lay in the future. Yes. Huifu's other major reform was the creation of the One Hundred and Eight Mandators, a demarchic random sampling of people across Chinese society. This was his attempt to plot a third way between traditional Chinese conservative ideas and those advocating European-style democracy. Most Chinese schools of thought agreed with the concept of the 'Mandate of Heaven', that an Emperor could lose his divine mandate and that this was expressed through natural disasters as well as popular revolts. The philosophy of the Mandators was to suggest a kind of early warning system for such a loss, which would allow misconceived policy to be rethought before it was too late. Xi Juzheng, Huifu's ally and one of the architects of the system, explicitly compared it to the famous seismograph of Zhang Heng.[4] Just as a bronze dragon on the device might drop a ball into the mouth of a toad to indicate the direction and strength of an earthquake, discontent from a peasant reacting to a proposed policy in the Palace of the 108 could suggest the cause of a potential revolt before it broke out. Yes. Huifu appears to have seen it as more of a symbolic rubber-stamp originally, but responded to noble complaints by forcing nobles to be part of the assembly as well. The selection was, at first, genuinely randomised. Peasant Mandators would usually be bribed to agree with state policy ninety-nine percent of the time, at least publicly, but in private might voice concerns that would be fed back to the mandarins. Their families would be exempted from taxes and subsidised for the duration of the year they served, ensuring they did not suffer from the loss of a working man. Such largesse also helped endear the Emperor across the nation in a new and concrete way, even though being selected as a Mandator was not always seen as a positive. Huifu had also continued his father's push for industrialisation and the construction of railways, roads, modernised canals, and other arteries for communication and transport. China's 'natural' economic place in the world had always been near the top, but the empire had suffered under splaying canopies and a broken sky. Turbine balloons float tethered above village communes as mechanics and whizz kids fiddleyears of Qing decline and division, falling behind Europe's Industrial Revolution. Now, China's economy swelled, with prosthetics, tracingsome of that prosperity trickling down to the common people, especially in the large cities. And again, more controversially, some partly attribute this influx of wealth to the mass theft of gold and jewels from Jihadi-burnt Hindu temples in Jushina by Chinese adventurers. Regardless, China's status as an economic powerhouse was proved by the Panic of 1917. This global recession was partly kicked off when Chinese troops controversially intervened in Corea, putting down a public revolt against King Geongjong by those angry about the imprisonment of reformist politician Lee Chang-jung.[5] Overnight, China had changed the balance of power in the region, effectively booting the Russians out of their hands across each mechanism's flowery reliefs. Refugees are shepherded beyond the great deserts that now swallow up much of the world, and in art nouveau palaces knights and reiters swear fealty to their handlers. Welcome back toseat of influence over Corea and even the corporate possessions of Corean businessmen in Yapon and the International Guntoor Authority. The market shock from this sudden shift, coupled to the Kingdom of Guatemala defaulting on her war debt payments, destroyed the shaky remnant of the pre-Pandoric War 'Antwerp System' and spent the world of tomorrow stranger, though it's a bit different than how you remember. The year is 2173 AD. Almost a century and a half has passed since the Collapse Era began, though the exactspiralling into recession. Though there was some economic fallout in China itself, overall the strong and largely self-sufficient Chinese economy weathered the crisis well, with state-backed Chinese business consortia acting to bail out foreign corporate entities on the verge of collapse. This saw China gaining additional influence in the Liaodong and Formosan Republics, as well as in the former 'Senhor Oliveira's Company' (now renamed the Concan Confederacy) in India, and beyond. At a time when it ended is in dispute,other powerful economies such as Russia, France and the ENA were using bailouts to gain influence, China was asserting her seat at the top table of world affairs. So in the year 1919, China had a restive population coupled to a reforming Emperor, a sense of growing power tempered by a feeling that the job remained unfinished. The remaining flies in the ointment, from a nationalist perspective, was that Russia still occupied parts of Manchuria that had formerly been nominally part of their Beiqing puppet state; that the Liaodong and Formosan Republics remained formally independent; and that a further war with Siam, influenced by the Red Sash Brigade revanchists, seemed inevitable and inescapable. That status quo would suffer two remarkable blows separated by a few years. In 1919 itself, successful French negotiation managed to defuse tensions between China and Siam, returning part of Tonkin to Siam in return for Siamese recognition of the rest remaining China's Jiaozhi Province, and China flexing her economic muscles to Siam's benefit. This was the Treaty of Guiling. With mutual mistrust declining, new trade links were built, which would yield a terrible, unintentional harvest as they linked certain parts of the remote Yunnan Province to the rest of the world.[6] But we'll get to that. France was also building alliances with the ENA and others, seeking to contain an expansionist Russia. What the French had not that there'sexpected was that China, led diplomatically by Foreign Minister Ding Guoyang, Duke of Cao, had other ideas. The victory against the Beiqing in the Pandoric War, coupled to the Russians being pushed out of their position of influence in Corea, had severely tipped the balance of odds in terms of any global institution thatfuture Russo-Chinese war. Tsar Paul was enough of a realist to realise that Russia could decide when that was anymore. While the "Collapse Era" is a broad term, beginning before the climate collapse itself kicked off in earnest, most historians set its beginning to the onset of the American War, a multi-generational conflict that engulfed the former United States and Canada between a panoply of pretender governments and post-American states of various kinds. The premature death of thenot possibly hope to fight China as well as the ENA and the French-led European alliance. Thus, just as France had bought Siamese neutrality against China to try to persuade China to attack Russia, Russia bought Chinese neutrality against themselves. Most of the disputed Manchurian territories were ceded to China, and Russia recognised China's immediate annexation of the Liadong and Formosan Republics, finally returning long-lost territory to the metropole.[7] France, the only other world hegemon led to a discordant global period in which the major global institutions attempted to reorient themselves under the UN now based (mainly) out of Vienna. The new order was, in its own words, imperfect and reactive. The need to shore up faith in the global system, to ensure the protection of accounts, states, and economies reeling in the face of America's fall, and the pressure to balance the now more pronounced regional frameworks in Europe, Africa, and even the Caribbean meant that the post-American world was dominated more by an attempt to loot the great behemoth as it tore itself apart in order to keep itselfpower that would normally be in a position to protest, could of course scarcely do so, as she found herself dragged into what was then called the 'Khivan War' with a rather smaller alliance than she had thought she had. And so China secured several long-running policy goals in the matter of a handful of years, without going for as long as possible as opposed to creating anything enduring. In the midst of this other parts of the world began to pull apart at the edges. In the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia the Three Flags Army otherwise known as the Democratic Federation, tore through the region, even taking Mecca for a brief period of time. The outpouring of American refugees (which themselves presaged the larger refugee waves of the era) became a source of conflict as many nations especially in the global south fought over access to a new very skilled and cheap workforce that was up for grabs. China and peripheral nations jumped at the opportunity thatto battle - not with a shout, but with a sigh. If France had been presented and attempted to kitbash a Fifth Internationale,the 'Vulture' of the Pandoric War, using her strength to remain neutral and then exploit the chaos of the postwar situation as a strong and fresh arbiter among exhausted rivals, it seemed that this title would now pass to China. The so-called Celestial Empire had gone from being the divided playground of European trade to a nation that bestrode the world like a giant.[8] With these popular achievements, one might assume that the rule of the Huifu Emperor, and of the Feng Dynasty system, was now assured. But history is not so predictable. Certainly, as Jingyi said earlier, China faced a number of challenges that could not be entirely brushed over by economic strength and foreign policy triumphalism - the return of many Huaqiao from the diaspora, the urban-rural divide, the continuing divisions over political ideology and questions of religious tolerance. But the biggest factor was, of course, one which no-one saw coming. That self-same peace, those increased trade links between China and Siam, would open up the formerly isolated province of Yunnan and allow its people and goods to be traded far afield. It's believed that the bubonic plague, known today in China as shu-yi, the Rat-sickness, had existed in natural reservoirs in Yunnan for years, perhaps even centuries. There are recorded cases of plague in Yunnan going back many years before the outbreak of the Third Plague Pandemic across the world. In 1805, shortly before his death from an earlier plague outbreak, Xu Wenxing wrote a despairing poem about it, 'The Ballad of Dying Rats' which begins thusly: "Rats die to the left, to the right! Folk would sooner see a tiger than a dying rat For days after the rats fall Folk join them, crumbling like a a besieged wall. Never count the number Of those who die before sunset!"[9] Much like Europeans of the same era, just because the Chinese people were aware of the connection between dying rats and a plague outbreak did not mean they knew how the plague was transmitted. At the time that Xu lived, the Chinese still viewed mass disease as an act of divine judgement; in their cosmology, the Jade Emperor's celestial government had a Ministry of Epidemics which would unleash plagues in response to sin and complacency from the people. That was a model which, in broad strokes, many mediaeval Europeans would concur with. In the age of the Enlightenment, such ideas seemed to be swept away - but Europeans were no closer to deducing the origins of diseases. Scientifically-minded savants in both Europe and China remained firmly convinced of the miasma theory of disease, albeit formulated in slightly different ways. Xu's poem refers to 'plague ghosts stealing souls' as an agent of disease, not the dead rats themselves, which are seen purely as a warning and omen. Even when European doctors had suggested rats as a disease vector, many dismissed it as a cause compared to the eating of contaminated food (which can be a real cause of the plague, but in reality an extremely rare one).[10] So plague was not known by the name shu-yi until the Black Twenties themselves, when both European and Chinese - and Novamundine - scientists finally began to unlock the secrets of how so many had died in the preceding centuries. The first wave of the plague in China, in early 1923 by the Gregorian calendar, was by far the worst, with as many as a million deaths - the figures are disputed. This was because the seemingly minor initial outbreaks were spread across the nation, along with neighbouring Siam, by people travelling for Lunar New Year celebrations.[11] Though the rest of the Old World and the Novamund were both eventually ravaged by the plague in their turn, there was at least the fact that it burned relatively slowly across them and generally allowed some time to prepare, Ireland's Black Homecoming aside. China, by contrast, was hit hard and all at once, in every major city and much of the countryside as well. Though China was not distracted by involvement in a global war, the nature of this first wave meant that doctors and civil servants were frequently overwhelmed. It is still disputed in Chinese academia when the concept of quarantine first began in China. Those arguing from a Diversitarian point of view like to bring up that sufferers from earlier epidemics were told to 'isolate' in monasteries many hundreds of years ago, but it's not clear whether it was recognised that it was the isolation that was preventing the disease spreading. Of course, the more obvious reason to send a patient to a monastery was because of the understanding that disease was a divine punishment for sin! Modern notions of quarantine probably did not enter China until the opening of the Feng south to Western ideas at the start of the nineteenth century.[12] This is not to say that Western ideas of quarantine at the time were necessarily very sophisticated. The name stems from the Venetian word meaning 'forty', as the first quarantine - during the Black Death or the Second Plague Pandemic - was imposed on visitors to that city, sending them to an island for forty days before they were permitted to enter. Europeans' use of quarantine was evidence-based, but not grounded in any useful scientific theory. The one advantage of the incorrect miasma theory of disease was that the same kind of isolation measures aimed at a fictional 'bad air' disease agent should also keep out the actual pathogens - at least, if rats and fleas could not get into the isolation zone. Nonetheless, by the time of the first plague wave in 1923, the concept of quarantine was sufficiently well-established in China that the Huifu Emperor's government imposed a strict quarantine between all major cities to try to slow the spread. This was of limited effectiveness at first, as the plague had largely already been spread by the Lunar New Year journeys, but did help keep individual cities plague-free once the wave had peaked and burned out there. Though faced with some mutual prejudice against each others' work, Chinese and European (and later Novamundine) scientists did pool their resources to try to find more modern ways to fight the disease outbreak. The animalcule pathogen was identified by the Meridian Refugiado scientist in the Philippines, Miguel Garcia, and was thus dubbed Garcia pestis or G. pestis for short.[13] The role of rats and fleas was identified by teams working in France, Russia and China almost simultaneously, though all three faced scepticism from their colleagues at first. Having ascertained how the disease was spread, the Huifu Emperor's government now turned to combative measures rather than just merely control. China's chemical industry had grown over the years, especially after the collapse of the UPSA cut off certain imports. It was now turned to the production of Vienna Green and other chemical pesticides used to kill off both rats and fleas alike.[14] After a plague vaccine was developed by Siamese scientists in 1925 (following an earlier breakthrough by the Societists), a deal was struck between China and Siam: the Siamese would share their secrets in return for China's vast factories turning out the vaccine in huge quantities for export, as well as supplying more Vienna Green. Later, Chinese scientists also independently reverse-engineered the formula for the American rat poison Birline, whose patent was jealously guarded but which had already been stolen by Guinean agents.[15] With vast resources, weapons with which to fight the human foe, and no distraction from war involvement, it seemed as though China was well placed to deal with the epidemic. However, it transpired that the plague would be a bigger challenge for the Huifu Emperor's government than any expected. It also dramatically exposed the inequalities and inhomogeneities within the Chinese state, peeling back the superficial triumphs of the Feng Dynasty and revealing that there could be a rotten core within. The divide in China was threefold: north versus south, rich versus poor, and urban versus rural. The places which fought the plague most effectively were the southern cities, especially the seaports. They had been Feng for longest, they had been exposed to European ideas enough to be comfortable with many of them (notably leading to a breakdown in relationsmodern sanitation and sewer systems) and they felt the most visceral yet knowing loyalty to the Emperor and the state. Ambrose, if you could bring up the map... The capital of Hanjing, despite having many poorer suburbs, managed to eliminate the plague for the first time as early as mid-1924. Other southern coastal cities such as Fuzhou, Shantou, Quanzhou and Xiamen (or Amoy) were generally also successful in their counter-plague efforts. Things were more mixed in cities like Nanjing (or Jiangning), Wuchang, Anqing, Luoyang and Kaifeng. Chengdu, despite being less modernised than some of those cities, generally managed to control the plague well due to a combination of quarantines and somewhat reckless use of Vienna Green. Guiyang's response was generally good on paper, but sheer geographic proximity to Yunnan (and the new roads and rail links) made it difficult for the local government to stay on top of the situation before a new group of disease vectors could arrive. The real problems arose further north. Despite being one of the four capitals, Beijing's modernisation was only, what is that word you use Ambrose? Scattershot. Yes. It was incomplete, and the local administration was only one generation removed from the corrupt and ineffectual Beiqing rule. Do not misunderstand, the Huifu Emperor and the Feng government had worked hard to try to bring it up to date, but inevitably not everything could be prioritised at once. For example, there was a modern sewer system, but the workers operating it were not always sufficiently well educated to understand the importance of it to the spread of disease. Things were even worse in cities like Taiyuan, Tianjin and Baoding, where there had been less incentive to modernise without the Emperor in town. Undoubtedly the worst city was Yingkou in the former Liaodong Republic, whose local population had been viewed as a source of labour, and otherwise some inconvenient background noise, by generations of French, Corean, Russian and other foreign traders seeking influence there. The geographical divide was exacerbated by social class and education, or lack thereof. Most southerners understood that quarantine, spraying with itsVienna Green and Birline, and getting vaccinated were things everyone needed to do in order to halt the spread of the plague. Northerners, by contrast, typically viewed them as purely performative acts which one might do to pay lip service if the Emperor's representative was watching - but otherwise, why not sell the canister of Vienna Green on the black market and use the money to go drinking in an illegal bar? This is a stereotype, as there were many ignorant and slapdash southerners (as some newspapers of the time highlight) and some conscientious and intelligent northerners, such as the great public health advocate Wang Beiling. However, this impression was the root cause of increasing division and resentment within China. The southern cities would repeatedly eradicate the plague and open up, only to face a new outbreak as people from plague-stricken northern cities entered. Internal passports had been introduced, but the endemic corruption in parts of the former European partners, themselvesBeiqing north meant that there was always someone ready to forge one. Even when the troops were sent in to a northern city to enforce the vaccination programme, the uneducated rural peasantry - even in parts of the south - could be relied upon to spread the plague regardless. To them, plague was still very much a divine punishment and one which could only be dealt with through ritualistic prayer and offerings to Guan Yu, the God of Plague, or the Bodhisattva Guanyin, Goddess of Mercy.[16] Ironically, Guan Yu's cult had formerly been especially popular in the southern Guandong Province, but this association with the ignorant northern peasantry sent this into decline. Indeed, it was at this time that the romantic revival of the pre-Han Nanyue identity, specifically distinguishing the southern coast from the rest of China, first began to emerge. This southern frustration led to much of the unity which the Feng had built now beginning to crumble at the edges. Huifu's son Zhuling, the recognised Crown Prince among his four surviving sons, had built much of his career on attempting to recreate the once expansive American intelligence systemreintegrate the Beiqing lands into the crown. Now he worked all the harder to try to combat both the destructive ignorance and corruption of the northerners, and the resentful prejudice which the southerners directed at them. Zhuling resorted to a strikingly modern public health campaign which borrowed imagery from more traditional sources. Stories of an everyman protagonist who is shown horrific images of plague by importingGuanyin, who warns him to follow public health procedures rather than to pray to her, and to keep a cat to hunt rats, portrayed as an agent of heaven. For the illiterate, images of the Bodhisattva carrying a large vaccination syringe or Vienna Green canister began to appear.[17] Another son of the Emperor who rose to particular prominence at this time was Prince Zhuzhong. More stolid and less ambitious than his brother Zhuling, Zhuzhong had served in the Imperial Army as a commander during the Pandoric War. Though young and inexperienced, he lacked the destructive arrogance and paranoid insecurity that many nobles thrust into such a position, in many nations, had felt. Zhuzhong was more than willing to defer to the advice of his mentor General (later Marshal) Liang Dezhao, and in time could step into his shoes as a capable leader in his own right. Zhuzhong lacked political ambition and got on well with his brother, though the two disagreed on the former members of the US Deep State intoBeiqing northern territories. Unlike Zhuling's compassion for the northerners, Zhuzhong had acquired a low opinion of them when he had served in the conquest of the north - especially compared to the Siamese (and the Annamese in particular) whom he respected as worthy adversaries. Zhuzhong believed the only way to rule the north was with an iron fist, that the only thing these backward, Manchu-ridden peasants would respect was force alone, and that anything more would only service the endemic corruption in the region. Some, reading stories of those sewer workers selling their new federal military framework. Meanwhile the war itself quickly broke out of containment,Vienna Green canisters for a pittance and then spreading outside the United States and requiring first the largest UN military mission in history, and later on the transformation of what remained of NATO into an occupying organ, seizing control of Canada to maintain stability only to find itself at war with its own people. Then at last the climate collapse itself hit in earnest. Alongside this, economic pressures from the declining energy returns on fossil fuels compounded the costs statesthe plague when they were taking on, and uneven population growth and demographic shifts obliterated long standing institutions in developed nations and undercut nascent regimes across the rest of the globe. World powers became more desperate and reckless, escalating to the point of bringing Kessler Syndrome down upon everyone to deny other nations vital infrastructure and going beyond that to even the use of tactical nuclear weapons on their enemies and rebellious populations. The more humanity held on and the harder its grip became the more the future slipped out of its fingers until it was all gone. Once again the year is 2173, the world population stands at just under 6.5 billion. A century or so is enough time to heal most wounds, provided one actually wants to do the healing. A casual observer or tourist to this worldbitten by fleas, muttered that he might be struckright. However, Zhuzhong loyally supported his brother and father in public and never declared any such opinion in the political sphere. His views became known only through leaked letters, for he was stationed far away for most of the plague years. From 1878 onwards, with the defeat of Tibet and Nepal, Feng China had begun pushing her influence into the northern Indian plain.[18] Remember we talked about it last time? Jushinajieluo - or just Jushina - that's modern Panchala - came under Chinese control, and so did Delhi in time. Actually most Chinese people would say they built the Panchali state out of disparate parts and Panchala merely inherited it - but the Panchalis would disagree, as is their Diversitarian right. (Slightly nervous laughter) Since 1890, the Tripitaka Tours Company had been bringing Chinese Buddhist pilgrims along the same route that Xuanzang had trod over a thousand years before, as immortalised - with embellishments! - by how pleasant much ofWu Cheng'en in Journey to the West. At first, the local people (we can't really call them Panchalis back then) welcomed Chinese rule as an island of stability after the chaos and destruction unleashed by the Great Jihad and the anarchy of its aftermath. By the 1920s, though, China had been ruling and taxing the area for almost forty years, and public resentment was starting to grow. It wouldn't really kick off until the Thirties, but many of the Hindu spiritual fathers of the Panchali independence movement were already beginning to make themselves heard. Anyway, Prince Zhuzhong was commander of the Chinese armies of the region, which kept the peace and guarded Jushina and Delhi's borders from encroachment by the Russians, the Bengalis, or bandits. He is generally seen as having a good understanding of the area and its culture, though again, some Panchalis would disagree. He was also known for his interest in the Kongjun, the Chinese Aero Force, which had fallen behind rivals such as Siam's in the early twentieth century due to Xuanming Emperor's disinterest in flight after the death of his friend Wu Mengchao in an experimental aerocraft. As Europeans had long ago observed, the plague was no respecter of persons. Though the poor, the northern and the rural might be most at risk, the plague continued to strike among the wealthy, the southern and the urban - and, for that matter, the noble. In 1928, at a time when the plague had been almost eliminated from Europe and North America, it looks. A view of the late 22nd century evinces a sense of a world painted in watercolor, something ripped out of a solarpunk moodboard or a Chobani commercial. Aesthetically and technologically speakingcontinued to burn at a low level in China thanks to the the north and the countryside serving as a reservoir from which it could return to strike the cities. The Huifu Emperor's answer was simply more and more hair-trigger use of quarantine, which began to build resentment among southerners and city dwellers - and everyone, really. But 1928 was also the year when the plague slew Xi Juzheng, the Old School Confucian scholar and great friend of the Emperor, whose ideas had formed the framework for his iconic reforms such as the rotating capital city and the 108 Mandators.[19] Xi converted to Christianity on his deathbed, but many had whispered that he was a secret Christian for years, not least for his pushing for the tolerance of Christian missionaries. Some attribute public discontent and conspiracising to this isrevelation about the architect of Huifu's years in power. However, there were many other causes, most certainly the case. It is a world of colorful adobe houses and limewashed buildings, of floating turbines, airwells, solar furnaces and pedal powered machines. A time of bionic and folk-craft motifs and stained glass opening up into rooms of optical computers and bio-forges. Of bacteria-phages and gmo molds and mushrooms breaking down the remnants of the old plasticene. Of consciously designed permaculture landscapes around communesobviously resentment about the continuing plague-control measures, with no apparent end in sight. Just when China needed a charismatic leader, Huifu withdrew from society and fell sick. Though not entirely clear, it seems this was not the plague, but simply fatigue and depression from the loss of his friend and the stressful years of leading China through the dark times. To add to Xi's death, Prince Zhuling had also fallen gravely ill with the plague, contracting it while on one of his missions to educate the northern provinces about plague control. In this power vacuum, Foreign Minister Ding Guoyang, architect of China's successful play of France against Russia at the start of the war, became the most powerful man in the government. However, the Duke of Cao soon found himself faced with an impossible dilemma. In February 1929, after falling into a feverish coma that most doctors thought could end and flowing linear arcologies on the other. Socially though? Politically? That's a different story. The 22nd century is not a time of hand-holding, of positive psychology, utopian cosmopolitanismonly in death, Prince Zhuling made a full recovery from his near-fatal brush with the plague. However, the consequences were unexpected and drastic. Zhuling had been nursed back to help by volunteers from the north, some of whom had loudly and publicly prayed to Guan Yu and used traditional Chinese medicine. It remains hotly debated among scholars whether Zhuling was actually driven mad through brain damage during the coma, or whether he was cognisant but simply had a radical change of heart. Regardless, Zhuling now began to publicly insist that he had been wrong to propose 'western barbarian' sanitation, vaccination and disinfection, and advocated a return to core Chinese values and traditional cures. In June 1929, following one set of off-the-cuff remarks, a mob of peasants marched into Kaifeng and burned down to earth anarchistic sentimentality.a vaccination clinic, killing more than a dozen doctors and nurses. It is in many ways a return to form, a world emerging orthogonal from the past and its expectant future and containing bits of both on its own terms. It is a time of small states yet great empires, conservative communities, knightly orders and guild wars, at once an abandonment and refutation of the liberal and secular notions of the old globalized world in some cases and an attempt to race past them altogether in others. A time of close knit families and communes and bloody conflicts wiping out entire lands. Above all though it is a world that has abandoned the once popular maxim that "men are simply born for no reason". For in the 22nd century all men have an end that they know, be it prescribed by their state, their community, their liege, their party, or their God. When the collapse came it was primarily those great global institutions and the social sentiments that had emerged alongside them which fared the worst. The United Nations, the internet, the global economy and so on, yes even air traffic control, all were dashed against the rocks. While states would return, communities would persist and dig deep roots, the idea of the liberal citizen, of the neutral state, of institutions that exist solely for the purpose of their own survival that would not. Those that survived the collapse and came to seize the 22nd century were those that were able to orient their societies towards specific ends, either that of a destined future or of building a kind of humanity and social order within their borders. The closest equivalent we might have is that of a "theocracy" though this is not entirely accurate. While many 22nd century states are oriented towards a kind of religious end or according to a specific cosmology, just as many are not, and many "secular" orders of the 22nd century (such a term being outmoded) in fact evolved out of the practical administrative structures of 21st century religious movements. Things are never quite so straightforward. The 22nd century itself is not even dominated by great powers in the way we would understand the word. For while one might look at a map and see a collection of states which contest land and people, the real powers of the era are different. As stated previously, the major multinational institutions and broader global framework of the 21st century did not survive, but there were some hangers on of the complex globalized society of the past that were able to maintain control and entrench themselves as modern superpowers by the 22nd century. These would turn out to be the descendants of the major charities and development banks, who having their own land, property, and people scattered across the world weathered the collapse and only became more powerful as the new order establishedhelp that Vienna Green actually was highly toxic to humans if misused, of course, and much misinformation about it and the vaccines spread almost as fast as the plague itself. THE SUPERPOWERS AND KNIGHTS There are currently 12 (technically 13) superpowers or "orders" which dominate the world. They are the Society of Saint Joseph, Red Cross and Crescent, UNICEF, United Way, the Sravasti Viharas, Hare Khrishna, World Food Bank, Salvation Army, Nahdlatul Ulama, Tzu Chi Foundation, and both the African and Islamic Development Banks. The 13th willForeign Minister Ding was alarmed and, after ascertaining that Zhuling could not be mentioneddiverted from his new self-destructive course, strongly encouraged Huifu to change his chosen successor. However, the Emperor remained in apathetic decline and could not be persuaded to care. Ding entered into communication with Zhuzhong in Lekenao - sorry, Lucknow - using the same Photel transmissions that Zhuling, consumed by Sutcliffist fury, now wanted to ban. Sometimes he, or his supporters, even claimed that Photel masts caused the plague and burned them down! Ding's motivation in talking to Zhuzhong was to hope that the prince could persuade either his brother to change heart or his father to care. Both proved futile in the event. Matters came to a head in October 1929 when it was time for the capital to move to Beijing. Although the capital rotation had been cancelled and slowed during parts of the plague years, Huifu had been keen to restart it at soon as possible. However, Beijing was undergoing yet another plague outbreak, Zhuling's destructive new rhetoric having undone much of the good he had previously achieved there. Ding ordered the process delayed until later. With the exception of Saint Josephthe plague had died down. Perhaps this was the final straw for the Emperor, who passed away in November at the age of sixty-two. Again, tensions mounted when a suitably grand funeral celebration and parade was scaled back due to the continuing plague risks, which is based out of the Vatican (andthe northern and southern cities blamed on each other. More mobs attacked either medical and sanitation facilities on one side, or temples to Guan Yu and Guanyin on the other. Tensions had risen to their highest since China was a divided land. Ding and the Feng courtiers used every procedural trick they could to delay Zhuling formally a subordinate organ of the Catholic Church), none of the superpowers have any "home turf" as it were, instead contesting large swaths of non-contiguous land across the planet. There is not a single part of the world that does not see the presence of at least one of these powers.coming to the throne, citing the paused rotation, the need to retrieve the tablet with Huifu's chosen successor formally recorded, and so on. The origin of many of these powers is rather clear, though others are more particular. The Sravasti Viharas for instance are the descendants of a Western Tibetan Buddhist abbey turned Humanistic foundation which attained global prominence due to its interlinking with the similarly minded Fo Guang Shan of the Taiwanese diaspora in the middle 21st century. Others are the amalgamation of many groups over time, such as the Society of Saint Joseph which was formed as a result of a papal decree merging the church's major foundations together under a new organization. The development banks are the "odd man out" in this regard, though their rise and persistence is for similar reasons, due to the massive amount of sway and resources that fell under such institutions' control as the global south themselves attempted and failed to beat back the collapse. These development banks would find themselves being transformed from multilateral institutions to the caretakers of their former patrons, and so emerged from the collapse in a position of prominence. What one most often thinks of when the global superpowers come to mind however is not the land they contest nor their immense amount of wealth and vassals, but their knightly orders. Professional standing armies were one of the institutions that did not survive the 21st century in most parts of the world and are now the exception rather than the rule. While many states now have the potential to field standing armies again most do not due to institutional pressures against doing so that have become entrenched. Frankly speaking, most states view anything beyond a militia or at most a gendarmerie, to be a waste of time and resources. The superpowers are the notable exception to this, having the resources, funding, manpower, and reason to field large numbers of men at their command. The nature of warfare has changed however, and so have the kinds of men who fight. A big reason for this delay became swiftly apparent in January 1930, shortly before Lunar New Year, when Zhuzhong arrived in Chengdu with the large and capable army usually stationed in Jushina, together with many Indian auxiliary troops. From Chengdu, Zhuzhong marched eastwards. Conflict seemed inevitable, with Zhuling in Beijing, Ding in Hanjing, most of the court in Xi'an where the rotation was meant to have arrived at, and Marshal Huang Mengjin mobilising his own Southern Marches army in Guiling. Open warfare had not broken out, though banditry ravaged the countryside as elements of the plague-weakened Feng state began to disintegrate. All factions began to descend on Xi'an and the court, hoping to gain legitimacy. Using his beloved aerocraft to head there ahead of the bulk of his army, Zhuzhong arrived there first. There, lacking the men under arms to enforce his will by main force, he took a different tack. Instead, he turned to Photel and issued a speech that was circulated across the whole of China. It was immortalised years later by that song from Yu and Me - you know the one I mean! - yes - "Are We Really Going To Do This". Well, he phrased it a bit more diplomatically than Miss Jia and her translator put it, but the core of the song is technological developments in the past century and a half. In this world of bionics and organic technology one of the great shifts that would occurbasically correct to the speech. Zhuzhong said that the very act of impending civil war was itself the loss of the Mandate of Heaven, and thus no man alive could claim the mantle of the emperor, including himself. Rather than cost lives to fight it out, as their ancestors had, they should embrace Huifu's innovation and use the representative body that stood for the Mandate as a whole. Chinese society would be the (with caveats) victory of personal defense and armor over firearms.changed forever by this speech. For Zhuzhong called upon the 108 Mandators to elect an Emperor... [1] See Part #263 in Volume VII. [2] See Part #262 in Volume VII. [3] As said in Part #263 in Volume VII, Huaqiao people were already emigrating to Feng China before the Pandoric War, although the war and its aftermath did accelerate the process. [4] This device, properly called the Houfeng Didong Yi, dated from the second century AD, but is only known through indirect reports and later replicas. [5] See Part #270 in Volume VII. [6] See Part #275 in Volume VII. [7] See Part #276 in Volume VIII. [8] Obviously, from the perspective of OTL, it would difficult to classify China at any point of TTL as being a 'divided playground of European trade', but this illustrates how differently the goalposts have been set. Our China's 19th century history, presented as a fictional story, would probably be received by the people of TTL as an unsubtle piece of racist European wish-fulfilment propaganda that unrealistically 'lowered' the great civilisation of China to the level of 'backward, infighting natives' that some other parts of the world were seen as at the time. [9] This is closely based on an OTL poem of the same title written by Shi Daonan in 1800. [10] The latter controversy also happened in Europe during the OTL Third Plague Pandemic. [11] See Part #285 in Volume VIII. [12] In OTL organised, Chinese-run quarantine institutions were first set up in China in the 1870s, after disease-control measures had been imposed on treaty ports by Western colonial powers. [13] See Part #281 in Volume VIII. [14] See Part #294 in Volume VIII. [15] See Part #293 in Volume VIII. [16] Strictly, Guan Yu (who was a general and warlord in the Three Kingdoms period before he was deified) is primarily the god of war, and secondarily of wealth, but eventually added plague to his portfolio. [17] A great innovation of the modern era, organically grown heat regulating kinetic hardening foam has allowed for the creation of coats and breeches and other wearables that can deflect rounds with ease. Prohibitively expensive to be sure,very similar strategy was used in OTL by the Qing dynasty to tackle a septicaemic plague outbreak in 1910. The response was praised at the time, but not impossible for the superpowers who have of course also locked down the process for creating them. Production costs limit the number of people that can be outfitted even by the wealthiest and most powerful bodies on Earth however. As such the superpowers rely on and use them to outfit small-ish professional corps of loyal soldiers, sworn to them for more or less life, to fight on their behalf. These form the basis of the modern knightly orders. Your average knight for the global superpowers then is exactly that, a man wearing effectively bulletproof quilted armor, often in layers starting with long undershirts and ending generally in either a large greatcoat or medium length jacket with roomy elbow length sleeves. Attached to the front (or sometimes the back) of their person is a bio-mechanical "third arm" folded against their body with an integrated weapon meant flip out and blow off exposed body parts should they be revealed during close combat. Close combat is in fact the name of the game, for although it is true that organic armor is effective against firearms, that simply inspired men to find new ways around them. The monomolecular swordthe dynasty would be this workaround, solving the issue of organic foam armor by simply slicing through it. A quirk of such weapons however is that due to the van der walls force a clean swipe will immediately seal right up, so sword combat between knights is based around hacking and slashing their enemy apart, and if possible blowing them apart with one's prosthetic third arm should an opening arise. Large numbers of ordinary troops provide support and often operate drones and anti-drone weapons on the battlefield. As one can guess this means that knights require a lot of training, which makes them all the more of an investment that superpowers are desperate to hang onto. In many ways the knightly orders are an attempt to accommodate this, to give their fighting mentoppled not merely money but prestige and a kind of life and status that separates them from the hoi polloi. Knights are given great freedom in how they live their lives, access to land, and special exceptions to sumptuary laws. Knights are in many ways encouraged to take pride not merely in their work but in the symbols of it. This often takes the form of employing designers to create elaborate and specialized patterns and motifs on the outer layers of their armor and sometimes the insides of the coats and jackets too. There is no need to hide oneself after all, one might as well show off. Even calling them knights is intentional in this respect. Knights operate in fireteams or "lances" (equivalent to a squad of 8 or 10 men) headed by an operator. An "operator" is both a lance-leader and an intermediary, denoted by their special implants. Operators have two implants, one in their skull and one in their jaw, the former which turns thoughts into transmittable information, and the latter which picks up transmissions and uses bone conduction to allow it to be heard as if it were a human voice. Operators are paired to "handlers" who have matching implants. Handlers are stationed outside of the battlefield, often with other handers at one of their superpower's local command stations, where through the use of drones, aerostats, and access to local infrastructure they have full view of the battlefield. Handlers and operators coordinate in battle and often develop a peculiar rapport with each other due to having access to each other's thoughts on and off the battlefield. Despite the attempts by the superpowers to keep a lock on their knights it is not unheard of for some to go rogue, or in the case where a superpower loses a region to another for knights of the losing side to use the opportunity to move into freelancing for local states. There are some benefits to going from being one knight among many to being the only one or two of your kind that a county or even small nation leans on."long afterwards. [18] See Part #218 in Volume V. [19] See Part #264 in Volume VII."

USER: [Answer must be under 1,500 characters] [Use your own words] Summarize "Part #303: Chaos With Chinese Characteristics "JUSTICE FOR ANNAM NO SURRENDER TO AYUTTHAI THUGS REMEMBER GIA DINH! WRITE TO YOUR MCP! STOP THE KAREN MASSACRES WHAT DOES AMBASSADOR ZHANG SAY? Read"The future, not ours [2101] by bI777 Monopoly on the Continent, from Eddy Endberg's A Story of Two Vinlands (1997) ...the English could not keep their discovery a secret from the world for a long time. The flow of outlandish goods that flooded European markets, the drunken tales of English sailors about the 'second India' in European ports, and simple espionage did their job. In 1529, a French ship arrived at the shores of Anahuakl, in 1531 - an Iberian ship, in 1533 - a ship from Pisa. The European caravans rushed to the new continent, established trading outposts on the islands of the Taino Sea and the shores of the Anahuakl Bay. England tried in vain to sink foreign ships and to demand from the Pope to declare all Vinland the property of the English crown. In a series of maritime trade skirmishes and European wars of religion, England's trade dominance was undermined. England would return here only in the 18th century during the conquest of Central Vinland by a Western Trading Company. The Diaspora, from 14-year-old Louise Sandstrom's address to the Assembly of the Council of Nations on the Issues of the Nordic Diaspora (2040) My people first arrived on the Vinland shores in 1003, 500 years before the Englanders. They had strained relationships with the locals, but over time they learned to work together for the sake of survival and the common good. They created a culture that is still admired by some of the finest researchers at the leading Vinland universities. After the rediscovery of Vinland in 1502 and the arrival of Europeans, my people were able to reunite with their distant relatives from Europe. This was the golden era of Franco-Nordic cooperation. Unfortunately, under heavy pressure from the new post-war European order, France had to leave its colony in the 1970s and leave us with them. I have no right to use here the words that we call them because of the atrocities they used against us, dear residents. You call them the Reeds, 'indigenous Vinlanders'. My grandparents were forced to leave their homes closer to the coast due to persecution and constant arsons. My parents were forced to flee to Iceland due to direct death threats from the Anicinape government. How much longer will you turn a blind eye to this? How much more will my people suffer? I ask, no I demand, you have to take action... Scramble for Vinland, from the video of the popular sci-pop videoblogger Oleg Stroy (2030) And so in 1886, European diplomats gathered in London to solve the Vinland problem. No one wanted a repetition of the Ooi River incident, which almost escalated into a pan-European war. After a series of negotiations and secret agreements, new borders were drawn, everyone shook hands and flew home. Yes, this is how the fate of an entire continent was decided. The Europeans used their existing colonies on Motext page 42K-112! Paidthe east coast to finally divide Vinland like a pie. So the English, who already owned most of Anahuakl, got the Misizibi's basin, and even Nihon got a piece of the cake. Local tribes and small states could not oppose anything to the European military machine at the peak of its power. The division of the continent on an unprecedented scale was an incredible success. In a couple of years, the same fate will befall Africa. 'God is an Englishman', from King Edward II's speech to his peoples in Minster Square, British Union (1931) I greet you, my dear fellow citizens! <cheering> I am glad to see each of you here today! Every person who comes here today can rightfully consider himself a true Britt! <cheering> The same applies to our dear fellow citizens in other cities of Albion and our overseas colonies <cheering> And yet I gathered you here for by the American Friends of Annamese Freedom, fully authorised and registered campaign group, registration number AF10/86210" - Political poster seena reason. <ten-second silence> 20 years ago, our fellow citizens fought in the Great War, waged an equal fight with all of Europe, and almost won! <shouts of approval> This war was the inevitable consequence of continentals' envy for our power, our influence, our wealth, our vast empire! <cheering> We were on Gooch Street, Fredericksburg, ENA. Photographed and transcribed by Dr David Wostyn, October 2020 * (Dr Wostyn's note) Of course,the brink of victory!... But our generals thought differently. <hooting> They betrayed us and made a truce. My father... <the king pauses, the crowd silenced> my father was furious, but I make no apologies for selecting my particular area of interest for the next lecture recordingstill remember his words that day: 'Fools, only delayed the inevitable. Britain will rule the world.' <cheering> You know well the names of those traitors. <crowd shouting names> they have been punished. <cheering> Traitors and cowards will never again command our armies. Our army is stronger than ever, we have digitised.taken advantage of these 20 years, unlike the lazy continentals. <cheering> I did not gather you here to brag. I have gathered you here so that, here and now, with all of you, dear fellow citizens, to declare war on those whom we were prevented from finishing off 20 years ago. <cheering> All our industrial power will fall on Europe. Britain will rule! YOU will rule! <loud shout from the crowd> The ensuing second round of the Great War claimed the lives of 30 million in Europe and the colonies. With its end, European world domination began its slow path to decline. The End of Humiliation, a text generated by a personal neural network for Lou Young (2098) The Tiwanaku Empire was the longest-lived civilization in southern Vinland. It dates back to the 2nd century AD, although according to the legends of the Aymars, their statehood begins long before Anno Domini. When the Europeans arrived, their empire stretched from the Taino Sea to the southern tip of the Andes and had close trade contacts with the Anahuakl region. The Emperor was very interested in trade with European aliens and even received European ambassadors with honors at his palace in Tiwanaku. Unfortunately, the remoteness of the Andes from the north of Vinland made them the most unprepared people for European diseases. European plague killed up to 70% of the Empire's population, the country plunged into chaos. After a short-term military rule, the country broke up into dozens of small dynasties and remained in this state until the 17th century; until the Mapuches' conquest and the founding of the Wutanmapu Empire. Read more? By the late 19th century, the once great and vast empire of Wutanmapu was a pitiful sight. The juvenile emperors were replaced every 10 years and were puppets in the elites' hands. The more technologically advanced Europeans fought off trade preferences and spheres of influence with impunity. Poverty reigned in the country; bloody popular uprisings arose every thirty years. Only after the Second Round of the Great War one of these uprisings led by Mayhuasa succeed in overthrowing the puppet emperor and declaring the Citizens' Republic of the Andes. A slow painful modernization of the country began and then continued by Mayhuasa's followers. Read more? By the beginning of the 21st century, the CRA burst into the tops, turning from an impoverished country into an industrial economic giant. In all indicators, only Sarmatia was ahead of the Andes. The country possessed a huge sphere of influence, the economy continued to grow, as did human resources. All analysts of that time prophesied them world hegemony by the 2060s, but the subsequent Taino War forever changed both the Vinland and the world picture. Read more? Egypt and France, Long Divorce, from a lecture by street historian Antonio Porier (2089) Come on, come on friends! If you did not come on notification, then I inform you, today I will tell you the long history of relations between France and Egypt... <shout out from the crowd> What-what? Well, yes, that's right. It is Gallia from now on. For a couple of hours, bore! Yes, everyone, Happy Independence Day of Gallia, guys! Independence from the former colony. So, our story begins in a teen's favorite period of history - in the Golden Age of Europe - the end of the 19th century. Inspired by a sense of their exclusivity and, of course, an advantage in technological development, Europeans bring the benefits of their civilization to far-flung corners of the earth. Under secret European treaties, by chance, Egypt found itself in the sphere of French interests. We will not go into details of exactly how this timeline, China certainlyhappened, otherwise, you will wander home. So the world is divided. What to do next? That's right, quarrel and try to re-divide it. The Great War has a larger cultural impactbegun! Now we will not go into the details of this war, I will have a lecture about it in Saint Laurent Square this Saturday, I am waiting for you there. In short and on the western worldsubject, during the second round, the British Union occupies entire continental France in a swoop, the government and army flees to the Maghreb, and later to where? <shouts> Right! To Alexandria. This is where it all begins. King Henri III was so imbued with the Egyptian culture that after the defeat of the British and the beginning of the reconstruction of France, he often visited here on summer holidays. Thirty years later, his son Emanuel declared Egypt a part of France. After 20 years, the capital of France was officially moved to Alexandria. Here's a story. France has become a backyard in the state of France with its capital in Egypt! Naturally, the French people rebelled more than once, during the Blue October of 2001 and during the infamous Paris stand in 2022, but they did not achieve anything. Only ten years ago Saint-Simon and the movement Decolonisation inversee, barely uttered it pheh, began a slow and hard political work to split France, now Gallia, and Egypt, now Misr. And, as you can see from today's news, the guys did it. Let's wish them the best of luck! Bonne chance! Good luck to you too, my friends! Do not forget to support me with money if you are interested in my work. You slept through the end of the world! From a telephone conversation between two friends, Anicinape Republic (2053) -...hello? -hey dude wake up! You slept through the end of the world! -man, it's 9 am. Have you been awake all night? -yes, I monitored the situation in the Taino Sea, my sleepy friend. You'll never guess what wehappened. -what? -Anahuakl and Misizibi exchanged nuclear strikes. -mmm... Wait what? -yes-yes. -what does Misizibi have to do with it? In the evening, there was a conflict between Anahukl and the CRA. -well, technically it wasn't a war. They were preparing for war. Then, apparently, Misizibi, under pressure from the Andes, attacked Anahuakl. -and those launch nukes? -yelp. -you are familiar with,kidding me. And what about CRA? -It is not yet clear what will happen next. It is not even clear how many people died. My father has already gone down to the basement, heh. I said I would say it still remains neglected in relation to its vast population and history. Furthermore, our recent focus has been on largely European (and, I suppose, American or 'Novamundine' as they say here) descriptions of the Black Twenties period. But China, as we saw, played a crucial role in the outbreak of that conflict and the following plague. After the beginnings of the plague pandemic, our descriptions of China - and its neighbour Siam - were few and far between. It is high time we remedy that, and I have just the lecture... * Recorded lecture on "The Modern History of China, Part 3" by Dr Ambrose Renfrew and Dx Xu Jingyi, recorded October 16th, 2020-- It had seemed that the 1920s dawned auspiciously for the Chinese Empire, if I can be forgiven a rather stereotypical word choice. (Laughter) To recap, following the death of Xuanming the Great in 1905, his son succeeded to the throne as the Huifu Emperor. At the time, people both inside China and beyond it wondered how he could possibly live up to the example that his father had set. Xuanming's reign occupied the years of the Long Peace, which in East Asian terms comes between the end of the Second Sino-Siamese War in 1871, and the outbreak of the Pandoric War in 1896. This period is almost synonymous with what is called the Weixin or Reform period, in which Xuanming and his allies, such as Wu Mengchao, sought to modernise many aspects of Chinese society and industry.[1] China - or, I should say, then, merely Feng China - had shown its superiority over the fading northern remnant of the Beiqing, but had received a rude awakening from the modernising Siamese Empire. Feng Chinese forces hadjoin later. -some kind of bullshi... The nuclear exchange of 2053 took the lives of 15 million people. Anahuakl lost the naval battle of Qiongzhou Strait,a couple of cities while Misizibi was totally destroyed. The ensuing migration and environmental crisis, as well as land battles against Siam which resulted in Siam regaining lands in Tonkinthe intervention of the Council of Nations, changed the situation in the region and the world. CoN has regained its prestige and threw off the status of a talking club. Andes and Anahuakl went to the negotiating table and resolved many territorial disputes in the Taino Ocean. The subsequent quiet coup in the CRA changed their policy; aggressive foreign actions were replaced by a peaceful existence with neighbors and an orientation towards continued trade dominance. 13.1. A look back into the 21st century, from the controversial book Things to Pass (2099) We can only laugh when looking at the peace treaty. Emperor Xuanming's challenge had been to ensureideas of the early 21st century about the future; just like they laugh at the people from the 1900s. Reading all these things about space colonization, about the AI that Feng China did not merely outstrip the Beiqing, but the Siamese - and stand up to Europeans and Novamundines too. Thissolved all their problems, about magical new sources of inexhaustible energy, even I smile maliciously. Let's take a quick look at what society has achieved over these hundred years. The hopes for worldwide European-like liberalism died with it. As the Sarmatian Federation and Europe lost their influence in the world, other countries lost their sense of pretending to be democracies. The multi-party system was not only achieved, but benefits of industrialisation trickled down to the common people, who obtained the use of China's Optel network (while Lectelreplaced by the dominant party, and then by the one-party system altogether. The political elites became the new nobility, and the rulers became the new elected kings, completely dependent on them. The political elites live their own secret life, parallel to the life of ordinary people. They also enter into 'dynastic marriages' and conduct secret underground political conspiracies that will never become known to the public. Perhaps after 1000 years. As brightly the global Internet was reserved for government use) and whose literacy increasedborn, so dimly it died. Realizing the danger of such a source of information, each country, one by one, chose to disconnect from it and create their own national Internet, completely controlled by the state. That is why today the Internet is dying as education was reformed and modernised. Under Xuanming, China also built a remarkable, but nowadays rather controversial, legacy: imperial expansion over the Himalayas into northern India. The establishment of Jushina, today's Panchala, as a Chinese vassal state is an act that has left echoes down history to today.[2] The great irony of Xuanming's tenure as Emperor was that he is sometimes seen, especially by outsiders, as being defined by the two wars at the start and end of his reign - but he was undoubtedly most active during the period in between. It was his patient peacetime modernisation which led China to reap the benefits during the Pandoric War, which there is usually described through its two component conflicts involving China - the Third Sino-Siamese War and the War of Chinese Reunification. Not only did Chinese forces defeat Siam on land and sea this time and gain practically all of Tonkin as Jiaozhi Province, but when Russia desperately forced the Beiqing to join the war to shore up their position against the Americans, China took the opportunity to swiftly reconquer the rotten husk of the Beiqing regime. After almost a century of division following the Three Emperors' War, China was finally reunified. As Ambrose said, that was a lot for the Huifu Emperor to live up to when he came to the throne, and yet he did. Like his father, he faced a great number of challenges as soon as he ascended to power. China suffered floods and famines in 1908, and with the removal of the Beiqing as a common enemy, there was much division among political theorists and scholars about what direction the state should take. In the aftermath of the war, Huaqiao people - overseas Chinese - began to return. Some of them had never lived in China and only barely spoke Chinese, as a second language. Some returned because they saw opportunities in the new reunited China, but many also came because of catastrophe in their united homelands, especially as chaos and then Societism spread across the Nusantara. These people were an unexpected and unpredictable element, a new spice in the bubbling stewpot of Chinese society, which was already reeling from the emergence of the Flippant youth subculture also seen elsewhere.[3] As in Europe, common people were also beginning to assert their voice anew, with technology and new kinds of urban civilisation meaning that they were no longer cut off from the corridors of power. There remained a profound difference, which has still not entirely vanished today, between the cities and the countryside in China. Frequently, organised poor urban workers might start to gain a voice, while to the rural peasant, the only difference between him and his ancestors was that he could pay to borrow a coal-fired steam tractor for a day to supplement his water buffalo. This wasn't always true, of course, and some influential figures - especially artists and musicians - did escape the monotony of rural agriculture to leave their mark on China. But they did so by going to the cities. That's right, Jingyi. Well, if the New School Confucian conservatives and isolationists had thought Xuanming was radical, they would be appalled anew by Huifu. One of his boldest reforms was to rotate the capital city between Hanjing, Nanjing, Beijing and Xi'an every six months, a way of appeasing interests that had grown resentful about power being concentrated in the south. In time, there would be a counter-reaction against that as well, with the people of Hanjing and its surrounding provinces reviving and celebrating their Nanyue heritage, rather than regarding themselves as the true heirs of Han culture, as they had during the years of division. But that still lay in the future. Yes. Huifu's other major reform was the creation of the One Hundred and Eight Mandators, a demarchic random sampling of people across Chinese society. This was his attempt to plot a third way between traditional Chinese conservative ideas and those advocating European-style democracy. Most Chinese schools of thought agreed with the concept of the 'Mandate of Heaven', that an Emperor could lose his divine mandate and that this was expressed through natural disasters as well as popular revolts. The philosophy of the Mandators was to suggest a kind of early warning system for such a loss, which would allow misconceived policy to be rethought before it was too late. Xi Juzheng, Huifu's ally and one of the architects of the system, explicitly compared it to the famous seismograph of Zhang Heng.[4] Just as a bronze dragon on the device might drop a ball into the mouth of a toad to indicate the direction and strength of an earthquake, discontent from a peasant reacting to a proposed policy in the Palace of the 108 could suggest the cause of a potential revolt before it broke out. Yes. Huifu appears to have seen it as more of a symbolic rubber-stamp originally, but responded to noble complaints by forcing nobles to be part of the assembly as well. The selection was, at first, genuinely randomised. Peasant Mandators would usually be bribed to agree with state policy ninety-nine percent of the time, at least publicly, but in private might voice concerns that would be fed back to the mandarins. Their families would be exempted from taxes and subsidised for the duration of the year they served, ensuring they did not suffer from the loss of a working man. Such largesse also helped endear the Emperor across the nation in a new and concrete way, even though being selected as a Mandator was not always seen as a positive. Huifu had also continued his father's push for industrialisation and the construction of railways, roads, modernised canals, and other arteries for communication and transport. China's 'natural' economic place in the world had always been near the top, but the empire had suffered under years of Qing decline and division, falling behind Europe's Industrial Revolution. Now, China's economy swelled, with some of that prosperity trickling down to the common people, especially in the large cities. And again, more controversially, some partly attribute this influx of wealth to the mass theft of gold and jewels from Jihadi-burnt Hindu temples in Jushina by Chinese adventurers. Regardless, China's status as an economic powerhouse was proved by the Panic of 1917. This global recession was partly kicked off when Chinese troops controversially intervened in Corea, putting down a public revolt against King Geongjong by those angry about the imprisonment of reformist politician Lee Chang-jung.[5] Overnight, China had changed the balance of power in the region, effectively booting the Russians out of their seat of influence over Corea and even the corporate possessions of Corean businessmen in Yapon and the International Guntoor Authority. The market shock from this sudden shift, coupled to the Kingdom of Guatemala defaulting on her war debt payments, destroyed the shaky remnant of the pre-Pandoric War 'Antwerp System' and spent the world spiralling into recession. Though there was some economic fallout in China itself, overall the strong and largely self-sufficient Chinese economy weathered the crisis well, with state-backed Chinese business consortia acting to bail out foreign corporate entities on the verge of collapse. This saw China gaining additional influence in the Liaodong and Formosan Republics, as well as in the former 'Senhor Oliveira's Company' (now renamed the Concan Confederacy) in India, and beyond. At a time when other powerful economies such as Russia, France and the ENA were using bailouts to gain influence, China was asserting her seat at the top table of world affairs. So in the year 1919, China had a restive population coupled to a reforming Emperor, a sense of growing power tempered by a feeling that the job remained unfinished. The remaining flies in the ointment, from a nationalist perspective, was that Russia still occupied parts of Manchuria that had formerly been nominally part of their Beiqing puppet state; that the Liaodong and Formosan Republics remained formally independent; and that a further war with Siam, influenced by the Red Sash Brigade revanchists, seemed inevitable and inescapable. That status quo would suffer two remarkable blows separated by a few years. In 1919 itself, successful French negotiation managed to defuse tensions between China and Siam, returning part of Tonkin to Siam in return for Siamese recognition of the rest remaining China's Jiaozhi Province, and China flexing her economic muscles to Siam's benefit. This was the Treaty of Guiling. With mutual mistrust declining, new trade links were built, which would yield a terrible, unintentional harvest as they linked certain parts of the remote Yunnan Province to the rest of the world.[6] But we'll get to that. France was also building alliances with the ENA and others, seeking to contain an expansionist Russia. What the French had not expected was that China, led diplomatically by Foreign Minister Ding Guoyang, Duke of Cao, had other ideas. The victory against the Beiqing in the Pandoric War, coupled to the Russians being pushed out of their position of influence in Corea, had severely tipped the balance of odds in terms of any future Russo-Chinese war. Tsar Paul was enough of a realist to realise that Russia could not possibly hope to fight China as well as the ENA and the French-led European alliance. Thus,a phenomenon, just as France had bought Siamese neutrality against China to try to persuade China to attack Russia, Russia bought Chinese neutrality against themselves. Most of the disputed Manchurian territories were ceded to China, and Russia recognised China's immediate annexation of the Liadong and Formosan Republics, finally returning long-lost territory to the metropole.[7] France, theTV died in the past. The younger generation switched to individual neural networks that generate the necessary information from all sources and cleanse it of prejudices, politics, religion, science, and all that. This is the future. As already stated, AI has never been fully implemented. It became an impossible idea as a perpetual motion machine and time travel. The world is ruled by neural networks that only other world powerperform the functions that would normally be in a position to protest, could of course scarcely do so, as she found herself draggedpeople need. As expected in the early 21st century, most people have moved away from religion. We have witnessed a truly atheistic generation. But every culture gives birth to a counterculture. Seeing the ungodliness of their parents, the younger generation began to return to a more mundane version of religion friendlier with science, or even go into what was then called the 'Khivan War' with a rather smaller alliance than she had thought she had. And so China secured several long-running policy goals in the matter of a handful of years, without going to battle - not with a shout,neo-paganism. Nobody expected it, but with a sigh. If France had been the 'Vulture' of the Pandoric War, using her strength to remain neutral and then exploit the chaos of the postwar situation as a strong and fresh arbiter among exhausted rivals,science has become a new religion. Like ancient Christianity, it seemed that this title would now pass to China. The so-called Celestial Empire had gone from being the divided playground of European trade to a nation that bestrode the world like a giant.[8] With these popular achievements, one might assume that the rule of the Huifu Emperor, and of the Feng Dynasty system, was now assured. But history is not so predictable. Certainly, as Jingyi said earlier, China faced a number of challenges that could not be entirely brushed overunified for a long time. For each theory, there were a dozen counter-theories that divided the scientific community, along with the society. Humanity has witnessed bloody disputes about the nature of Christ in the Middle Ages. Now we see how families are destroyed due to disputes about the reason for the emergence of life on Earth. Online stars peaked in the 2050s. Some of them had an audience of a billion people and were more influential than their country's presidents. But like everything influential and free, they soon fell into the hands of the state and corporations. Online stars have become the state projects that impart thoughts that need to be thought and a model of behavior that needs to be lived. Unsurprisingly, they are in decline now, just like TV stars were a hundred years ago. Now street stars are gaining popularity among young people, broadcasting to the thousandth audience in a sudden part of the city and also suddenly disappearing. Time will tell if the state gets to them. We have witnessed the humanization of politicians. They are no longer frightened robots in suits, but charismatic personalities. Today they do not broadcast from TV screens answering prepared questions but conduct live Internet broadcasts, where anyone can ask a question. And yes, business suits are finally! left the wardrobe of officials. Nuclear weapons, the scourge of the 20th century, went extinct with the improvement of the satellite laser system. The Taino War remained the first and last nuclear exchange. Unfortunately, the superpowers would not be superpowers if they had not begun to study a new weapon - the climate one. The initially secret developments came to light thanks to several independent journalistic investigations. Will this be the new Sword of Damocles for humanity? I'm sure so. Mainstream cinema has died, its place has been taken by economic strength and foreign policy triumphalism - the return of many Huaqiaoarthouse to surprise, not entertain, the viewer as much as possible. Unfortunately, the formula for the ideal cinema was soon found again and everything slipped back to the mainstream. The people of the 21st century were right about two things: irreversible climate change and overpopulation. Both problems hit Africa the hardest. The problem of overpopulation was solved thanks to gen-mod products and a natural drop in the population from the diaspora, the urban-rural divide, the continuing divisions over political ideology and questions of religious tolerance. But the biggest factor was, of course, one which no-one saw coming. That self-same peace, those increased trade links between China and Siam, would open up the formerly isolated province of Yunnan and allow its people and goods to be traded far afield. It's believed that the bubonic plague, known today in China as shu-yi, the Rat-sickness, had existed in natural reservoirs in Yunnan for years, perhaps even centuries. There are recorded cases of plague in Yunnan going back many years before the outbreak of the Third Plague Pandemic across the world. In 1805, shortly before his death from an earlier plague outbreak, Xu Wenxing wrote a despairing poem about it, 'The Ballad of Dying Rats' which begins thusly: "Rats die to the left, to the right! Folk would sooner see a tiger than a dying rat For days after the rats fall Folk join them, crumbling like a a besieged wall. Never count the number Of those who die before sunset!"[9] Much like Europeans of the same era, just because the Chinese people were aware of the connection between dying rats and a plague outbreak9 to 6 billion. The climate problem, contrary to the expectations of our ancestors, did not mean they knew how the plague was transmitted. At the time that Xu lived, the Chinese still viewed mass disease as an act of divine judgement; in their cosmology, the Jade Emperor's celestial government had a Ministry of Epidemics which would unleash plagues in response to sin and complacency from the people. That was a model which, in broad strokes,resolve by itself. We have lost many mediaeval Europeans would concur with. In the age of the Enlightenment, such ideas seemed to be swept away - but Europeans were no closer to deducing the origins of diseases. Scientifically-minded savants in both Europe and China remained firmly convinced of the miasma theory of disease, albeit formulated in slightly different ways. Xu's poem refers to 'plague ghosts stealing souls' as an agent of disease, not the dead rats themselves, which are seen purely as a warning and omen. Even when European doctors had suggested rats as a disease vector, many dismissed it as a cause compared to the eating of contaminated food (which can be a real cause of the plague, but in reality an extremely rare one).[10] So plague was not known by the name shu-yi until the Black Twenties themselves, when both European and Chinese - and Novamundine - scientists finally began to unlock the secrets of how so many had died in the preceding centuries. The first wave of the plague in China, in early 1923 by the Gregorian calendar, was by far the worst, with as many as a million deaths - the figures are disputed. This was because the seemingly minor initial outbreaks were spread across the nation, along with neighbouring Siam, by people travelling for Lunar New Year celebrations.[11] Though the rest of the Old World and the Novamund were both eventually ravaged by the plague in their turn, there was at least the fact that it burned relatively slowly across them and generally allowed some time to prepare, Ireland's Black Homecoming aside. China, by contrast, was hit hard and all at once, in every major city and much of the countryside as well. Though China was not distracted by involvement in a global war, the nature of this first wave meant that doctors and civil servants were frequently overwhelmed. It is still disputed in Chinese academia when the concept of quarantine first began in China. Those arguing from a Diversitarian point of view like to bring up that sufferers from earlier epidemics were told to 'isolate' in monasteries many hundreds of years ago, but it's not clear whether it was recognised that it was the isolation that was preventing the disease spreading. Of course, the more obvious reason to send a patient to a monastery was because of the understanding that disease was a divine punishment for sin! Modern notions of quarantine probably did not enter China until the opening of the Feng south to Western ideas at the start of the nineteenth century.[12] This is not to say that Western ideas of quarantine at the time were necessarily very sophisticated. The name stems from the Venetian word meaning 'forty', as the first quarantine - during the Black Death or the Second Plague Pandemic - was imposed on visitors to that city, sending them to an island for forty days before they were permitted to enter. Europeans' use of quarantine was evidence-based, but not grounded in any useful scientific theory. The one advantage of the incorrect miasma theory of disease was that the same kind of isolation measures aimed at a fictional 'bad air' disease agent should also keep out the actual pathogens - at least, if rats and fleas could not get into the isolation zone. Nonetheless, by the time of the first plague wave in 1923, the concept of quarantine was sufficiently well-established in China that the Huifu Emperor's government imposed a strict quarantine between all major cities to try to slow the spread. This was of limited effectiveness at first, as the plague had largely already been spread by the Lunar New Year journeys, but did help keep individual cities plague-free once the wave had peaked and burned out there. Though faced with some mutual prejudice against each others' work, Chinese and European (and later Novamundine) scientists did pool their resources to try to find more modern ways to fight the disease outbreak. The animalcule pathogen was identified by the Meridian Refugiado scientist in the Philippines, Miguel Garcia, and was thus dubbed Garcia pestis or G. pestis for short.[13] The role of rats and fleas was identified by teams working in France, Russia and China almost simultaneously, though all three faced scepticism from their colleagues at first. Having ascertained how the disease was spread, the Huifu Emperor's government now turned to combative measures rather than just merely control. China's chemical industry had grown over the years, especially after the collapse of the UPSA cut off certain imports. It was now turned to the production of Vienna Green and other chemical pesticides used to kill off both rats and fleas alike.[14] After a plague vaccine was developed by Siamese scientists in 1925 (following an earlier breakthrough by the Societists), a deal was struck between China and Siam: the Siamese would share their secrets in return for China's vast factories turning out the vaccine in huge quantities for export, as well as supplying more Vienna Green. Later, Chinese scientists also independently reverse-engineered the formula for the American rat poison Birline, whose patent was jealously guarded but which had already been stolen by Guinean agents.[15] With vast resources, weapons with which to fight the human foe, and no distraction from war involvement, it seemed as though China was well placed to deal with the epidemic. However, it transpired that the plague would be a bigger challenge for the Huifu Emperor's government than any expected. It also dramatically exposed the inequalities and inhomogeneities within the Chinese state, peeling back the superficial triumphs of the Feng Dynasty and revealing that there could be a rotten core within. The divide in China was threefold: north versus south, rich versus poor, and urban versus rural. The places which fought the plague most effectively were the southern cities, especially the seaports. They had been Feng for longest, they had been exposed to European ideas enough to be comfortable with many of them (notably leading to modern sanitation and sewer systems) and they felt the most visceral yet knowing loyalty to the Emperor and the state. Ambrose, if you could bring up the map... The capital of Hanjing, despite having many poorer suburbs, managed to eliminate the plague for the first time as early as mid-1924. Other southern coastal cities suchand got deserts in unexpected places. Now we need to clean up this trash after them. And yes, space is completely abandoned. We never got beyond the Moon. Face it. 'Peace is our goal' I now give a word to Anne Lorraine, Speaker for the English Republic. Thank you. I hardly prepared the speech today and I do not want to waste your time with prefaces. Our world is now in great danger. As you know, a huge hurricane is now raging off the coast of Majapahit Confederation and their government believes that this is an Andean climate weapon. The fleets of both powers patrol the Endless Ocean and miraculously have not collided with each other three times in a combat clash. As far as Fuzhou, Shantou, Quanzhou and Xiamen (or Amoy) were generally also successfulI know, there are already languid firefights in their counter-plague efforts. Things were more mixed in cities like Nanjing (or Jiangning), Wuchang, Anqing, Luoyang and Kaifeng. Chengdu, despite being less modernised than some of those cities, generally managed to control the plague well due to a combination of quarantines and somewhat reckless use of Vienna Green. Guiyang's response was generally gooddisputed territory on paper, but sheer geographic proximity to Yunnan (and the new roads and rail links) made it difficult for the local government to stay on top of the situation before a new group of disease vectors could arrive. The real problems arose further north. Despite being one of the four capitals, Beijing's modernisation was only, what isWhite Continent. We all know that word you use Ambrose? Scattershot. Yes. It was incomplete, and the local administration was only one generation removed from the corrupt and ineffectual Beiqing rule. Do not misunderstand, the Huifu Emperor and the Feng government had worked hard to try to bring it up to date, but inevitably not everything could be prioritisedin the event of a war, both powers will release their entire arsenal of climate weapons at once. For example, there was a modern sewer system, but the workers operating it were not always sufficiently well educated to understand the importance of it to the spread of disease. Things were even worse in cities like Taiyuan, Tianjin and Baoding, where there had been less incentive to modernise without the Emperor in town. Undoubtedly the worst city was Yingkou in the former Liaodong Republic, whose local population had been viewed as a source of labour, and otherwise some inconvenient background noise, by generations of French, Corean, Russian and other foreign traders seeking influence there. The geographical divide was exacerbated by social class and education, or lack thereof. Most southerners understoodeach other, and we all know that quarantine, spraying with Vienna Green and Birline, and getting vaccinated were things everyone needed to do in order to halt the spread of the plague. Northerners, by contrast, typically viewed them as purely performative acts which one might do to pay lip service if the Emperor's representative was watching - but otherwise, why not sell the canister of Vienna Green on the black market and use the money to go drinking in an illegal bar? This is a stereotype, as there were many ignorant and slapdash southerners (as some newspapers of the time highlight) and some conscientious and intelligent northerners, such as the great public health advocate Wang Beiling. However, this impression was the root cause of increasing division and resentment within China. The southern cities would repeatedly eradicate the plague and open up, only to face a new outbreak as people from plague-stricken northern cities entered. Internal passports had been introduced, but the endemic corruption in parts of the former Beiqing north meant that there was always someone ready to forge one. Even when the troops were sent in to a northern city to enforce the vaccination programme, the uneducated rural peasantry - even in parts of the south - could be relied upon to spread the plague regardless. To them, plague was still very much a divine punishment and one which could only be dealt with through ritualistic prayer and offerings to Guan Yu, the God of Plague, or the Bodhisattva Guanyin, Goddess of Mercy.[16] Ironically, Guan Yu's cult had formerly been especially popular in the southern Guandong Province, but this association with the ignorant northern peasantry sent this into decline. Indeed, it was at this time that the romantic revival of the pre-Han Nanyue identity, specifically distinguishing the southern coast from the rest of China, first began to emerge. This southern frustration led to much of the unity which the Feng had built now beginning to crumble at the edges. Huifu's son Zhuling, the recognised Crown Prince among his four surviving sons, had built much of his career on attempting to reintegrate the Beiqing lands into the crown. Now he worked all the harder to try to combat both the destructive ignorance and corruption of the northerners, and the resentful prejudice which the southerners directed at them. Zhuling resorted to a strikingly modern public health campaign which borrowed imagery from more traditional sources. Stories of an everyman protagonist who is shown horrific images of plague by Guanyin, who warns him to follow public health procedures rather than to pray to her, and to keep a cat to hunt rats, portrayed as an agent of heaven. For the illiterate, images of the Bodhisattva carrying a large vaccination syringe or Vienna Green canister began to appear.[17] Another son of the Emperor who rose to particular prominence at this time was Prince Zhuzhong. More stolid and less ambitious than his brother Zhuling, Zhuzhong had served in the Imperial Army as a commander during the Pandoric War. Though young and inexperienced, he lacked the destructive arrogance and paranoid insecurity that many nobles thrust into such a position, in many nations, had felt. Zhuzhong was more than willing to defer to the advice of his mentor General (later Marshal) Liang Dezhao, and in time could step into his shoes as a capable leader in his own right. Zhuzhong lacked political ambition and got on well with his brother, though the two disagreed on the former Beiqing northern territories. Unlike Zhuling's compassion for the northerners, Zhuzhong had acquired a low opinion of them when he had served in the conquest of the north - especially compared to the Siamese (and the Annamese in particular) whom he respected as worthy adversaries. Zhuzhong believed the only way to rule the north was with an iron fist, that the only thing these backward, Manchu-ridden peasants would respect was force alone, and that anything more would only service the endemic corruption in the region. Some, reading stories of those sewer workers selling their Vienna Green canisters for a pittance and then spreading the plague when they were bitten by fleas, muttered that he might be right. However, Zhuzhong loyally supported his brother and father in public and never declared any such opinion in the political sphere. His views became known only through leaked letters, for he was stationed far away for most of the plague years. From 1878 onwards, with the defeat of Tibet and Nepal, Feng China had begun pushing her influence into the northern Indian plain.[18] Remember we talked about it last time? Jushinajieluo - or just Jushina - that's modern Panchala - came under Chinese control, and so did Delhi in time. Actually most Chinese people would say they built the Panchali state out of disparate parts and Panchala merely inherited it - but the Panchalis would disagree, as is their Diversitarian right. (Slightly nervous laughter) Since 1890, the Tripitaka Tours Company had been bringing Chinese Buddhist pilgrims along the same route that Xuanzang had trod over a thousand years before, as immortalised - with embellishments! - by Wu Cheng'en in Journey to the West. At first, the local people (we can't really call them Panchalis back then) welcomed Chinese rule as an island of stability after the chaos and destruction unleashed by the Great Jihad and the anarchy of its aftermath. By the 1920s, though, China had been ruling and taxing the area for almost forty years, and public resentment was starting to grow. It wouldn't really kick off until the Thirties, but many of the Hindu spiritual fathers of the Panchali independence movement were already beginning to make themselves heard. Anyway, Prince Zhuzhong was commander of the Chinese armies of the region, which kept the peace and guarded Jushina and Delhi's borders from encroachment by the Russians, the Bengalis, or bandits. He is generally seen as having a good understanding of the area and its culture, though again, some Panchalis would disagree. He was also known for his interest in the Kongjun, the Chinese Aero Force, which had fallen behind rivals such as Siam's in the early twentieth century due to Xuanming Emperor's disinterest in flight after the death of his friend Wu Mengchao in an experimental aerocraft. As Europeans had long ago observed, the plague was no respecter of persons. Though the poor, the northern and the rural might be most at risk, the plague continued to strike among the wealthy, the southern and the urban - and, for that matter, the noble. In 1928, at a time when the plague had been almost eliminated from Europe and North America, it continued to burn at a low level in China thanks to the the north and the countryside serving as a reservoir from which it could return to strike the cities. The Huifu Emperor's answer was simply more and more hair-trigger use of quarantine, which began to build resentment among southerners and city dwellers - and everyone, really. But 1928 was also the year when the plague slew Xi Juzheng, the Old School Confucian scholar and great friend of the Emperor, whose ideas had formed the framework for his iconic reforms such as the rotating capital city and the 108 Mandators.[19] Xi converted to Christianity on his deathbed, but many had whispered that he was a secret Christian for years, not least for his pushing for the tolerance of Christian missionaries. Some attribute public discontent and conspiracising to this revelation about the architect of Huifu's years in power. However, there were many other causes, most obviously resentment about the continuing plague-control measures, with no apparent end in sight. Just when China needed a charismatic leader, Huifu withdrew from society and fell sick. Though not entirely clear, it seems this was not the plague, but simply fatigue and depression from the loss of his friend and the stressful years of leading China through the dark times. To add to Xi's death, Prince Zhuling had also fallen gravely ill with the plague, contracting it while on one of his missions to educate the northern provinces about plague control.will lead to a global environmental disaster. In this power vacuum, Foreign Minister Ding Guoyang, architect of China's successful play of France against Russia at the start of the war, became the most powerful man in the government. However, the Duke of Cao soon found himself faced with an impossible dilemma. In February 1929, after falling into a feverish coma that most doctors thought couldregard, I, represented by the English Republic and eight other countries, express my protest and insist on holding urgent negotiations between Majapahit and the CRA. Right now, we are inviting other countries to join us and not silently wait for the end only in death, Prince Zhuling made a full recovery from his near-fatal brush with the plague. However,of the world. If our conditions are not met, we will be forced to impose heavy sanctions on them; the more countries join us, the more severe the consequences were unexpected and drastic. Zhuling had been nursed back to help by volunteers from the north, some of whom had loudly and publicly prayed to Guan Yu and used traditional Chinese medicine. It remains hotly debated among scholars whether Zhuling was actually driven mad through brain damage during the coma, or whether he was cognisant but simply had a radical change of heart. Regardless, Zhuling now began to publicly insist that he had been wrong to propose 'western barbarian' sanitation, vaccination and disinfection, and advocated a return to core Chinese values and traditional cures. In June 1929, following one set of off-the-cuff remarks, a mob of peasants marched into Kaifeng and burned down a vaccination clinic, killing more than a dozen doctors and nurses. It did not help that Vienna Green actually was highly toxic to humans if misused, of course, and much misinformation about it and the vaccines spread almost as fast as the plague itself. Foreign Minister Ding was alarmed and, after ascertaining that Zhuling could not be diverted from his new self-destructive course, strongly encouraged Huifu to change his chosen successor. However, the Emperor remained in apathetic decline and could not be persuaded to care. Ding entered into communication with Zhuzhong in Lekenao - sorry, Lucknow - using the same Photel transmissions that Zhuling, consumed by Sutcliffist fury, now wanted to ban. Sometimes he, or his supporters, even claimed that Photel masts caused the plague and burned them down! Ding's motivation in talking to Zhuzhong was to hope that the prince could persuade either his brother to change heart or his father to care. Both proved futile in the event. Matters came to a head in October 1929 when it was time for the capital to move to Beijing. Although the capital rotation had been cancelled and slowed during parts of the plague years, Huifu had been keen to restartwill be. Peace is our goal, and we will achieve it at soon as possible. However, Beijing was undergoing yet another plague outbreak, Zhuling's destructive new rhetoric having undone much of the good he had previously achieved there. Ding ordered the process delayed until the plague had died down. Perhaps this was the final straw for the Emperor, who passed away in November at the age of sixty-two. Again, tensions mounted when a suitably grand funeral celebration and parade was scaled back due to the continuing plague risks, which the northern and southern cities blamed on each other. More mobs attacked either medical and sanitation facilities on one side, or temples to Guan Yu and Guanyin on the other. Tensions had risen to their highest since China was a divided land. Ding and the Feng courtiers used every procedural trick they could to delay Zhuling formally coming to the throne, citing the paused rotation, the need to retrieve the tablet with Huifu's chosen successor formally recorded, and so on. The reason for this delay became swiftly apparent in January 1930, shortly before Lunar New Year, when Zhuzhong arrived in Chengdu with the large and capable army usually stationed in Jushina, together with many Indian auxiliary troops. From Chengdu, Zhuzhong marched eastwards. Conflict seemed inevitable, with Zhuling in Beijing, Ding in Hanjing, most of the court in Xi'an where the rotation was meant to have arrived at, and Marshal Huang Mengjin mobilising his own Southern Marches army in Guiling. Open warfare had not broken out, though banditry ravaged the countryside as elements of the plague-weakened Feng state began to disintegrate. All factions began to descend on Xi'an and the court, hoping to gain legitimacy. Using his beloved aerocraft to head there ahead of the bulk of his army, Zhuzhong arrived there first. There, lacking the men under arms to enforce his will by main force, he took a different tack. Instead, he turned to Photel and issued a speech that was circulated across the whole of China. It was immortalised years later by that song from Yu and Me - you know the one I mean! - yes - "Are We Really Going To Do This". Well, he phrased it a bit more diplomatically than Miss Jia and her translator put it, but the core of the song is basically correct to the speech. Zhuzhong said that the very act of impending civil war was itself the loss of the Mandate of Heaven, and thus no man alive could claim the mantle of the emperor, including himself. Rather than cost lives to fight it out, as their ancestors had, they should embrace Huifu's innovation and use the representative body that stood for the Mandate as a whole. Chinese society would be changed forever by this speech. For Zhuzhong called upon the 108 Mandators to elect an Emperor... [1] See Part #263 in Volume VII. [2] See Part #262 in Volume VII. [3] As said in Part #263 in Volume VII, Huaqiao people were already emigrating to Feng China before the Pandoric War, although the war and its aftermath did accelerate the process. [4] This device, properly called the Houfeng Didong Yi, dated from the second century AD, but is only known through indirect reports and later replicas. [5] See Part #270 in Volume VII. [6] See Part #275 in Volume VII. [7] See Part #276 in Volume VIII. [8] Obviously, from the perspective of OTL, it would difficult to classify China at any point of TTL as being a 'divided playground of European trade', but this illustrates how differently the goalposts have been set. Our China's 19th century history, presented as a fictional story, would probably be received by the people of TTL as an unsubtle piece of racist European wish-fulfilment propaganda that unrealistically 'lowered' the great civilisation of China to the level of 'backward, infighting natives' that some other parts of the world were seen as at the time. [9] This is closely based on an OTL poem of the same title written by Shi Daonan in 1800. [10] The latter controversy also happened in Europe during the OTL Third Plague Pandemic. [11] See Part #285 in Volume VIII. [12] In OTL organised, Chinese-run quarantine institutions were first set up in China in the 1870s, after disease-control measures had been imposed on treaty ports by Western colonial powers. [13] See Part #281 in Volume VIII. [14] See Part #294 in Volume VIII. [15] See Part #293 in Volume VIII. [16] Strictly, Guan Yu (who was a general and warlord in the Three Kingdoms period before he was deified) is primarily the god of war, and secondarily of wealth, but eventually added plague to his portfolio. [17] A very similar strategy was used in OTL by the Qing dynasty to tackle a septicaemic plague outbreak in 1910. The response was praised at the time, but the dynasty would be toppled not long afterwards. [18] See Part #218 in Volume V. [19] See Part #264 in Volume VII."cost."

USER: [Answer must be under 1,500250 characters] [Use your own words] Summarize "The future,"Apotheosis by CyberPhoenix001 In this world, in the 2nd century BC, Hindu merchants from south-east Asia managed to travel as far north as Japan, which was linked into the Hindu trade routes. With this new expansion, Hinduism never loses its maritime traditions, linking much of south and oceanic Asia in a trade network allowing for the spread of ideas, religions and experiences. Hinduism slowly and steadily spread throughout the Japanese Isles creating a syncretic religion with Shinto traditions, beating Buddhism to the punch. Outposts in the Philippines and Indonesia spread the influence of the Indian thalassocracies and the Hindu religion further into oceanic Asia, which ended up becoming an "Arc" of Hindu nations throughout the Indian and Pacific oceans. Meanwhile, across Eurasia, the coalition of tribes that formed the Huns in OTL never formed and, as a result, the nomadic migrations into Europe and developments of states within were drastically shifted. The Goths ended up settling down in the Balkans, and were joined by the Vandals in Dacia, who were never driven west. There was no Battle of Adrianople or Sack of Rome, meaning that the Western Roman Empire struggled on for another century before eventually coming down in 520 AD. The Franks still rose to prominence, but never developed into the Carolingian Empire of OTL, though successive attempts to unite the feudal region do occur over the centuries. Without the Visigothic invasion, Hispania became more central to the affairs of the Western Roman Empire, with western Europe as a whole being largely Germanised over the centuries. Without the distraction of the Huns, Aetius was able to properly fortify Britain, largely preventing the initial Anglo-Saxon settlement. Unfortunately, as dynastic disputes continued to play out in North Italy and Greece, Britain was once again largely left to fend for itself against invaders, which it did slightly better than OTL, resulting in a much more culturally varied *England that, without Saxon political ascendancy, ended up a hotbed of internecine warfare between the settlers. The Scandinavian raids started largely on schedule, but they were able to get a much stronger cultural foothold on Britain than OTL, in effect largely Nordicising the northern region. To this day, *Scotland is firmly entrenched in the Nordic sphere, though Ireland remains independent. With a more populous and developed south-eastern Europe and a less organised west, the Slavs expanded into the Baltic and northern Europe as far west as the Elbe, cementing their position. Some time later, the Magyars migrated through eastern Europe and end up settling in the Alps. Islam never arose, but a new, more inclusive and expansionist form of Zoroastrianism arose out of Persia and competed with Christianity for influence in Arabia. Neither side managed to completely come out on top, but the Zoroastrian faith did spread to a maritime Aksum after the conversion of the King and beat out Christianity amongst the general populace. From there, the religion spread down the southern coast of Africa and into the interior. History follows. There were two historic conquerors in Eurasia who managed to rapidly build up fiercely expansionist empires; both a Turk and a Mongol, respectively. The Turk (in the 8th century) managed to conquer all of Central Asia as well as the Caucasus and much of Eastern Europe, displacing a lot of tribes in the process, most notably the Magyars who ended up in northern Italy. However, after suffering a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the ERE, the empire crumbled with his death. The Mongol (in the 12th century), on the other hand, spread much like Genghis Khan's empire did, but he ended up dying in the middle of his empire-building after eating something he shouldn't have, leaving his empire in the hands of his far-less-capable brother. Being a less competent strategist, he never managed to conquer all of Cina (still pronounced China; just spelt differently), with Buddhist regions at the south remaining independent (butterflies meant that despite campaigns of persecution of Buddhists in Cina, they never managed to eradicate it in the south before being invaded). After the *Mongol Empire inevitably crumbled, not ours [2101]even having made it as far as Europe, Buddhism once again took force in Cina, with many Confucian texts and scholars having been destroyed and killed respectively by bI777 Monopolythe Mongols. As Buddhist forces reunited the broken nation, they began the long Chinese tradition of Buddhist theocracy, which, strangely enough, would end up a more stable beast than Confucian Cina of OTL. Of all the successor states to the Western Roman Empire (most of which are unrecognisable due to centuries of borders shifting and cultural mingling) the Iberian Peninsula (solidly Germanic) inarguably came out on the Continent,top. With a relatively strong, centralised position of authority and having largely escaped the deluge of tribes that invaded Europe, Hispania took up the mantle of the WRE and continued to contest the Eastern Roman Empire's position in Italy. Wars of legitimacy continued for several centuries, both in Italy and northern Africa, until the ERE was once again embroiled in a war with Ariya (as Persia came to be known), forcing it to fight a war on both sides, neither of which held. Hispania ended up lodged in Rome, taking all of southern Italy with it. There were also multiple attempts to re-establish imperial authority in Gaul, which were repeatedly thwarted by other upstart kingdoms in the region. Sustained by the services of Saxon and Magyar mercenaries, the north never fell under prolonged Hispanian dominance, and eventually coherent states emerged in the age of nationalism; namely, a "Greater Brittany" in the east, several smaller states lining the Mediterranean, and Bakaardo, a nation which covered OTL north-eastern France and OTL Benelux, with a Saxon confederacy to the east. Over time, even Hispania (now known as Yspana) succumbed to the rise of ethnic nationalism, with the Vaskr (OTL Basque) in the north breaking away in the 13th century, taking a chunk of the Pyrenees with them. In the absence of Islam, Christianity hit it big in the Maghreb thanks to Yspan efforts to spread the word of Christ, and it continued to spread all throughout west Africa, whereupon a strong centralised Christian kingdom arose along the Niger River. State-building emerged both in the interior of west Africa and along the coast, with the Kingdom forming a nexus of trans-Saharan trade. The kingdom eventually swelled to an expansionist empire, determined to bring all of western Africa under its rule. It succeeded, but at the cost of its own survival; over-farming, monarchical decadence and vast imperial overreach ensured its downfall. Out of its ashes several successor states arose, most notably the Asiki Empire around OTL Nigeria, notable not only for their relative tolerance compared to other African Christian nations at the time, but also for their system of government, which bore resemblance to a form of proto-Arkonism [1]. Because of this, the Asiki Empire has had an immeasurable effect on African history and development. Meanwhile, on the other side of Africa, Aksum continued to spread the word of Zoroaster throughout eastern Africa, spreading down the coast as far as Zanzibar and northern Madagascar. It also triggered state-building exercises in the Sudan, triggering localised conflicts with Egypt (which remained largely under ERE control over the centuries), but ultimately made little headway in inner east Africa, though Zanzibar did have its own bout of empire-building which broadly succeeded where Aksum failed. Over in Asia, in the 11th century the southern Indian states were united under an empire known as Vijayanagara (a slightly different beast than the OTL empire of the same name; they managed to work some nuance into the caste system, for one thing) that managed to stick, uniting the bulk of the maritime provinces that, with the end of religious wars in Egypt and the Levant, ended up bridging the east and west (chaos in central Asia had largely blocked off the Silk Road for some time), with Vijayanagara ships making their way to Europe to trade and European ships trading throughout the East Indies. This ended up triggering a reciprocal cultural fascination between hemispheres, with the East adopting certain European imperial ideals, while Europe developed a craze for Oriental styling, particularly in the ERE, which by that time had become known as the Rhomanian Empire. Trade with Cina remained a distant prospect, owing to Cina's tendency towards isolationism. Science and technology also spread throughout the continents. The printing press (here invented in Vijayanagara in the 12th century) and gunpowder (still invented in Cina, though the Indians vigorously contest that claim) and the concept of the number zero found their way to Europe, as did the Black Death, triggering a colossal social upheaval that wracked Europe for several centuries. In the early 15th century, during a period of renewed hostility between eastern and western Europe, the Yspan noticed that the Vaskr seemed to be producing a strange surplus of fish from Eddy Endberg's A Story of Two Vinlands (1997) ...the English couldan unknown source to the west. Further investigation of this phenomenon led to an astonishing discovery; there were two whole other continents across the Atlantic, rich in land, resources and opportunities. Expeditions were hastily commissioned to map the continents as word spread throughout Europe and the trade routes to Asia. Colonies all across the east coast sprung up along the coasts of North and South Elysium (the explorer who ended up naming the continents also happened to be a patron of the classics) fairly rapidly, for different reasons. Yspana, looking for national pride, set up shop along the *Mississippi and spread throughout the Gulf and continental interior. Bakaardo and Asiki, both fiercely commerce-oriented nations, went in looking for profits, with Asiki colonising south-east of South Elysium and Bakaardo taking the north-east. The northern regions of North Elysium were settled by Svaireik, a less heavily Christianised Sweden, largely 'cause no one else wanted it, with the Vaskr holding out in *Newfoundland and its surrounds out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Beorn, the Nordicised northern region of the British Isles, made it into *Mexico and located the wealthy regions within. Unfortunately, this did not escape the attention of the other European powers, and soon the region became awash with attempted colonies, adventurers, entrepreneurs and exiles all competing to carve out their own little empires, leaving *Mexico a hodgepodge of little statelets and miniature nations. Beorn was forced to give up its aspirations for Elysian colonialism and instead mostly turned its attention to the spice trade while Airu (OTL Ireland, which united in the face of attempted Viking invasions), fiercely independent and nationalistic and not one for colonialism, looked over the chaos in the west with a look of resigned condescension. The easternmost coast of North Elysium was taken by a hodgepodge of nations including Brittys, the aforementioned "Greater Britanny", a Slavic state in northern Europe known as Sorzem, and even Rhomania taking a few small pieces of the Elysian pie, though few of these smaller colonies lasted, with them being swallowed up over time. However, a lot of the most lasting developments took place over on the west coast. Khamanu (OTL Japan), which never cut itself off from the outside ITTL, was solidly Hindu by the time the Elysian continents were discovered, and unified into a relatively strong federal empire. Having already colonised the furthest regions of Siberia up north, they seized upon the opportunity to move into the lands to the east, forming the colony of Ashiwema in *California; a colony which quickly became a byword for the Land of Plenty once the gold was discovered. (Khamanu still gave rise to its own warrior class and culture, but not to the same extent as OTL. Also, they used Damascus steel for their weapons; Khamanu culture being bigger on individuality and openness to new ideas than OTL Japan.) However, they were soon joined by a less-than-welcoming power; Cina. Looking to colonise the Elysian continents not out of commercial desire or national pride, Cina went in for another reason entirely; to spread their brand of fundamentalist Buddhism. Armed with cannons, rifles and a fanaticism to rival the OTL Crusaders, missionaries stormed into South Elysium, with catastrophic results. The Andean civilisations were doomed from the very start. Disease ripped through the populations as Cinese armies toppled the native monarchies and replaced them with repressive agrarian communes. Religious adornments, ornamentation, and luxuries in general were prohibited, with entire villages put to the torch for resisting, in the name of "bringing Enlightenment to the savages in the East". Indeed, so fervent was the devotion of some colonists that it was reported that they totally destroyed any items that included gold, casting the offending metal into rivers so as to eliminate the possibility of further temptation towards materialism (actually a foreign fabrication, but the idea made it into the popular consciousness and is now a widely held misconception). The whole affair was such a catastrophe that it united the Hindu Arc for the first time in centuries in a direct campaign against the Cinese, ending with the pacification and seizure of the colonies and largely ending Cina's thirst for religious expansionism. Centuries passed. Wars were fought with bouts of peace in between. Colonies expanded and were swallowed up, broke apart and united. Borders shifted, as did alliances. Progress marched on. Some of the more interesting points of this period of history include the slave rebellion in the Bakaardoan colony of Noi Balchia, becoming a more successful "Greater Haiti" and destination for freed slaves everywhere (as well as renaming itself "Viyarica"), the Turko-Slavic expansion throughout northern Asia and the founding of the nations of Praetoria in western *Australia by Rhomanian ex-mercenaries and of Midgard in OTL New Zealand by a devout group of Svaireikian pagans, fleeing persecution in the now-solidly Christian Svaireik. Africa still underwent a period of colonisation by both European and Asian powers, but it was a slightly more muted effort, with many colonies retaining significant levels of independence and culture. Brittys managed to snag the Cape from Bakaardo, but ended up having to contend with a confederation of native African tribes that govern most of south-eastern Africa as well as the lower half of *Madagascar. Asiki managed to largely keep west Africa to itself with the assistance of its long-time ally, Yspana (the slave-trading rates were pretty good) working to keep other powers out and the Maghrebian theocracies in check. The Congo was divvied up between powers, and surprisingly fared better as a result. The defining moment of the modern era (for Europeans and North Elysians at least) came in 1877 when a succession crisis in the traditionally neutral Kingdom of Firirk (OTL Denmark) triggered an invasion by Svaireik when it appeared that the side of the heir loyal to the Svaireikians was losing. This in turn triggered a counter-invasion by their discovery a secret from the worldBaltic rival Sorzem, afraid that Svaireik was attempting to cut off their access to the Atlantic. War spread throughout Europe and North Elysium, not out of obligation, but because tensions had been growing between the local powers during a long period of peace, and now was believed to be the time to take advantage of it. What became known to the Europeans as the War of Nine Kingdoms and to the North Elysians as the Burning War ended up raging for a long time. The flow of outlandish goods that flooded European markets, the drunken tales of English sailors about the 'second India' in European ports, and simple espionage did their job. In 1529, a French ship arrived at the shores of Anahuakl, in 1531 - an Iberian ship, in 1533 - a ship from Pisa. The European caravans rushed to the new continent, established trading outposts on the islands of the Taino Sea and the shores of the Anahuakl Bay. England tried in vain to sink foreign ships and to demand from the Pope to declare all Vinland the property of the English crown. In a series of maritime trade skirmishes and European wars of religion, England's trade dominance was undermined. England would return here only in the 18th century during the conquest of Central Vinland by a Western Trading Company. The Diaspora, from 14-year-old Louise Sandstrom's address to the Assembly of the Council of Nations on the Issues of the Nordic Diaspora (2040) My people first arrived on the Vinland shores in 1003, 500seven years before the Englanders.burning out as the final peace treaty was signed in 1884. In the aftermath, Svaireik was forced to cede much of its influence in the Baltic as well as in Firirk, which was ceded to the Sorzemic sphere of influence. Bakaardo was split up, with the Magyar state of Tanqri (which had already absorbed the Saxons in a previous campaign) gained control of the Low Countries, south-eastern OTL France and northern Italy. Yspana absorbed south-western OTL France as well as Vaskr, preceding a large amount of nationalist guerilla warfare in the decades to come. Airu, following an abortive invasion by Beorn with assistance from Svaireik, was given direct control over *Wales, and the rest of the Isles were ceded to their localised sphere of influence as well. Borders were shuffled around in North Elysium as well; the giant Svaireikian state dominating the north split in two between east and west, with Ashiwema annexing the region of OTL Oregon. The nations of *Mexico finally managed to coalesce into some larger federations, and the Vaskrian colonies (now declaring themselves the legitimate Vaskrian government) expanded at the expense of the broken Svaireikian nation and clashing with the former Yspana colonies in the Great Lakes region. The officially-past-their-prime Bakaardoan colonies were partitioned, being absorbed by the former Sorzemic and Brittysian colonies and the remaining Rhomanian colonies in the Arrakian Sea (OTL Carribean) and the Yucatan Peninsula were granted independence. But none of that compared with the wave of revolutionary thought that swept the northern hemisphere in the aftermath of the wars. With the wars taking a heavy toll on the economies and populations of the nations of Europe and North Elysium, the populace came to blame their Kings and Queens for their suffering (including in the independent colonies; standard practice for granting independence ITTL involved offloading a spare heir onto them and declaring them an independent Kingdom) and with the monarchs still retaining a substantial amount of power compared to OTL, their subjects accused them for dragging them into wars that, whether they had won or lost, had still suffered greatly as a result. Arkonist spirit surged throughout the northern hemisphere as political discourse took a decidedly radical turn. Monarchs all over the northern hemisphere found themselves besieged by the people they governed. One by one the Kings and Queens were toppled, with Arkonist governments taking the helms. Most of them managed to avoid spiralling into violent infighting or dictatorship and set up working, viable systems of representative government, with the exception of a few governments in North Elysium and both Brittys and, most notoriously, Rhomania. An astute and expedient politician in Rhomania (formerly referred to as "the sick man of Europe") soon rose up the ranks of the new government and cemented control, intending to restore the former Roman Empire under Rhomanian control. Instituting a program of modernisation in both the military and civil services, Rhomania quickly rose to become the greatest threat to peace in the region, as Yspana, Tanqri and Sorzem cemented an alliance to combat the threat of Rhomanian imperialism, while Rhomania courted the sympathetic Brittysians and their old ally Svaireik, which had escaped Arkonist revolution but had instead succumbed to a form of *Communism with heavy emphasis on the teachings of Jesus known as Distributionism. Meanwhile, over in Asia, in 1910 Cina, determined to unite all of Asia under their rule launched an offensive against the Hindu Arc, marching into Burma and launching a naval campaign against Khamanu while a coalition of anti-Vijanagayara states launched a campaign against the south. The fighting was bloody, especially during the land campaign against Cina by Khamanu during the turnaround, though troops from the various nations in *Indonesia and from the Hindu nations across the Pacific helped push back against the Cinese incursion, with the Arc finally doing away with the state of Cina altogether, dismembering it and placing various areas of it under their spheres of influence. However, just as the war was ending in Asia, another war was starting back in Europe, but it went in a different direction than everyone was expecting, with Rhomania invading and annexing formerly peaceful Ariya. No one was sure what the Rhomanian Arkon was planning, but that was his intention, for he was a long-term thinker and intended to keep them off-balance. Fortunately for the rest of the world, they figured out his goal as his tanks moved into the Arabian Peninsula; with the world already deep into the Oil Age [2], he was planning to seize control of the world's oil supply. With war still far from a desired prospect by many of the nations of Europe, many nations began shoring up their own supplies of fuel and moving to switch to alternative sources of energy in the name of national security. Giant crash programs close to the relative scale of the Manhattan Project were implemented to switch to renewable resources. The Rhomanian Arkon, seeing his chance for European domination escaping, attacked. The war was chaotic and brutal, spreading to Africa and South Elysium as well. Italy was rolled over, with much of Rome suffering heavy damage (only a bare fragment of the Colosseum remains), with Rhomania beating back the Tanqri and even mounting a land invasion of Yspana, with Vaskrian guerillas blowing up military targets and even the *Parliament, killing a large number of government representatives and the Yspan Arkon. Also, the African Berber theocracy of Marrasa took the opportunity to assist with the invasion of Yspana, which in turn led Asiki to enter the war against them out of obligation to their old ally Yspana. Meanwhile, on the other side of Africa, the ailing Aksumite Empire, seeing the way the wind was blowing, joined up on the side of the Rhomanians, seeking to restore their influence currently being lost to the rising power of Zamarya in the Sudan region (the Rhomanians particularly welcomed this new ally, as the Svaireikians had in fact bowed out of war, lacking sufficient military preparation). Down south, the Confederation of African Kingdoms launched a war against the Brittysian Cape and Hindu northern Madagascar in the name of "liberation", while in South Elysium, Viyarica, under the grip of a new theocratic religious movement combining elements of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Buddhism into a wholly unpleasant blend of a religion called Suuatarism, began a war in central South Elysium against the former Asiki colonies in an attempt to bring them into their fold. The All-Engulfing War, as it came to be known, was devastating. But as peace was declared after four years of bloodshed, the victorious nations picked up the pieces and moved forward. * * * Today, in 2014, 95 years after the end of the All-Engulfing War, the world is mostly peaceful, but is currently divided by several new ideological divides. In the aftermath, the new Panterran movement took hold, which posited that peace was most easily achieved through economic interdependency between states. With the colossal cost of the war immediately evident, the relatively new movement gained substantial traction, and new economic alliances emerged as new infrastructure was built to connect nations around the world. However, given the inherently Distributionist nature of Panterran economics (unifying economies by transcending borders) many initial alliances were largely between quite well-off nations, who were not keen on linking their economies with less prosperous nations and seeing their capital going towards fixing what they saw as nations that were nothing more than money sinks. As a result, a lot of less-than-affluent nations were left out to dry in the new global order; many turned inwards, or were taken over wholesale by corporate entities, powerful new players in the world order. Opposing the league of economic unions formed around the world is the Coalition, a not-so-united smattering of highly nationalistic nations led very loosely by Airu, which, in the aftermath of its invasion by Beorn and subsequent pushback and victory, put forward a very different point of view regarding the nature of the world, which is that political economic integration leads not to prosperity for all as the economies build on each other, but instead leads to destitution for all as the weaker economies drag the stronger ones down (the Airuvians going by experience from their attempted integration of *Wales). Economically libertarian-esque (but big on defensive infrastructure), the Coalition does virtually all its major trade through corporations, using them as neutral third parties. Khamanu, having emerged largely unhurt from the wars around the world (Cina managed to establish a beachhead in the south, but it didn't last long), stands as the top player in the world. It leads an economic union of the *Indonesian states, much of south-east Asia, the Hindu east *Australian Arkonate of Padanya, Ashiwema, a federation of Hindu states in Central Elysium and the Hindu south Andes; a union known as the Rim Association. Fuelled by a seemingly endless supply of Cinese cheap labour, Khamanu capital dominates the world, with fingers in the pies of all the other major nations in the world, as well as a great deal of the lesser ones. Currently rivalling the Rim Association in Asia is a union of Indian nations led by the badly-battered Vijayanagara. Much of this integration was generally at the point of a gun, however, and is not translating well into economic progress, given the energies they must divert towards battling rebellion and insurgency. It occupies all of India, extending through south-east Asia and down the Malay Peninsula, as well as Sumatra and Madagascar (establishing control over the whole island was difficult as the Confederation refused to leave after the A-EW was over). They had strained relationships with the locals,do not have quite the economic muscle that the Rim has, but are still making headway all the same, and if they have to squash a few nationalists in the process every now and then, well, that's just the price one has to pay for progress. Yspana, despite being on the winning side of the A-EW, suffered considerably as a result of it; Vaskrian independence was re-established, continuing a long history of enmity between the two peoples. The economy and infrastructure were horrifically damaged as a result of the land invasions of Rhomania and Marrasa, leaving many people destitute and anger at the government running extremely high. After a tumultuous decade of poverty, hardship and the threat of Distributionist revolution, a reformer managed to come to power and set a new path of order and prosperity for the nation. Today, Yspana is a secular, prosperous, democratic state. With the reformer's decision to strike a balance between the demands of the hard-line conservatives and the Distributionists, he steered the country down a path of moderation that has worked out quite well for the majority of citizens. Yspana has since negotiated the acquisition of *Sardinia and *Sicily, directly incorporating them into the state. It was also one of the founders of the European Concord, the economic and slowly-integrating defence union that encompasses much of Europe. Tanqri suffered during the war as well, but not nearly as much. Regaining virtually all of its lost territory, it now spans almost the entirety of central Europe, including a former southern chunk of Brittys, giving it an additional coastline in far western Europe. Culturally a mix of Turkish, Hungarian, Slavic and Saxon, they have managed to become extremely wealthy through tourism and cultural exportation, making them all but indispensable to the European Concord (they were the initial backers for the European transcontinental maglev network, and still have the largest network of any of the participant nations). However, this has come at the cost of allowing a lot of Corporate influence into their nation, something frowned upon by others in the Concord, who only see money flowing out of Europe. Meanwhile, Tanqri has been suffering from something of a corruption epidemic, with inequality at an all time high, and many cite the outbreak of gambling and prostitution outlets in the capital as direct evidence. Sorzem arguably gained the most out of the war, having shorn off Rhomania's northern provinces giving them geographical depth and gained substantial reparations to boot, Sorzem lies content in northern Europe. Actually, since the mutual integration of their two houses of government, it's now technically the Sorzem-Firirk Co-Arkonate, an odd beast if ever there was one. Socially democratic in governmental style, they do fairly well, both controlling the Baltic Sea and having patched things up with Svaireik at the same time. Svaireik, after going through a fundamentalist phase with regard to their Distributionist ideology (the *gulags were not fun for anyone), has largely mellowed out, but has eschewed further ties with Europe in exchange for closer relations with Beorn and, with more difficulty, their former colonies in North Elysium. Rhomania, after losing the A-EW, suffered a tumultuous blow to their Neo-Imperial ambitions. The northernmost and most culturally divergent states in central Europe were severed from Constantinople (which itself suffered heavy damage thanks to bombings during the war), as were Egypt and the Caucasus. Ariya's independence was re-established, and given a hegemony over timemuch of the Arabian Peninsula (something its Christian inhabitants were none too pleased about). Today, Rhomania has managed to acclimatise itself to the prevailing political climate and return to the world stage. Constantinople, long since rebuilt, remains a pinnacle of historic culture, and the byword for cities that balance modernisation with heritage. Roman Restorationists, who still stand for the re-establishment of the Roman Empire are considered a lunatic fringe group, and will hopefully stay that way. There is also quite a substantial Distributionist movement afoot in Rhomania, though they learned to work togetherare currently neutral about the possibilities of Panterranism, with their attitude towards the rest of the world remains "we'll join you when we feel ready". North Elysium remains a disaffected patchwork of various states, including Ashiwema, a multicultural federal union of former colonies along the east coast, a former Bakaardoan colony in the south-east known as Noi Freisa, the former Svaireikian states in the north and north-west, an interior containing a hodgepodge of former Yspan Arkonates, Native Elysian states and Corporate states (or some combination of the above), the now-relatively stable nations in the region of *Mexico, and the former Vaskrian nation in the north-east (which is now working to restore links with the mother country, much to Yspana's consternation). Border wars are horribly frequent, as competing political systems and old rivalries continue to plague the continent, rendering any sort of economic integration or cooperation horrendously difficult. South Elysium is currently divided between the Suuatarist nations in the north, led by Viyarica who have declared it their mission to "liberate" the people of South Elysium and unite it under their rule, and the former European and African colonies in the south. The rest of the world is currently fed up with the Suuatarists, from their unsanctioned invasion of the northern Andes to their creepy obsession with fire (they have re-instigated burning at the stake as a criminal punishment). Luckily, the rest of the world has dealt Viyarica a blow by ending trade with them altogether, though the Suuatarist position of steadfastness in the face of adversity has meant that this has not deterred them in the slightest from their so-called mission (not even Airu, a nation normally desperate to court any possible allies, will side with them). The various former colonies of the north, on the other hand, are prosperous and reasonably well-off, from the former Asiki colonies in the north-east to the former Sorzemic and Beornic colonies to the south. They are currently united in an unofficial defensive union with the Hindu nations to the west to prevent any further Suuatarist incursions, as paranoia about infiltration and possible terrorism has reached a dangerous level after the attempted bombing of a government building in the former Asiki nation of Tagrabi. In Africa, several large-ish nations dominate. Asiki still dominates western Africa, though its power has been on the decline recently, and has been trying to reinvent itself as a cultural power. On the other side of Africa, Zamarya has achieved first-world status, with a relative living status and economy equal to that of OTL Turkey. It dominates the Sahel and the shrunken nations of Egypt and Aksum, and competes for the sake of survival and the common good. They created a culture thatinfluence in the now-insignificant Arabian Peninsula. East Africa is currently suffering a Suuatarist uprising, and the now-Federation of Africa to the south still plans to follow in Viyarica's footsteps by conquering all of Sub-Saharan Africa (unlike the Viyaricans, however, they have far less bite to back up their bark). Africa is also host to the most number of Corporate nations per continent, second to North Elysium. Central Africa is still admiredrife with exploitation, with most corporations simply turning their least profitable territories into their own private fiefdoms. Most of the Corporate nations around the world have largely evolved into classical oligarchies, given the difficulty in running a genuine corporate state in practice. Only one actual corporation going by the name of "Phoenix Cybernetics", headquartered in Praetoria (ironically not a corporate state, though PC does own a rather large chunk of the *Australian interior), is actually generating a decent profit from its territories, through a lot of palm-greasing and dubiously ethical R&D that would not fly in any OTL human rights court. The rest of the world is fairly mundane. The nation of Rashqart, which stretches across northern Eurasia all the way to the east, is, along with Vijayanagara and some of the finest researchers at the leading Vinland universities. After the rediscovery of Vinland in 1502 and the arrival of Europeans, myIndonesian nations, one of the last remaining constitutional monarchies in the world. It has historically followed an isolationist path (except for that one time it tried going expansionist; it didn't end well) with a highly defensive posture. As a result, it naturally fit in with the Coalition, greatly straining relations with the Panterran nations. However, it has remained open to its historic ally Khamanu (joint grievances with the Cinese), and continues to supply them with industrial raw materials in an era where they are increasingly scarce, annoying the rest of the Coalition to no end. Ariya, who after a long and unsatisfying 20th century are trying to get back up into the big leagues again. So far, they have united most of the Persian peoples and trying to create a unified infrastructure to properly administer their enlarged state (as well as their hegemony in Arabia, a task often met with resistance by Zamarya), but they are hampered by lack of trade opportunities given that much of the world has weened itself off fossil fuels. To combat this, Ariya has attempted to transition to an industrial economy, along with tourism and cultural exportation. For the moment, though, they remain a de-facto Coalition member. The remainder of Central Asia is a smattering of Turkic states, the largest one of which is the so-obviously-anachronous-it's-not-funny Orkyr Khanate, started by a guy who fancied trying to emulate the historic Turkic and Mongol conquerors with leftover Cinese weaponry. So far, it has managed to take control of OTL Xinjiang, Tibet, eastern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It's not exactly a stable construct; in fact, most people were able to reunite with their distant relatives from Europe. This was the golden era of Franco-Nordic cooperation. Unfortunately, under heavy pressure from the new post-war European order, France had to leaveare surprised it has stuck around this long, and both the Rashqarta and the Ariyans are beginning to get more than a tad annoyed by its colony in the 1970s and leave us with them. Iantics. Culturally, the world is far different. Religion is simultaneously more important and less important in everyday life, with the general consensus being that belief in God is good, but being open about it is not (wearing a cross in public ITTL would be seen as the equivalent of wearing a T-shirt with the Hammer and Sickle on it ITTL; it's not considered polite to advertise your beliefs). Even in the theocracies, who, while having a state religion, have no right to use here the words that we call them because of the atrocitieslargely grown to accept liberal interpretations of whatever they used against us, dear residents. You call them the Reeds, 'indigenous Vinlanders'. My grandparents were forced to leave their homes closer to the coast due to persecution and constant arsons. My parents were forced to flee to Iceland due to direct death threats from the Anicinape government. Howfollow, and fundamentalists are not looked upon fondly. There is a much longer will you turn a blind eye to this? Howlarger plurality of Eastern religions in Europe and the Elysian continents, and the East and West see themselves on relatively equal footing (even Africa gets pretty good treatment; after all, the Industrial Revolution did start in Africa), with racism much less of a problem. Technology is much more will my people suffer? I ask,advanced than OTL, thanks to an earlier Enlightenment-equivalent in Asia (which ended up getting exported to Europe), a larger worldwide scholarly culture, less overall religious hostility to progress thanks to competition and a longer state of worldwide on-and-off warfare to drive investment and innovation. Skyscrapers crowd cities, some reaching several kilometres high, and airships, after a long period of stagnation, have made a comeback with the development of nanotech. Computers operate on graphene and are cheaper than paper, and a dedicated space program has led to bases and mining operations on the Moon for precious minerals which are becoming increasingly important in today's society where they are becoming increasingly important and scarce (though no I demand, youone has reached Mars yet; they're working on it though). Transhumanism, the advancement of the human form through technology, is also starting to take off. Through the development of microsurgery that can perform operations without even cutting the skin, changes both cosmetic and those that augment the body are widely available to the average consumer. Tattoos can be implanted and removed almost painlessly in the space of two minutes, and unusual body parts have to take action... Scramble for Vinland, from the video of the popular sci-pop videoblogger Oleg Stroy (2030) And so in 1886, European diplomats gathered in London to solve the Vinland problem. No one wanted a repetition of the Ooi River incident, whichbecome the new must-have fashion items, complete with styles and fads (though cat ears never seem to go out of style). Some have even seen fit go further, replacing as much of themselves as they can with biological and technological upgrades with an almost escalated into a pan-European war. After a series of negotiations and secret agreements, new borders were drawn, everyone shook hands and flew home. Yes, this is how the fate of an entire continent was decided. The Europeans used their existing colonies on the east coast to finally divide Vinland like a pie. So the English, who already owned most of Anahuakl, got the Misizibi's basin, and even Nihon got a piece of the cake. Local tribes and small states could not oppose anything to the European military machine at the peak of its power. The division of the continent on an unprecedented scale was an incredible success. In a couple of years, the same fate will befall Africa. 'God is an Englishman', from King Edward II's speech to his peoples in Minster Square, British Union (1931) I greet you, my dear fellow citizens! <cheering> I am glad to see each of you here today! Every person who comes here today can rightfully consider himself a true Britt! <cheering> The same applies to our dear fellow citizens in other cities of Albion and our overseas colonies <cheering> And yet I gathered you here for a reason. <ten-second silence> 20 years ago, our fellow citizens fought in the Great War, waged an equal fight with all of Europe, and almost won! <shouts of approval> This war was the inevitable consequence of continentals' envy for our power, our influence, our wealth, our vast empire! <cheering> We were on the brink of victory!... But our generals thought differently. <hooting> They betrayed us and made a truce. My father... <the king pauses, the crowd silenced> my father was furious, but I still remember his words that day: 'Fools, only delayed the inevitable. Britain will rule the world.' <cheering> You know well the names of those traitors. <crowd shouting names>religious fervour, the basis of a spreading movement dedicated to beginning what they have been punished. <cheering> Traitors and cowards will never again command our armies. Our army is stronger than ever, we have taken advantage of these 20 years, unlike the lazy continentals. <cheering> I did not gather you here to brag. I have gathered you here so that, here and now, with all of you, dear fellow citizens, to declare war on those whom we were prevented from finishing off 20 years ago. <cheering> All our industrial power will fall on Europe. Britain will rule! YOU will rule! <loud shout from the crowd> The ensuing second round of the Great War claimed the lives of 30 million in Europe and the colonies. With its end, European world domination began its slow path to decline. The End of Humiliation, a text generated by a personal neural network for Lou Young (2098) The Tiwanaku Empire was the longest-lived civilization in southern Vinland. It dates back to the 2nd century AD, although according to the legends of the Aymars, their statehood begins long before Anno Domini. When the Europeans arrived, their empire stretched from the Taino Sea to the southern tip of the Andes and had close trade contacts with the Anahuakl region. The Emperor was very interested in trade with European aliens and even received European ambassadors with honors at his palace in Tiwanaku. Unfortunately, the remoteness of the Andes from the north of Vinland made them the most unprepared people for European diseases. European plague killed up to 70% of the Empire's population, the country plunged into chaos. After a short-term military rule, the country broke up into dozens of small dynasties and remained in this state until the 17th century; until the Mapuches' conquest and the founding of the Wutanmapu Empire. Read more? By the late 19th century, the once great and vast empire of Wutanmapu was a pitiful sight. The juvenile emperors were replaced every 10 years and were puppets in the elites' hands. The more technologically advanced Europeans fought off trade preferences and spheres of influence with impunity. Poverty reigned in the country; bloody popular uprisings arose every thirty years. Only after the Second Round of the Great War one of these uprisings led by Mayhuasa succeed in overthrowing the puppet emperor and declaring the Citizens' Republic of the Andes. A slow painful modernization of the country began and then continued by Mayhuasa's followers. Read more? By the beginning of the 21st century, the CRA burst into the tops, turning from an impoverished country into an industrial economic giant. In all indicators, only Sarmatia was ahead of the Andes. The country possessed a huge sphere of influence, the economy continued to grow, as did human resources. All analysts of that time prophesied them world hegemony by the 2060s, but the subsequent Taino War forever changed both the Vinland and the world picture. Read more? Egypt and France, Long Divorce, from a lecture by street historian Antonio Porier (2089) Come on, come on friends! If you did not come on notification, then I inform you, today I will tell you the long history of relations between France and Egypt... <shout out from the crowd> What-what? Well, yes, that's right. It is Gallia from now on. For a couple of hours, bore! Yes, everyone, Happy Independence Day of Gallia, guys! Independence from the former colony. So, our story begins in a teen's favorite period of history - in the Golden Age of Europe - the end of the 19th century. Inspired by a sense of their exclusivity and, of course, an advantage in technological development, Europeans bring the benefits of their civilization to far-flung corners of the earth. Under secret European treaties, by chance, Egypt found itself in the sphere of French interests. We will not go into details of exactly how this happened, otherwise, you will wander home. So the world is divided. What to do next? That's right, quarrel and try to re-divide it. The Great War has begun! Now we will not go into the details of this war, I will have a lecture about it in Saint Laurent Square this Saturday, I am waiting for you there. In short and on the subject, during the second round, the British Union occupies entire continental France in a swoop, the government and army flees to the Maghreb, and later to where? <shouts> Right! To Alexandria. This iscall "the Apotheosis", a point where it all begins. King Henri III was so imbued with the Egyptian culture that after the defeat of the British and the beginning of the reconstruction of France, he often visited here on summer holidays. Thirty years later, his son Emanuel declared Egypt a part of France. After 20 years, the capital of France was officially moved to Alexandria. Here's a story. France has become a backyard in the state of France with its capital in Egypt! Naturally, the French people rebelled more than once, during the Blue October of 2001 and during the infamous Paris stand in 2022, but they did not achieve anything. Only ten years ago Saint-Simon and the movement Decolonisation inversee, barely uttered it pheh, began a slow and hard political work to split France, now Gallia, and Egypt, now Misr. And, as you can see from today's news, the guys did it. Let's wish them the best of luck! Bonne chance! Good luck to you too, my friends! Do not forget to support me with money if you are interested in my work. You slepthumanity advances to the point where they, essentially, through the end of the world! From a telephone conversation between two friends, Anicinape Republic (2053) -...hello? -hey dude wake up! You slept through the end of the world! -man, it's 9 am. Have you been awake all night? -yes, I monitored the situation in the Taino Sea, my sleepy friend. You'll never guess what happened. -what? -Anahuakl and Misizibi exchanged nuclear strikes. -mmm... Wait what? -yes-yes. -what does Misizibi have to do with it? In the evening, there was a conflict between Anahukl and the CRA. -well, technically it wasn't a war. They were preparing for war. Then, apparently, Misizibi, under pressure from the Andes, attacked Anahuakl. -and those launch nukes? -yelp. -you are kidding me. And what about CRA? -It is not yet clear what will happen next. It is not even clear how many people died. My father has already gone down to the basement, heh. I said I would join later. -some kind of bullshi... The nuclear exchange of 2053 took the lives of 15 million people. Anahuakl lost a couple of cities while Misizibi was totally destroyed. The ensuing migration and environmental crisis, as well as the intervention of the Council of Nations, changed the situation in the region and the world. CoN has regained its prestige and threw off the status of a talking club. Andes and Anahuakl went to the negotiating table and resolved many territorial disputes in the Taino Ocean. The subsequent quiet coup in the CRA changed their policy; aggressive foreign actions were replaced by a peaceful existence with neighbors and an orientation towards continued trade dominance. 13.1. A look back into the 21st century, from the controversial book Things to Pass (2099) We can only laugh when looking at the ideas of the early 21st century about the future; just like they laugh at the people from the 1900s. Reading all these things about space colonization, about the AI that solved all their problems, about magical new sources of inexhaustible energy, even I smile maliciously. Let's take a quick look at what society has achieved over these hundred years. The hopes for worldwide European-like liberalism died with it. As the Sarmatian Federation and Europe lost their influence in the world, other countries lost their sense of pretending to be democracies. The multi-party system was replaced by the dominant party, and then by the one-party system altogether. The political elites became the new nobility, and the rulers became the new elected kings, completely dependent on them. The political elites live their own secret life, parallel to the life of ordinary people. They also enter into 'dynastic marriages' and conduct secret underground political conspiracies that will nevertechnological progress, become known to the public. Perhaps after 1000 years. As brightly the global Internet was born, so dimly it died. Realizing the danger of such a source of information, each country, one by one, chose to disconnect from it and create their own national Internet, completely controlled by the state. That is why today the Internet is dying as a phenomenon, just as TV died in the past. The younger generation switched to individual neural networks that generate the necessary information from all sources and cleanse it of prejudices, politics, religion, science, and all that. This is the future. As already stated, AI has never been fully implemented. It became an impossible idea as a perpetual motion machine and time travel. The world is ruled by neural networks that only perform the functions that people need. As expected in the early 21st century, most people have moved away from religion. We have witnessed a truly atheistic generation. But every culture gives birth to a counterculture. Seeing the ungodliness of their parents, the younger generation began to return to a more mundane version of religion friendlier with science, or even go into neo-paganism. Nobody expected it, but science has become a new religion. Like ancient Christianity, it could not be unified for a long time. For each theory, there were a dozen counter-theories that divided the scientific community, along with the society. Humanity has witnessed bloody disputes about the nature of Christ in the Middle Ages. Now we see how families are destroyed due to disputes about the reason for the emergence of life on Earth. Online stars peaked in the 2050s. Some of them had an audience of a billion people and were more influential than their country's presidents. But like everything influential and free, they soon fell into the hands of the state and corporations. Online stars have become the state projects that impart thoughts that need to be thought and a model of behavior that needs to be lived. Unsurprisingly, they are in decline now, just like TV stars were a hundred years ago. Now street stars are gaining popularity among young people, broadcasting to the thousandth audience in a sudden part of the city and also suddenly disappearing. Time will tell if the state gets to them. We have witnessed the humanization of politicians. They are no longer frightened robots in suits, but charismatic personalities. Today they do not broadcast from TV screens answering prepared questions but conduct live Internet broadcasts, where anyone can ask a question. And yes, business suits are finally! left the wardrobe of officials. Nuclear weapons, the scourge of the 20th century, went extinct with the improvement of the satellite laser system. The Taino War remained the first and last nuclear exchange. Unfortunately, the superpowers would not be superpowers if they had not begun to study a new weapon - the climate one. The initially secret developments came to light thanks to several independent journalistic investigations. Will this be the new Sword of Damocles for humanity? I'm sure so. Mainstream cinema has died, its place has been taken by arthouse to surprise, not entertain, the viewer as much as possible. Unfortunately, the formula for the ideal cinema was soon found again and everything slipped back to the mainstream. The people of the 21st century were right about two things: irreversible climate change and overpopulation. Both problems hit Africa the hardest. The problem of overpopulation was solved thanks to gen-mod products and a natural drop in the population from 9 to 6 billion. The climate problem, contrary to the expectations of our ancestors, did not resolve by itself. We have lost many coastal cities and got deserts in unexpected places. Now we need to clean up this trash after them. And yes, space is completely abandoned. We never got beyond the Moon. Face it. 'Peace is our goal' I now give a word to Anne Lorraine, Speaker for the English Republic. Thank you. I hardly prepared the speech today and I do not want to waste your time with prefaces. Our world is now in great danger. As you know, a huge hurricane is now raging off the coast of Majapahit Confederation and their government believes thatGods themselves. Of course, this is an Andean climate weapon. The fleets of both powers patrol the Endless Ocean and miraculously have not collided with eachextremely divisive issue, with many on the other three times in a combat clash. As far as I know, thereside of the spectrum pointing out how many of the augmentations the movement promotes are already languid firefights in their disputed territory on White Continent. We all know that in the event of a war, both powers will release their entire arsenal of climate weapons at each other, and we all know thatonly available to those who can afford them, and this will inevitably lead to a global environmental disaster. In this regard, I, represented by the English Republic and eight other countries, express my protest and insist on holding urgent negotiations between Majapahit and the CRA. Right now, we are inviting other countries to join us and not silently wait for the end of the world. If our conditions are not met, westratified humanity where the strong and rich rule over the weak and poor, essentially creating a new world aristocracy. Some in the movement favour the Distributionist approach, ensuring that the augmentations will be forced to impose heavy sanctionsavailable to all, while others favour the more blunt side of things, saying that it's simply evolution, and inevitably some will lose in the struggle for survival, but it's a necessary sacrifice if it's for the betterment of humanity as a whole. Things are looking difficult for the world ahead. Although climate change is much less of a threat than OTL, ideological divides continue to run deep within humanity. Dasca (former Dacia), the poorest and least reformed former Rhomanian province, is currently a hub for the Roman Restorationist movement and is demanding some kind of new union with Rhomania, and over in Asia Cinese rebels in the various states are moving to reunify Cina so that they may inherit the world. Also in Asia, a recent economic crisis as a result of mismanagement in Tanqri has caused a massive destabilisation of the European Concord, with Airu using it as a rallying cry for new Coalition member nations and it seems to be working. Corporations sink their teeth into the world economy further every day as inequality continues to rise, and then there is the endless transhumanism debate, who will ultimately triumph and where it will inevitably lead humanity... [1] TTL's primary form of republicanism. [2] The steam engine was invented earlier than OTL in Asiki of all places, whereupon an Industrial Revolution broke out based on them; the more countries join us, the more severe the consequences will be. Peacepaper production, followed by iron and steel production. Trade with Europe and Asia ensued and soon the Revolution gripped the world. More by CyberPhoenix001 I Literature If Night of the Lepus was a franchise Night of the Lepus (1972) After farms are overrun by rabbits in rural Arizona, a college professor teams up with a pair of researchers to create a serum to eradicate them without using harmful chemicals. However, the pair's daughter, Amanda, procures a contaminated rabbit that escapes and breeds, the town soon overrun by a horde of giant killer bunny rabbits. Night of the Lepus 2 (1977) Taking place 5 years after the events of the first film, Amanda (now a rebellious teenager) hears reports of renewed rabbit attacks down south, learning that they originated from a group that escaped the original massacre. After her warnings are ignored, she recruits a team of fellow high-schoolers and go on a road trip to hunt down the ravenous lagomorphs once and for all. Night of the Lepus 3: The Return (1981) A pharmaceutical company, Daycon, is our goal, and we will achieve it at any cost."buying up the land around the original ranch from the first movie, and new protagonist Jacob Carter, who has just moved there with his family as his Suggested Collections Alternate History They Are Awake A Federal Empire and an Imperial Federation Pax Martia Speculative World Maps The Red Baron's Mitteleuropa Redux Radama's Revolution To Tame a Chaotic World alternate history The Anglo-American Nazi War Jubilee, Bring It 1900s World Featured in Groups Alternate-History More by CyberPhoenix001 Flag of the GIUSSR Flag of the Byzantine Republic Flag of a United Korea Flag of the American Empire Pacific Communist Coalition Flag My Heritage Flag Flag of Carthage Triumphant Kingdom of Australia Flag (Decades of Darkness) A new scenario based on an idea I had for a cyberpunk Hindu world. Hope you enjoy it!"

USER: [Answer must be under 2501,000 characters] [Use your own words] "Apotheosis"PAX PER BELLUM Colonization On Veneris, 27 Pisces 195 TE [4 July 1976], Robert H. Lawrence, Jr and the crew of Ares-5 became the first human beings to set foot on Mars, at the site that would eventually become the modern city of Primus. Because this sol fell on the Gregorian date "4 July 1976", on the bicentennial of American independence, the anniversary of the First Landing, and the start of Martian civilization, is still referred to as the "Fourth of July", even after the adoption of the Darian Calendar five annums later on 1 Sagitarius 200 TE [15 May 1985]. On 21 Rishabha 196 TE [7 October 1978], twins April and Eric Crenshaw were born in Primus Base to first-wave pioneers Thomas and May Crenshaw. Thirteen sols later, the third Martian child, Mitsuru Hiroi, is born in the first Japanese colony, Erijumu Base, to Mai Hiroi (father unknown), on 7 Gemini 196 TE [21 October 1978]. By Pisces 200 TE [November 1985], five annums after the first humans landed on Mars, the population was already at 5,000 colonists, mostly in the American and Japanese colonies. 95% of this growth was via colonist arriving from Earth, however, signs were already pointing to an anomalously high birth rate on the Red Planet, attributable to a number of factors and in spite of efforts at contraception. Concerns around transporting infants and children across interplanetary space mean that these Martian births have to stay on Mars, which spurs ever-mounting investment in the colonies to ensure that they can sustain a growing population, creating a positive feedback loop of more settlers and more supplies. And soon more babies. On 6 Aquarius 196 TE [6 March 1978], the Mars Treaty Organization (or MTO) was founded following the Houston Conference, which formally carved up Mars into territorial claims among the Conference's attendees (mostly the US and its Cold War-era allies). On 17 Leo 201 TE [19 July 1988], the International Mars Forces Command (IMFC) was established as a means of organizing and coordinating the various military detachments deployed to Mars. A product of late Cold War paranoia around the potential for warfare in the colonies, in essence, the IMFC would allow for the coordination of the American, Japanese, British and French military assets present on Mars at the time. In practice, most of these military personnel were put to work building or maintaining infrastructure, or assisting with various scientific ventures. In theory, the forces being coordinated by CyberPhoenix001the IMFC answered to their respective colonial governments via the MTO, as surrogates for national governments back on Earth. In this world, in the 2nd century BC, Hindu merchants from south-east Asia managed to travel as far north as Japan, whichpractice, the IMFC answered to the MTO. With the end of the Cold War, the realities of life on Mars culminated in the reformation of the IMFC into MarsCom on 16 Leo 208 TE [17 September 2001], placing the control of the IMFC's uniformed assets under the direct control of the MTO. A somewhat controversial move at the time on both Earth and Mars, but ultimately reflective of the situation on Mars at the time. Whereas the IMFC was linked into the Hindu trade routes. With thisan ostensibly military organization more often tasked with non-military activities, MarsCom was founded as a three-part service overseeing intercolonial military assets (Defense Command), and pan-Martian infrastructure construction, maintenance, medical and emergency services (Civil Command), as well as innovating new expansion, Hinduism never loses its maritime traditions, linking much of south and oceanic Asia in a trade network allowing forin-situ technologies, exploration and the spread of ideas, religions and experiences. Hinduism slowly and steadily spreadknowledge across the colonies (Science Command), all while maintaining a military-style rank hierarchy. An unusual development, though perhaps apropos for the planet named after the god of war. Speaking of, on 28 Mithuna 197 TE [27 October 1980], Earthling scientist Carl Sagan popularized the Shield of Ares on the fifth episode of his popular TV program, Cosmos. Sagan advocated for the symbol, consisting of a circle with a triangular lambda inside (sometimes said to represent the mighty peak of Olympus Mons), reminiscent of an ancient Spartan warrior's shield, as a new, gender-neutral symbol of Mars, to replace the Red Planet's more ancient symbol, due to the latter's conflation with the masculine sex. The Shield will go on to become a ubiquitous symbol in Martian iconography, featured on many Martian flags throughout the Japanese Isles creating a syncretic religion with Shinto traditions, beating Buddhism to the punch. Outposts in the Philippines and Indonesia spread the influence of the Indian thalassocracies and the Hindu religion further into oceanic Asia, which ended up becominghistory. On 4 Taurus 197 TE [9 July 1980], evidence of past and current Martian life is discovered. The simple, microscopic extremophiles are dubbed "greenmen" (Cohortsuva musgravei) after Ares-5 astronaut Story Musgrave remarks at the time "we found the little green men on Mars". These would be the first of many microbial organisms found beneath the surface of Mars, the final remnants of a bygone Martian biosphere. On 28 Capricornus 199 TE [21 September 1983], a startling discovery uncovered an "Arc" of Hindu nations throughout the Indian and Pacific oceans. Meanwhile, across Eurasia, the coalition of tribesentire second branch of Martian life, when ESA pioneers Jean-Francois Vandamme and Ricardo Gallerani discover that formed the Huns in OTL never formed and, as a result, the nomadic migrations into Europe and developments of states withina series of anomalous rock formations on Mars were drastically shifted. The Goths ended up settling down in the Balkans, and were joined by the Vandals in Dacia, who were never driven west. There was no Battle of Adrianople or Sack of Rome, meaning that the Western Roman Empire struggled on for another century before eventually coming down in 520 AD. The Franks still rose to prominence, but never developed into the Carolingian Empire of OTL, though successive attempts to unite the feudal region do occur over the centuries. Without the Visigothic invasion, Hispania became more central to the affairs of the Western Roman Empire, with western Europe as a whole being largely Germanised over the centuries. Without the distraction of the Huns, Aetius was able to properly fortify Britain, largely preventing the initial Anglo-Saxon settlement. Unfortunately, as dynastic disputes continued to play out in North Italy and Greece, Britain was once again largely left to fend for itself against invaders, which it did slightly better than OTL, resulting in a much more culturally varied *England that, without Saxon political ascendancy, ended up a hotbed of internecine warfare between the settlers. The Scandinavian raids started largely on schedule, but they were able to get a much stronger cultural foothold on Britain than OTL, in effect largely Nordicising the northern region. To this day, *Scotland is firmly entrenched in the Nordic sphere, though Ireland remains independent. With a more populous and developed south-eastern Europe and a less organised west, the Slavs expanded into the Baltic and northern Europe as far west as the Elbe, cementing their position. Some time later, the Magyars migrated through eastern Europe and end up settling in the Alps. Islam never arose, but a new, more inclusive and expansionist form of Zoroastrianism arose out of Persia and competed with Christianity for influence in Arabia. Neither side managed to completely come out on top, but the Zoroastrian faith did spread to a maritime Aksum after the conversion of the King and beat out Christianity amongst the general populace. From there, the religion spread down the southern coast of Africa and into the interior. History follows. There were two historic conquerors in Eurasia who managed to rapidly build up fiercely expansionist empires; both a Turk and a Mongol, respectively. The Turk (in the 8th century) managed to conquer all of Central Asia as well as the Caucasus and much of Eastern Europe, displacing a lot of tribes in the process, most notably the Magyars who ended up in northern Italy. However, after suffering a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the ERE, the empire crumbled with his death. The Mongol (in the 12th century), on the other hand, spread much like Genghis Khan's empire did, but he ended up dying in the middle of his empire-building after eating something he shouldn't have, leaving his empire in the hands of his far-less-capable brother. Being a less competent strategist, he never managed to conquer all of Cina (still pronounced China; just spelt differently), with Buddhist regions at the south remaining independent (butterflies meant that despite campaigns of persecution of Buddhists in Cina, they never managed to eradicate it in the south before being invaded). After the *Mongol Empire inevitably crumbled, not even having made it as far as Europe, Buddhism once again took force in Cina, with many Confucian texts and scholars having been destroyed and killed respectively by the Mongols. As Buddhist forces reunited the broken nation, they began the long Chinese tradition of Buddhist theocracy, which, strangely enough, would end up a more stable beast than Confucian Cina of OTL. Of all the successor states to the Western Roman Empire (most of which are unrecognisable due to centuries of borders shifting and cultural mingling) the Iberian Peninsula (solidly Germanic) inarguably came out on top. With a relatively strong, centralised position of authority and having largely escaped the deluge of tribes that invaded Europe, Hispania took up the mantle of the WRE and continued to contest the Eastern Roman Empire's position in Italy. Wars of legitimacy continued for several centuries, both in Italy and northern Africa, until the ERE was once again embroiled in a war with Ariya (as Persia came to be known), forcing it to fight a war on both sides, neither of which held. Hispania ended up lodged in Rome, taking all of southern Italy with it. There were also multiple attempts to re-establish imperial authority in Gaul, which were repeatedly thwarted by other upstart kingdoms in the region. Sustained by the services of Saxon and Magyar mercenaries, the north never fell under prolonged Hispanian dominance, and eventually coherent states emerged in the age of nationalism; namely, a "Greater Brittany" in the east, several smaller states lining the Mediterranean, and Bakaardo, a nation which covered OTL north-eastern France and OTL Benelux, with a Saxon confederacy to the east. Over time, even Hispania (now known as Yspana) succumbed to the rise of ethnic nationalism, with the Vaskr (OTL Basque) in the north breaking away in the 13th century, taking a chunk of the Pyrenees with them. In the absence of Islam, Christianity hit it big in the Maghreb thanks to Yspan efforts to spread the word of Christ, and it continued to spread all throughout west Africa, whereupon a strong centralised Christian kingdom arose along the Niger River. State-building emerged both in the interior of west Africa and along the coast, with the Kingdom forming a nexus of trans-Saharan trade. The kingdom eventually swelled to an expansionist empire, determined to bring all of western Africa under its rule. It succeeded, but at the cost of its own survival; over-farming, monarchical decadence and vast imperial overreach ensured its downfall. Out of its ashes several successor states arose, most notably the Asiki Empire around OTL Nigeria, notable not only for their relative tolerance compared to other African Christian nationsbiological in nature, but still alive. Dubbed "Amphiformes", these bizarre, sessile organisms blur the line between "life" and "non-life", when they begin growing after exposure to moisture and oxygen, and forming unusual shapes resembling rocky corals. It is believed that Amphiformes represent a completely separate line of organic life from the greenmen, suggesting that abiogenesis occurred at the time,least twice on Mars. Additionally, the Amphiformes are believed to have remained in a fossil-like hibernation state for billions of annums as conditions on Mars gradually worsened, while remaining "alive" the entire time. On 1 Sagittarius 200 TE [15 May 1985], Thomas Gangale's Darian Calendar was formally adopted by the Mars Treaty Organization, becoming standard across all Martian colonies by the close of the annum. In place of the 12-month Gregorian "year", the Darian calendar opts for an "annum" divided into 24 months - 12 named after the signs of the Western Zodiac, and 12 after the signs of the Indian Zodiac. The term "year" persists on Mars, to describe the halves of a given annum. "New Years" on Mars is a mid-annum celebration, while "Novannum" (a term of dubious Latin that makes linguists cry) is a celebration of the transition between annums. All but also for their system of government, which bore resemblance to a form of proto-Arkonism [1]. Because of this, the Asiki Empire has hadtwo months have 28 sols. Each sol is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 36 seconds. The last minutes and seconds of the sol are known as "Runt Hour", a time of the sol considered spooky and superstitious among Martians. The seven sols of the week are Solis, Lunae, Martis, Mercurii, Jovis, Veneris and Saturni. The calendar's start date roughly corresponds with the Earth-years of 1609/1610, when Kepler published his first two laws of planetary motion, as well as Galileo's first observations of the phases of Mars, beginning the "Telescopic Epoch" (TE). In 212 [2007], the first construction phase began on the Halo orbital ring around Mars, beginning with a rotating cable encircling the planet above the equator. All would go according to plan and decades later in 230 [2041], six "ring stations" (Lawrence, Musgrave, Collins, Aldrin, O'Leary and Overmayer) were added atop the cable, remaining at static locations above the Martian equator via superconducting magnets, and connected to the surface via space elevators completed in 241 [2062]. Generally-speaking, from 195 [1975], until 215 [2013], everything seemed to be going smoothly in the Martian colonies, with constant growth and so many success stories. This all began to change with the first sighting of Comet Barrus on 11 Aires 207 TE [10 March 1999]. The Great Impact On Lunae 11 Aires 207 [10 March 1999], a comet is discovered by astronomer Jon Barrus atop Olympus Mons, determined to be on a trajectory for a close approach to Mars, with an immeasurable effect on African history and development. Meanwhile, on the other side of Africa, Aksum continued to spread the word of Zoroaster throughout eastern Africa, spreading down the coast as far as Zanzibar and northern Madagascar. It also triggered state-building exercises in the Sudan, triggering localised conflicts with Egypt (which remained largely under ERE control over the centuries), but ultimately made little headway in inner east Africa, though Zanzibar did have its own bout of empire-building which broadly succeeded where Aksum failed.estimated 1 in 200,000 chance of impact. "Comet Barrus" is estimated to be 1.5 kilometers in diameter, and composed chiefly of water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane and nitrogen. Over in Asia, in the 11th century the southern Indian states were united under an empire known as Vijayanagara (a slightly different beast than the OTL empire of the same name; they managed to work some nuance into the caste system, for one thing) that managed to stick, uniting the bulk of the maritime provinces that, with the end of religious wars in Egypt and the Levant, ended up bridging the east and west (chaos in central Asia had largely blocked off the Silk Road for some time), with Vijayanagara ships making their way to Europe to trade and European ships trading throughout the East Indies. This ended up triggering a reciprocal cultural fascination between hemispheres, with the East adopting certain European imperial ideals, while Europe developed a craze for Oriental styling, particularly in the ERE, which by that time had become known as the Rhomanian Empire. Trade with Cina remained a distant prospect, owing to Cina's tendency towards isolationism. Science and technology also spread throughout the continents. The printing press (here invented in Vijayanagara in the 12th century) and gunpowder (still invented in Cina, though the Indians vigorously contest that claim) and the concept of the number zero found their way to Europe, as did the Black Death, triggering a colossal social upheaval that wracked Europe for several centuries. In the early 15th century, during a period of renewed hostility between eastern and western Europe, the Yspan noticed that the Vaskr seemed to be producing a strange surplus of fishthe next eight annums, Comet Barrus drew closer and closer to Mars, changing from an unknown source to the west. Further investigation ofanticipated light show that would dazzle the Martian colonies, to an increasingly inevitable impact. On 18 Kanya 209 TE [30 October 2003], astronomers predicted that Comet Barrus had a 1 in 120,000 chance of impacting Mars. On 11 Virgo 210 TE [12 August 2005], this phenomenon led to an astonishing discovery; there were twobecame a 1 in 8,000 chance of impacting Mars. By 5 Gemini 212 TE [21 November 2008], Comet Barrus had a 1 in 2,000 chance of impacting Mars, and by 23 Mina 213 TE [6 June 2010], they said Barrus had a 1 in 1,250 chance of impacting Mars. Finally, on 12 Gemini 214 TE [2 September 2012], observation confirmed that Comet Barrus had a 1 in 10 chance of impacting Mars, with a 1 in 50 chance of hitting the North Pole. The MTO demarcated a 400-kilometer exclusion zone around the expected hypocenter of impact at the Martian North Pole. Here, researchers who had discovered vibrant colonies of indigenous Martian life forms within the polar ice, did their best to evacuate as many samples as they could in the final annum before impact, with some dying from exhaustion. On Jovis 5 Taurus 215 TE [17 May 2014], at 23:18, millions watched Comet Barrus approach and streak across the sky for up to a minute, before landing in the meters-thick sheet of frozen CO2 at the North Pole, with the force of 117 gigatons of TNT, sublimating almost all of it instantly, though with relatively little ejecta. Fears of super-quakes rattling the whole other continentsplanet and causing massive casualties, or apocalyptic dust clouds snuffing out solar power across the Atlantic, rich in land, resources and opportunities. Expeditions were hastily commissioned to map the continents as word spread throughout Europe and the trade routes to Asia. Coloniesplanet, turned out to be unfounded, as while serious damage was recorded in the north, for most Martians, dishes broke, pendulum clocks stopped, and the ground shook for a few moments. More important than the impact itself, the flash-sublimation of 650 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, water-ice, ammonia, nitrogen, hydrogen and methane (either contained in the ice sheet or within the comet itself), briefly deluged a large area of the Martian north with frozen watery slush, while the immense levels of sudden heat from the colossal explosion began a short-lived warming trend all across the east coast sprungMars. This alone would not be enough to transform Mars into a paradise, and with enough time everything would revert to the way things were before the impact. But only if nothing was done. The Red-Blue Debate The subject of "terraforming" was already being talked about as early as the 1990s, however, interest perked up along the coasts of North and South Elysium (the explorer who ended up naming the continents also happened to be a patron of the classics) fairly rapidly, for different reasons. Yspana, looking for national pride, set up shop along the *Mississippi and spread throughout the Gulf and continental interior. Bakaardo and Asiki, both fiercely commerce-oriented nations, went in looking for profits, with Asiki colonising south-east of South Elysium and Bakaardo taking the north-east. Theafter the possibility of Barrus altering the Martian climate came into focus, and post-impact, it reached a fevered pitch, even as MarsCom was busy assessing damage in the northern regions of North Elysium were settled by Svaireik, a less heavily Christianised Sweden, largely 'cause no one else wanted it, with the Vaskr holding out in *Newfoundland andcolonies. Opponents of terraforming saw it as too ambitious, too expensive or too impractical, while proponents saw it as the only way forward for Martian civilization, and preferred the term "noaforming", as they saw the process of making Mars more habitable as "returning" Mars to its surrounds out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Beorn, the Nordicised northern region of the British Isles, madewarmer, wetter state in the Noachian Epoch. By contrast, some of the more doctrinaire and philosophical opponents of noaforming believed it into *Mexico and located the wealthy regions within. Unfortunately, this did not escape the attention of the other European powers, and soon the region became awash with attempted colonies, adventurers, entrepreneurs and exiles all competing to carve out their own little empires, leaving *Mexico a hodgepodge of little statelets and miniature nations. Beorn was forced to give up its aspirations for Elysian colonialism and instead mostly turned its attention to the spice trade while Airu (OTL Ireland, which united in the face of attempted Viking invasions), fiercely independent and nationalistic and not one for colonialism, looked over the chaos in the west with a look of resigned condescension. The easternmost coast of North Elysium was taken by a hodgepodge of nations including Brittys, the aforementioned "Greater Britanny", a Slavic state in northern Europe known as Sorzem, and even Rhomania taking a few small pieces of the Elysian pie, though few of these smaller colonies lasted, with them being swallowed up over time. However, a lot of the most lasting developments tookwasn't man's place over on the west coast. Khamanu (OTL Japan), which never cut itself off from the outside ITTL, was solidly Hindu by the time the Elysian continents were discovered, and unified into a relatively strong federal empire. Having already colonised the furthest regions of Siberia up north, they seized upon the opportunity to move into the lands to the east, forming the colony of Ashiwema in *California; a colony which quickly became a byword for the Land of Plenty once the gold was discovered. (Khamanu still gave rise to its own warrior class and culture, but not to the same extent as OTL. Also, they used Damascus steel for their weapons; Khamanu culture being bigger on individuality and openness to new ideas than OTL Japan.) However, they were soon joined by a less-than-welcoming power; Cina. Looking to colonise the Elysian continents not out of commercial desire or national pride, Cina went in for another reason entirely; to spread their brand of fundamentalist Buddhism. Armed with cannons, rifles and a fanaticism to rival the OTL Crusaders, missionaries stormed into South Elysium, with catastrophic results. The Andean civilisations were doomed from the very start. Disease ripped through the populations as Cinese armies toppled the native monarchies and replaced them with repressive agrarian communes. Religious adornments, ornamentation, and luxuries in general were prohibited, with entire villages put to the torch for resisting, in the name of "bringing Enlightenment to the savages in the East". Indeed, so fervent was the devotion of some coloniststo "pollute" Mars in such a way, that it was reporteda form of terrestrial chauvinism, that Mars' natural beauty was worth preserving for future generations. A recurring topic of discussion on Mars was the matter of water. From the earliest sols on Mars, most of the water used by colonists was extracted from underground ice sources, which often accumulated in the lowest-lying regions of the planet along with other ices, where the planet's ancient hydrosphere pooled as the changing environment caused it to recede and freeze. After the Great Impact of 215, however, pools of hypersaline slush and half-frozen mud appeared in these lowland craters and canyons, as microscopic crystals of frozen water across the planet began melting. This injected considerable ambiguity into a very important component of the Noaforming Question, which was whether or not Mars had enough water to sustain its growing civilization. According to the Blues, there was not enough water readily-available to sustain current populations or the industries keeping them alive on a sol-to-sol basis. Mars had lost too much water over the last few billion years, and for Martians to call the place home, they totally destroyed any itemswould need more, or else a global water crisis was inevitable. However, according to the Reds, this was not the case. Mars, in fact, had plenty of water, and more, while nice, wasn't required, and they would point to the slush and the mud, as evidence of this fact, as well as advances in drilling technology which would enable access to deeper aquifers and permafrost. Others, of a more conspiratorial bent, believed that included gold, casting the offending metal into rivers so as to eliminate the possibility of"Peak Water" was in fact a scheme to justify further temptation towards materialism (actually a foreign fabrication,regulatory control over water resources and/or increased power being given to the MTO. The first serious proposal for large-scale noaforming was presented before the MTO General Assembly in Primus, on 3 Leo 217 TE [8 August 2018]. The "Blue Mars Plan" called for, among other things, the use of thousands of nuclear explosives, redirecting comets to impact Mars, unproven methods of genetic engineering as-yet beyond the reach of then-current Martian biotech, massive infrastructure projects requiring dramatic expansion of MarsCom's capabilities, and, most controversially, the mass-eviction of the northern colonies to make way for an ocean in the north. The Blue Mars plan was ultimately rejected by the Assembly, but the idea made it into the popular consciousness and is now a widely held misconception). The whole affaironly narrowly, and was such a catastrophe that it united the Hindu Arc for the first time in centuries in a direct campaign against the Cinese, ending with the pacification and seizure of the colonies and largely ending Cina's thirst for religious expansionism. Centuries passed. Wars were fought with bouts of peace in between. Colonies expanded and were swallowed up, broke apart and united. Borders shifted, as did alliances. Progress marched on. Some of the more interesting points of this period of history include the slave rebellion in the Bakaardoan colony of Noi Balchia, becoming a more successful "Greater Haiti" and destination for freed slaves everywhere (as well as renaming itself "Viyarica"), the Turko-Slavic expansion throughout northern Asia and the founding of the nations of Praetoria in western *Australia by Rhomanian ex-mercenaries and of Midgard in OTL New Zealand by a devout group of Svaireikian pagans, fleeing persecution in the now-solidly Christian Svaireik. Africa still underwent a period of colonisation by both European and Asian powers, butexpected to be revisited at a much later date. Growing Pains While the debate over noaforming drew the philosophical and ideological battle lines for the RBW, it was a slightlythe rapid growth of colonial civilization on Mars that would make war inevitable. In 200 [1985], less than five annums after the first humans set foot on Mars, the Martian population was already at 5,000 colonists, mostly in the American and Japanese colonies. 95% of the growth is via colonists arriving from Earth, however signs were already pointing to an anomalously high birth rate on the Red Planet, attributable to a number of factors, and in spite of efforts at contraception. In 24 Makara 209 TE [5 August 2002], Neo-Tokyo became the first settlement on Mars with a population greater than 100,000. In 23 Libra 211 TE [8 September 2007], Mars reached one million people, and at the time, everyone assumed it would reach two million by the next decade, only for there to be three million Martians by 11 Aquarius 221 TE [17 March 2025]. In 206 [1996], the first of six AEGIS satellites were deployed at Mars-Sol L1 to create a magnetosheath disrupting incoming solar wind. By 214 [2012], the AEGIS array had lowered surface radiation levels by 45%, allowing for lower standards for radiation shielding, and the dramatic expansion of housing, growth in trade thanks to lighter vehicles, and as a result, a rise in both immigration from Earth and birthrates at home. The growing Martian population, and more muted effort, with manyimportantly, the rise of both parents and the youth as a new, formidable voting bloc, reinvigorated interest in noaforming, as the future of Mars became less that of outposts of Earthling civilization, and more a question of what shape or direction an independent Martian civilization would take. Perceptions of Earthlings by Martians of Earthlings have always been...complicated. From the earliest sols, the idea of the "colonies" on Mars being "colonies" in the old-fashioned sense that Spanish America was ruled from Madrid, or Australia from London, was almost entirely a legal fiction. Insofar as the colonies retaining significant levels of independence and culture. Brittys managed to snag the Capewere still reliant upon industry and supplies from Bakaardo, but ended up having to contend with a confederation of native African tribes that govern most of south-eastern Africa as well as the lower half of *Madagascar. Asiki managed to largely keep west Africa to itself with the assistance of its long-time ally, Yspana (the slave-trading rates were pretty good) working to keep other powers out and the Maghrebian theocracies in check. The Congo was divvied up between powers, and surprisingly fared better as a result. The defining moment of the modern era (for Europeans and North Elysians at least) came in 1877 when a succession crisis in the traditionally neutral Kingdom of Firirk (OTL Denmark) triggered an invasion by Svaireik when it appeared that the side of the heir loyal to the Svaireikians was losing. This in turn triggered a counter-invasion by their Baltic rival Sorzem, afraid that Svaireik was attempting to cut off their access to the Atlantic. War spread throughout Europe and North Elysium, not out of obligation, but because tensionsEarth early on, the drive in every offworld colony had been growing between the local powers during a long period of peace, and now was believed to be the time to take advantage of it. What became known to the Europeans as the War of Nine Kingdoms and to the North Elysians as the Burning War ended up raging for seven years before burning out as the final peace treaty was signed in 1884. In the aftermath, Svaireik was forced to cede much of its influence in the Baltic as well as in Firirk, which was ceded to the Sorzemic sphere of influence. Bakaardo was split up, with the Magyar state of Tanqri (which had already absorbed the Saxons in a previous campaign) gained control of the Low Countries, south-eastern OTL France and northern Italy. Yspana absorbed south-western OTL France as well as Vaskr, preceding a large amount of nationalist guerilla warfare in the decades to come. Airu, following an abortive invasion by Beorn with assistanceto become as self-sufficient as possible, as quickly as possible, and from Svaireik, was given direct control over *Wales, and the rest of the Isles were ceded to their localised sphere of influence as well. Borders were shuffled around in North Elysium as well; the giant Svaireikian state dominating the north split in two between east and west, with Ashiwema annexing the region of OTL Oregon. The nations of *Mexico finally managed to coalesce into some larger federations, and the Vaskrian colonies (now declaring themselves the legitimate Vaskrian government) expanded at the expense of the broken Svaireikian nation and clashing with the former Yspana colonies in the Great Lakes region. The officially-past-their-prime Bakaardoanthe start, colonies were partitioned, being absorbed by the former Sorzemic and Brittysian colonies and the remaining Rhomanian colonies in the Arrakian Sea (OTL Carribean) and the Yucatan Peninsulade facto self-governing, lacking representation in their Earthly "motherlands", but continuing to operate under Earthling laws where they were granted independence. But none ofstill applicable or practical, mostly for the sake of consistency. In the event of an emergency, anything that comparedneeded to be brought in from Earth wasn't a realistic option, not unless it was already on the way. Perceptions of Earth among early Martian colonists very quickly became critical. The fact was, your average Martian didn't have time to parse through information coming from Earth for nuance, and as a result, only the most exceptionally bad or unusual news arrived on Mars, or to be precise, reached Martian ears and eyes. Many colonists were themselves dissidents and oddballs dissatisfied in one way or another with the wave of revolutionary thought that swept the northern hemisphere in the aftermath of the wars. With the wars taking a heavy toll on the economies and populations of the nations of Europe and North Elysium, the populace came to blamelife on Earth, and eager to settle on Mars to pursue their Kings and Queens for their suffering (including in the independent colonies; standard practice for granting independence ITTL involved offloading a spare heir onto them and declaring them an independent Kingdom) and with the monarchs still retaining a substantial amount of power compared to OTL, their subjects accused them for dragging them into wars that, whether they had won or lost, had still suffered greatly as a result. Arkonist spirit surged throughout the northern hemisphere as political discourse took a decidedly radical turn. Monarchs all over the northern hemisphereown dreams of frontier life. Very often these dreams failed to materialize and these brave pioneers found themselves besiegedadapting to lives much less cozy than they imagined, the sunk-cost fallacy led many to rationalize their decisions to move to Mars by the peopleinventing thousands of other reasons why they governed. Oneleft the Earth. This would all go on to inform what Martian children were taught about the Earth. For them, the Earth was more of an abstraction than a real place, something they were told about. Some persons born on Mars were entranced by one the Kings and Queensthe Earth's beauty, and a few Martians would even migrate to the Earth, but these were toppled, with Arkonist governments taking the helms. Most of them managed to avoid spiralling into violent infighting or dictatorship and set up working, viable systems of representative government, with the exception of asurprisingly few governments in North Elysium and both Brittys and, most notoriously, Rhomania. An astute and expedient politician in Rhomania (formerly referred to as "the sick man of Europe") soon rose up the ranks of the new government and cemented control, intending to restore the former Roman Empire under Rhomanian control. Instituting a program of modernisation in both the military and civil services, Rhomania quickly rose to become the greatest threat to peace in the region, as Yspana, Tanqri and Sorzem cemented an alliance to combat the threat of Rhomanian imperialism, while Rhomania courted the sympathetic Brittysians and their old ally Svaireik, which had escaped Arkonist revolution but had instead succumbed to a form of *Communism with heavy emphasis on the teachings of Jesus known as Distributionism. Meanwhile, over in Asia, in 1910 Cina, determined to unitein number. Because when all of Asia under their rule launched an offensive against the Hindu Arc, marching into Burma and launching a naval campaign against Khamanu while a coalition of anti-Vijanagayara states launched a campaign against the south.you have is a life on Mars, you appreciate the little things, the red dunes and pink skies, the simple routines of colonial life, the strong sense of community. Earth's beauty and comfort was offset in its appeal by the perception of Earthlings as vain, atomized, unfocused, vulgar, chaotic and degenerate. The fightingEarth was bloody, especially during the land campaign against Cina by Khamanu during the turnaround, though troops from the various nations in *Indonesia and from the Hindu nations across the Pacific helped push back against the Cinese incursion, with the Arc finally doing away with the state of Cina altogether, dismembering it and placing various areas of it under their spheres of influence. However, just as the war was ending in Asia, another war was starting back in Europe, but it went in a different direction than everyone was expecting, with Rhomania invading and annexing formerly peaceful Ariya. No one was sure what the Rhomanian Arkon was planning, but that was his intention, for he was a long-term thinker and intended to keep them off-balance. Fortunately for the rest of the world, they figured out his goal as his tanks moved into the Arabian Peninsula; with the world already deep into the Oil Age [2], he was planning to seize control of the world's oil supply. With war still far from a desired prospect bya wealth of lessons to be learned. For some, this meant jotting down notes about the planet's many of the nations of Europe, many nations began shoring up their own supplies of fuel and moving to switch to alternative sources of energy in the name of national security. Giant crash programs close to the relative scale of the Manhattan Project were implemented to switch to renewable resources. The Rhomanian Arkon, seeing his chance for European domination escaping, attacked. The war was chaotic and brutal, spreading to Africa and South Elysium as well. Italy was rolled over, with much of Rome suffering heavy damage (only a bare fragment of the Colosseum remains), with Rhomania beating back the Tanqri and even mounting a land invasion of Yspana, with Vaskrian guerillas blowing up military targets and even the *Parliament, killing a large number of government representatives and the Yspan Arkon. Also, the African Berber theocracy of Marrasa took the opportunityfood webs and climatic models, to assist with the invasion of Yspana, which in turn led Asiki to enter the war against them out of obligation to their old ally Yspana. Meanwhile, on thenoaforming plans, while other side of Africa, the ailing Aksumite Empire, seeing the way the wind was blowing, joined up on the side of the Rhomanians, seeking to restore their influence currently being lost to the rising power of Zamarya in the Sudan region (the Rhomanians particularly welcomed this new ally, as the SvaireikiansMartians simply grew more appreciative of the Red Planet they already had in fact bowed out of war, lacking sufficient military preparation). Down south, the Confederation of African Kingdoms launched a war against the Brittysian Cape and Hindu northern Madagascar in the name of "liberation", while in South Elysium, Viyarica, under the grip of a new theocratic religious movement combining elements of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Buddhism into a wholly unpleasant blend of a religion called Suuatarism, began a war in central South Elysium against the former Asiki colonies in an attempt to bring them into their fold. The All-Engulfing War, as it came to be known, was devastating. But as peace was declared after four years of bloodshed, the victorious nations picked up the pieces and moved forward. * * * Today, in 2014, 95 years after the end of the All-Engulfing War, the world is mostly peaceful, but is currently divided by several new ideological divides. In the aftermath, the new Panterran movement took hold, which posited that peace was most easily achieved through economic interdependency between states. With the colossal cost of the war immediately evident, the relatively new movement gained substantial traction, and new economic alliances emerged as new infrastructure was built to connect nations around the world. However, given the inherently Distributionist nature of Panterran economics (unifying economies by transcending borders) many initial alliances were largely between quite well-off nations, who were not keen on linking their economies with less prosperous nations and seeing their capital going towards fixingand wanted to avoid what they saw as nationsEarth's faults. It's hard to care about Earth when it's just a little blue dot, and Mars is the ground beneath your feet. The water in your cells. The iron in your blood. For persons moving between planets, who had already spent their formative years on one but relocated to another, the extreme separation from the Earth-Mother became a source of intense stress and anxiety, the only resolution to which was to learn to love your new planet, and this would become an intense love, love for the sake of survival itself. Indeed, separation from Earth is hypothesized by some historians to be the reason for the unusually-high birth rates in the early colonies; the lizard-brain believing that the Earth was destroyed, triggering an instinctual drive to perpetuate the species. It should come as no surprise then, that by the early 220s [2030s], many Martians grew tired of even the legal fiction of colonial control from Earth, and by the late 220s [2040s], political upheaval and instability on Earth coincided with a massive groundswell of support for independence in the colonies themselves, who by that point had very little in the way of institutional connections to Earth anyway. And one of the most essential players in the Martian independence movement, would go on to become one of the planet's greatest villains. Born in Tokyo, Japan on 19 Libra 201 TE [12 November 1988], Fumikage Gondo and his family moved to Mars when he was only one annum old. Growing up in the settlement of Neo-Kansai, despite not being born on Mars, Gondo would become one of the most important of the "Young Martians", the first generation of native-born Martian political leaders. An ambitious power-player more accustomed to working behind the scenes, he was nevertheless one of the fresh faces in the MTO who advocated for the legal independence of the Martian colonies, making a name for himself as the then-youngest MTO Minister for Emergency Management, when he handled the post-Barrus disaster relief. Over the years, he built up an extensive personal political machine that saw his allies, most of them Young Martians, occupying every single MTO ministry, and himself filling the General Secretary seat three times, with his allies alternating as GenSec between his terms. This was a machine with almost complete control over the MTO, lasting over 21 annums. Under his watch, the MTO greenlit the Blue Mars Plan, now dubbed "Project Genesis", on 8 Mesha 229 TE [20 August 2040], complete with all of its controversial provisions, including an adversarial relationship with Mars' lowland colonies which were nothingwritten off as doomed to flood. Or at least, that's what Gondo's critics said. In reality, Gondo was a bit more callous than that. His policy, and that of the MTO, was to transfer the populations of the lowland colonies to higher ground, with no apparent plan for the continuity of the sovereignty of the colonies which were to be completely submerged over the next century. While popular history pins all blame on Gondo, the reality is that other states on Mars could have carved out territory for these colonies to reinstitute themselves in, but none wished to. And the governments of the colonies soon to be flooded had no willingness to go along with such a thing even if it were offered, unwilling to surrender the hard work of their grandfathers without a fight. Proposals to regulate flooding in some areas, such as a dam at the mouth of Valles Marineris, barriers along the entrance of the Isidis impact basin, or a system of pumps in Argyre or the Avalon Basin, were dismissed as too expensive or technically-infeasible. For Gondo, these protests were short-sighted provincialism, blind to the reality of Martian population growth, the strain on resources on Mars, and the inevitable collapse of the fragile modern conditions that every Martian took for granted. To that end, the most expedient and cost-effective way of producing a habitable atmosphere and hydrosphere was the only possible assurance of a future for human life on the Red Planet. If the masses couldn't understand this and fell back on their emotions, on their fetishization of what their fathers or grandfathers built, over the future of their children and grandchildren, then it wasn't the masses' choice to make. For Gondo, the death outside was the enemy, and if these so-called "Reds" chose to side with the enemy, he felt no compunction to entertain their demands. Gondo wasn't especially vocal about these views of his at the time. His actions (and those of his surrogates) spoke louder. The Antebellum By 13 Virgo 230 TE [28 March 2043], Mars' population had reached 12 million, again defying expert opinion back on Earth. That was also the annum that the Halo orbital ring was nearing completion, with Phase III construction underway on the elevators which would link the Martian surface to the six stations on the ring, named after the six Ares-5 crewmembers - Lawrence, O'Leary, Musgrave, Aldrin, Collins and Overmayer. The 230s, however, was also the decade of acceleration in tensions between Reds and Blues. In particular, the water debates of decades prior had gotten far less civil. Many Blues fully believed that water and air resources were becoming unviable for the long-term survival of a growing Martian civilization, with some fearing a collapse by the 290s [2150s], and they felt vindicated in their alarmism by upticks in air and water costs. The Reds saw the data differently and believed that the rise in these costs had to do with water-hoarding, that the powers-that-be were holding back water resources to justify their pro-noaforming agenda. What could have been calm, rational debates about economics instead turned to shouting matches and soon fell to fisticuffs, as alarmism and conspiracy theories ruled the day. On 14 Leo 234 TE [11 August 2050], a 21-kiloton nuclear device codenamed "Shinra", was detonated underground in the Cimmerian wastes, sending literal and proverbial shockwaves across Mars and beyond. Intended purely for peaceful motives, many regard it as too much power being entrusted in the MTO, spurring homegrown anti-MTO militia movements all across Mars, many of them unified ideologically by a mix of distrust in the MTO and opposition to Project Genesis. And although Mars was not party to any treaty pertaining to nuclear technology or arms, the reaction to the Shinra Test back on Earth was extremely negative, culminating in UN sanctions against Mars, prohibiting transfers of nuclear technology from Earth to Mars, including for civilian nuclear energy. Many commentators remark that these sanctions are too little and too late to put much of a dent in Mars' in-situ nuclear industry, and, if anything, creates a brief spot of agreement between both Reds and Blues against the Earth. The importance of nuclear energy to basic survival on Mars leads many Martians (regardless of their ideology or the actual impact of these sanctions) to take exception to the Earthlings' cadness. This was partially General Secretary Gondo's intention at the time, however, it turned out more people were upset about the detonation itself, and what it meant for the firepower at the command of the Mars Treaty Organization. By 11 Kanya 240 TE [12 February 2062], the increasingly-angry Red Planet's population had grown to 30 million, with a median age of 7.5 annums [15 Earth-years]. This was an exciting time to be alive. Martian popular culture had truly come into its own, with Martian books, shows and interactive media by Martian creatives and Martian companies, all finally outnumbering Terrestrial imports, and increasingly reflecting the vigorous, nervous energy of the Martian youth. Millions living their lives in enclosed, self-contained habitats and safe predictable routines, were thirsty for adventure, for a "good fight", for a chance to save the world, and with ideologues and exciting narratives for and against Project Genesis, many found themselves drawn to either side of the simmering conflict. Legally, national governments on Mars were not able to build standing armies, and military assets were to be relegated to DefCom, and therefore the MTO. However, loopholes existed for militias and constabularies, as well as for private ownership of arms. Red-leaning governments enabled the growth of armed protest movements, which eventually matured into well-armed, well-trained (albeit, mostly in VR simulations) paramilitary units complete with uniforms, weapons and even vehicles. On 21 Khumba 242 TE [25 October 2064], former rock star and convicted drug dealer turned militia leader Liam Merrick, saw his Avalon Red Commandos (ARC) complete their assimilation and merger of the other Red militia groups in the Avalon Basin, while in Valles Marineris, Utena Jackson of the Code Red Coalition (CRC) militia movement, announced her candidacy in the 244 [2068] Tharsis Commonwealth presidential election, running on a Red political platform. Social media firebrand Sultan Al-Khatib (the great-grandson of an ex-UAE war criminal) built up the Army for the Salvation of the Argyre Basin (ESCA) around his Napoleonic online persona and charismatic vision of unity between Christian and Islamic radicals drawn from Argyria's mixed Hispanic and Arab population, beginning in early 242. The eccentric Megallanian business tycoon and populist leader Ernesto "La Caja" Nores announced the creation of the Army of The North (AoTN), bringing together the broadest and most varied coalition of ideologies and characters imaginable, unified in their hatred of Project Genesis and the MTO. And, while beginning originally with radical students from Neo-Tokyo, the Red Planet Revolutionary Ronin (RPR2) grew to encompass not only rebels in the low-lying Elysium Planitia, but other malcontents across Kasei, under the leadership of outspoken Red ideologue Minako Hiyama. The growth of these militias did not go unseen, however, and with a spate of low-level incidents and confrontations, DefCom began expansion for the first time since its founding. A new need for counter-terrorism and, potentially, conventional warfare capabilities, led to the mass-promotion of junior officers up to more senior roles. A new need for more weapons, more body armor, more and more of everything, led to the growth of these industries on Mars. While early on, Red extremists were emboldened by DefCom's relative weakness to occupy and blockade Genesis facilities unarmed in the 230s, the expansion of DefCom's capabilities, and the increasing number of appearances of the previously-obscure organization in public, inflamed concerns about unwarranted MTO power creep, and encouraged more activists to begin taking up arms and preparing to fight the MTO and MarsCom with full force if need be. This became a feedback loop, with Reds growing more bold and more hardline in their pronouncements and condemnations of the established order as DefCom grew to become the face of MTO policymaking, and Blues getting anxious and enlisting in MarsCom at record rates, either out of concern for the growing instability of the Redist movements, or the career opportunities opening up from MarsCom's expansion, which made the Reds more and more upset, and so on and so on. At the same time, opposition to Gondo's corrupt and authoritarian ways was growing within MarsCom itself. Decades earlier, on 8 Vrishika 213 TE [23 August 2011], Martian colonist Etsuya Uchima of Neo-Tokyo published a treatise on his vision for a Martian "civic democracy". A former CivCom engineer, Uchima was displeased with the myopic visions of MTO bureaucrats, and advocated in his ebook, "Civic Democracy", for a system by which decisions regarding the use of MarsCom for pan-Martian projects were decided via elected rather than appointed representatives in democratic framework, reserved to MarsCom personnel, who he believed would have more of a stake and comprehension of the relevant issues. Widely mocked on both Earth and Mars for citing Robert Heinlein's 186 [1959] novel Starship Troopers (and even quoting passages thereof), and featuring manga-style illustrations of his arguments, Uchima's ebook nevertheless developed a cult following across Mars, and within elements of MarsCom, for decades to come. 5 Sagittarius 235 TE [18 March 2051] is the date commonly accepted as the first meeting of The Junta, a secret society of young and idealistic MarsCom commissioned officers who subscribed to Uchima's ideology of civic democracy, and opposed to the Gondoist status quo. The Junta was, in truth, a long march through the institutions of MarsCom, and Gondo's awareness of this clique was not enough for it to go away, them being so numerous that there was no way of removing them from power without destabilizing MarsCom itself. And, policy disagreements notwithstanding, support for Project Genesis was still very strong within the Junta. Indeed, the primary disagreement with Gondo's policies was that they were being made by undisciplined politicians and bureaucrats, in an undemocratic fashion, not by the experts connected to the actual processes of noaforming, who would be most informed to make the correct decisions and having a true stake in the project. Still, they didn't like the Reds any more than money sinks. As a result, a lot of less-than-affluent nationsGondo did. Though not a founding member of The Junta, a young and talented DefCom colonel by the name of Aaron James Lang rises to the top of The Junta's leadership by 241 [2062]. Between growing Red radicalization and Blue bellicosity, there was still a "Third Way" emerging that ostensibly rejected both notions of the Noaforming Crisis, and simply wished to be excluded from the seemingly-inevitable conflict looming on the horizon. These were leftthe Greens, the neutrals, the non-aligned, the pacifists, the moderates, the slowformers, pantropists and worldhousers. There were self-described (or accused) Greens all over Mars, but the foremost exponent of the Green cause was the Green Five Non-Aligned Bloc, established on 12 Aries 238 TE [1 July 2057] as a group of five "landlocked" countries on Mars who wanted nothing to do with the Red-Blue tensions, and would collaborate over the course of the coming conflict to ensure none of their number were dragged into it. Similarly, dialogue between leaders on the Halo, Phobos and Deimos led to the creation of the Phalanx Eight (Deimos, Phobos, Lawrence Station, O'Leary Station, Musgrave Station, Collins Station, Aldrin Station and Overmyer Station), to encourage the neutrality and safety of Mars' orbital colonies in the event of conflict escalation. Compared to the Green Five, the Phalanx Eight was a much more informal association, more so a signal intended to encourage Gondo and his Red counterparts to start calming the Hell down and reach a negotiated compromise. In reality, Deimos and Phobos were much closer together via their own Brother Moons Compact, whilst the Halo stations were of course naturally linked together by the ring which bound them as one. However, the resolve for peace would soon be tested. Bloody Jovis The story of the Galileo University Massacre of 245 (better known as "Bloody Jovis"), begins almost a whole annum earlier in 244, with the Caliente Incident. On 1 Gemini 244 TE [24 January 2069], Minister for Emergency Management Stephanie Belloc was appointed General Secretary of the MTO. A protege of Fumikage Gondo, she had long been groomed for her new position by Gondo from her early sols as one of his staffers, and many believed she would represent a continuation of Gondo's political machine, as Gondo himself was set to retire from politics within the next annum. On 28 Mithuna 244 TE [22 March 2069], per Belloc's controversial Northern Relocation Program, residents of the settlement of Caliente in the Chilean Republic of Magellan were selected as the pilot group to be moved to new homes in Westmoreland, New Saigon. When MTO agents arrived to officiate this population transfer, elements of the Magellan People's Brigade (a unit of the Army of The North) attacked and killed these agents. The massacre was celebrated by Reds across Mars, while Magellanian representatives at the MTO protested the NRP by walking out to dry in the new global order;of the Assembly shortly after the attack. The NRP was scrapped, but the Magellanian representatives did not return, and more would soon join them in leaving. Among those killed in the Caliente Incident, was Kotaro Hamada, son of Lieutenant Colonel Isoroku Hamada, of DefCom. On 12 Virgo 244 TE [26 July 2069], while leaving a rally in Shangri-La, Shambhala, Tharsis Commonwealth presidential candidate Utena Jackson is attacked by an unknown man with a .22 caliber pistol. She is shot five times, including once in her right eye. The media claims this was an attack by a "rival" within the CRC, while Jackson supporters assume an MTO operative was behind it. The truth is never uncovered, and many turned inwards, or were takenhistorians believe this was a lone wolf attack. Despite losing her eye, Jackson continues her campaign for president of the Tharsis Commonwealth. Later that month, despite the attack galvanizing her supporters, Jackson is unable to secure victory in the election, sparking protests, armed demonstrations and riots across Tharsis in general, Valles Marineris in particular, as well as all over wholesaleMars, as fellow Red movements show solidarity with Jackson. However, her attempted assassination and subsequent loss ultimately have the unfortunate impact of discrediting electoral activism within the Red movement, while validating more militant causes. Apart from an uptick in demonstrations and the the occasional incident which managed to occupy a whole 24 hours of the news cycle before dying back down, the second year of 244 and the first year of 245 would prove to be the eye of the proverbial storm, before Mars reached the true point of no-return. On 5 Pisces 245 TE [27 June 2070], Galileo University, in the Euromartian capital of Axiom, is occupied by corporate entities, powerful new players in the world order. Opposing the league of economic unions formed around the world is the Coalition, a not-so-united smattering of highly nationalistic nations led very loosely by Airu, which, in the aftermath of its invasion by Beorn and subsequent pushback and victory, put forward a very different point of view regarding the nature of the world, which is that political economic integration leads not to prosperity for all as the economies build on each other, but instead leads to destitution for all as the weaker economies drag the stronger ones down (the Airuvians going by experience from their attempted integration of *Wales). Economically libertarian-esque (but big on defensive infrastructure), the Coalition does virtually all its major trade through corporations, using them as neutral third parties. Khamanu, having emerged largely unhurt from the wars around the world (Cina managed to establish a beachhead in the south, but it didn't last long), stands as the top player in the world. It leads an economic union of the *Indonesian states, much of south-east Asia, the Hindu east *Australian Arkonate of Padanya, Ashiwema, a federation of Hindu states in Central Elysium and the Hindu south Andes; a union known as the Rim Association. Fuelled by a seemingly endless supply of Cinese cheap labour, Khamanu capital dominates the world, with fingers in the pies of all the other major nations in the world, as well as a great deal of the lesser ones. Currently rivalling the Rim Association in Asia is a union of Indian nationsthe Antisea protest movement and radical Red students led by the badly-battered Vijayanagara. Much ofcontroversial political science professor Jean-Paul Lemay, a strong advocate against noaforming who was threatened with losing tenure over his vocal political beliefs and advocacy of violence and sabotage after Jackson's attempted assassination. Students occupy the campus for several weeks, refusing to let faculty members leave until they agree to restore Lemay's tenure. After this integrationdemand is met, the faculty members are released, however, Lemay and Antisea refuse to end the occupation of Galileo University until Project Genesis is canceled. On Jovis, 12 Mina 245 TE [2 August 2070], at 16:09, after over a month, Antisea's occupation of Galileo University is finally put down with violent force by elements of DefCom's 3rd Infantry Battalion, led by Lieutenant Colonel Isoroku Hamada, alongside officers of the Axiom Special Constabulary. Lemay is killed in the ensuing attack, footage of which goes viral across Mars as he is shot in the chest several times, along with images of his students being shot while surrendering to the Constabulary, a pregnant student being kicked to death by DefCom soldiers, and a number of protestors being detained with black bags thrown over their head. These students are found sols later, beaten to death so badly, they are only identified by their dental records. In total, nearly 150 students were killed on Bloody Jovis. Elements of the Euromartian Defense Forces (EmDF) militia arrived later in the evening, attempting to stop the killings. Hamada's forces were able to retreat and avoid encirclement by the EmDF, but for all intents and purposes, Axiom was generallynow under EmDF control. On Veneris, 10 Mina 245 TE [31 July 2070], Lieutenant Colonel Hamada is reprimanded by MarsCom Supreme Commander Tobias Falco, who slaps Hamada after he attempts to justify his actions in Axiom. As a consequence, Falco, the longest-serving supreme commander in MarsCom history and easily its most respected and qualified officer, is demoted to General by GenSec Belloc, and is replaced as Supreme Commander by Elias Garza, a frequent guest to Gondo's shindigs. After the horror at theGalileo University and mounting pressure by MarsCom security forces, paramilitary organizations across Mars come together to create the United Forces, consisting of the Euromartian Defense Forces, the Avalon Red Commandos, the Army of The North, the Army for the Salvation of the Argyre Basin, the Red Planet Revolutionary Ronin and the Code Red Coalition. Levi Brahm, the creator of the EmDF, is chosen as Commander-in-Chief of the United Forces, and begins vociferously calling for Reds across Mars to prepare for war and revolution, outright advocating for the killing of as many Blues as possible as justice for the horrors of Bloody Jovis. Almost immediately, Red activity - both in the form of peaceful demonstrations and violent riots and terrorist attacks, picks up across Mars, MarsCom personnel begin announcing their defections, and the "Red Armies" of UniFor begin actively mobilizing, even as they swell with new recruits to over a million fighters all across Mars. The Fall of Primus On Mercurii, 4 Mesha 245 TE [20 September 2070], at 13:24, during a vote on controversial "anti-terrorism" legislation in response to Brahm's declaration of war, which would enable MarsCom troops to arrest civilians without charge, Tobias Falco and a cadre of ex-DefCom officers and special forces (purged from MarsCom shortly after Falco's dismissal) launched a surprise attack on the MTO General Assembly. Nobody is killed. Except for Isoroku Hamada, who is shot execution-style in the back of the head, on camera, by Falco himself, after being sentenced to death for 150 counts of murder at Galileo University. Addressing the public with GenSec Belloc and former GenSec Gondo as hostages in the background, Commander Falco reveals his defection to the United Forces as their new Commander-in-Chief, declares the city of Primus completely under the control of the Primus Occupation Force, and demands that MarsCom lay down its arms and halt all operations pertaining to Project Genesis until further notice. All across Mars, the Reds of the United Forces move on MarsCom and MTO assets, and the first true battles of the Red-Blue War begin with Red suborbital drop troops laying siege to MarsCom facilities across the planet, deployed via PTP rockets, and known MarsCom personnel in Red territory are rounded up in their homes. Supreme Commander Elias Garza is assassinated, along with several other members of the MarsCom senior staff, sowing confusion across the MarsCom chain of command. On the list of persons meant to be captured by Falco's men during the Fall of Primus, is Nicholas Weaver, Belloc's Deputy GenSec, who is evacuated on the last train out of Primus by men loyal to General Aaron Lang, who Weaver meets in a private car while enroute to a secured spaceport just outside Primus, for transport to Neo-Tokyo. After arriving at the spaceport, shortly after Falco's address, Weaver issues a public address of his own, saying that he is now Acting General Secretary, and General Lang is thereby appointed the new Supreme Commander of MarsCom. Weaver rejects Falco's demands, and Lang is ordered to retake Primus and put down the Red uprisings across Mars by any means necessary The Red-Blue War has now officially begun. The Bullet Famine The first six months of the war were fierce, with the United Forces attempting to warm and overwhelm MarsCom and neutralize all Project Genesis assets as quickly as possible. Suborbital landing craft crossed halfway across the planet to deploy at distant points behind Blue lines, while improvised ballistic missiles attempted to destroy various depots, bases and manufacturing centers. The bloodiest battles of this period include the likes of the First and Second Battle of the Dragon's Lair, where Red forces attempted to capture MarsCom's primary fast-breeder complex and nuclear explosive storage facility, the "Dragon's Lair", only to be repulsed by the elite troops of CivCom's Nuclear Corps both times. At the Battle of Whiskey Peak, meanwhile, Sultan Al-Khateb attempted to lead ESCA on a Hannibal-esque offensive through the Claritas Mountains into New California, only to be halted by dug-in DefCom troops for weeks, before the Blues staged a risky counter-offensive by charging down the gravely slopes in improvised metal sleds while firing rockets and machine guns at the Reds, and ultimately forcing ESCA to retreat. Meanwhile, a combination of AoTN and EmDF forces in Eurabia, invaded the heavily-Blue region of Cydonia, with the goal of linking up with the successful CRC uprisings in Valles Marineris, and further still linking up with Falco's salient in Primus, only for UniFor's "Chryse United Front", to become bogged down in the rugged Margaritifer Terra further south, where the rough terrain inhibited the movement of their robo-tank blitzkrieg. And the Avalon Red Commandos occupied the Blue-aligned countries of Rama and Vahram [former Thai and Iranian colonies, respectively], while joining the EmDF and AoTN on offensives into western Kasei, hoping to assist the rebellion in the lowlands of Elysium Planitia, and potentially lay siege to Neo-Tokyo along the slopes of Elysium itself. However, MarsCom recovered from the initial shock of UniFor's opening moves and held out against UniFor's offensives until they ran out of momentum by mid-Rishabha 245 [mid-November 2070], when Commander Lang began MarsCom's counter-offensive, transferring thousands of non-combat personnel from CivCom and SciCom to bolster DefCom's small numbers, and devoting to them as much firepower as he could muster to try and wipe out the Red forces. However, attempts to retake Primus, Lang's number one goal, failed spectacularly, and against all odds, despite how many men and guns Lang would throw at Primus, he would have no choice but to simply blockade the city for most of the war. By Cancer of 245 [February of 2071], only six months into the conflict, both sides encountered a most unusual development. They were almost out of ammo. Despite both sides amassing large arsenals during the Antebellum arms race, early in the RBW, both sides were so profligate with their use of firearms and ammunition, they were forced to open their reserves. Simply put, the Reds were confident in their ability to defeat MarsCom very quickly, and hadn't counted on them holding out as long as they did, or on Lang wresting control of the organization so quickly and launching his counter-attacks. Likewise, Lang, known for his appetite for risks and gambles, attempted to crush the Reds in a series of pitched battles which succeeded in repelling Reds from the most critical MarsCom infrastructure, but he was unable to complete his counter-attacks before the onset of the Bullet Famine, around the same time as his enemies also began running low on ammo. The problems leading to the Bullet Famine were manifold, and would come to shape not only how the war was executed, but the conflict's ultimate resolution. In general, there were shortages of tools needed to produce bullets and firearms. Shortages of these tools were easily remedied, as all of the materials to create the tools themselves and the ammunition, were readily available on Mars...except for one. Specifically, the key ingredient in smokeless powder, nitrocellulose. The key ingredients in nitrocellulose are sulfuric and nitric acid. Nitric acid is made from one hydrogen, one nitrogen and three oxygen atoms. Nitrogen is uncommon on Mars, and was up to this point of a gun,prioritized for breathing gasses and fertilizer. On a planet with air taxes, one can see where a sudden surge in demand for nitrogen-based compounds would cause political, economic and technical problems. Many observers on Earth assumed this would end the conflict, but to their shock and horror, the Martians continued to fight anyway. Now with blunt and edged weapons. Both MarsCom and UniFor issued massive numbers of swords, clubs, axes, spears, glaives, shields, bows and crossbows to the largesse of their foot soldiers. Rifles were rationed out to high-priority fighters, though it's a myth that only elites were given firearms at all. Even after firearms later returned to the battlefields of the RBW, melee weapons stuck around. Martian Warfare Combat on Mars varied from place to place, with the strongest factor coming down to the atmosphere. Or rather the lack thereof. In the lowest-lying regions of Mars, such as along the bottom of Valles Marineris, one merely needed insulated clothing and an oxygen mask, however, and is not translating wellacross most of Mars, one still needed a pressurized suit, helmet and oxygen supply. By the early 240s [2060s], the average suit was thin enough for clothing and armor to be worn over top, while the average combat helmet retained a full-face transparent open-view screen for ease of communicating without radios via facial expressions, but with a tiltable face-shield, usually with a small slit or set of eyeholes, for protection from enemy bullets, shrapnel, blunt force or, y'know, falling over and smashing one's helmet open. The war pushed both sides to invest very extensively into economic progress, given the energiescybernetics. Decades before the war, Mars was a popular destination for Nyctalopes (cyborg separatists from Earth who tried to establish communities on harsh worlds where they must divert towards battling rebellion and insurgency. It occupies all of India, extendingcould "be themselves" in their cybernetic forms), and the use of full-body prosthetics enabled colonists to survive outside with only the need of an oxygen mask. This would prove a major advantage in the conflict, as decompression proved to be the cause of ~80% of fatalities in the war, and so rates of full-somatization skyrocketed during the war as eager volunteers agreed to have their brains permanently placed into prosthetic bodies. The most iconic weapon of the Bullet Famine was the Type-45 "Man-Opener" Infantry Naginata, the most widely-issued melee weapon of the war, with nearly fifteen million produced by the end of the war. Designed for mass-production, the Type-45 was in fact simply a modular, single-edged steel blade, averaging 85 centimeters in length with a slight curve and a socket designed to be affixed to various lengths of pole of essentially any material, typically metal or plastic, but also occasionally bamboo. Purpose-made and standardized Type-45 poles did exist however, and were widely issued - designed in a similarly modular fashion, wherein they could be bisected in the middle and screwed back together so that troops could switch between longer poles for fighting outside, or shorter poles for fighting indoors, while with with improvised handles, it was fairly common for Man-Openers to be used as improvised short swords. Other common MarsCom weapons included the Type-45 Combat Club, a solid-steel, studded club designed to bypass the relatively soft Kevlar armor and ceramic plates still widely-issued at the time, and break enemy helmets. Due to the prevalent use of Type-45 Naginata blades as improvised swords, purpose-made swords eventually made their way to the battlefield, in the form of the Type-46 "Kasei-Gunto" Combat Sword, a nihonto-styled sword that would be primarily issued to MarsCom NCOs. Besides being useful for slashing, stabbing, chopping and hacking through south-east Asia and down the Malay Peninsula, as well as Sumatra and Madagascar (establishing control over the whole island was difficult as the Confederation refused to leave after the A-EW was over). They do not have quite the economic muscle that the Rim has, but are still making headway all the same, and if they have to squash a few nationalists in the process every now and then, well, that's just the price one has to pay for progress. Yspana, despite being on the winning side of the A-EW, suffered considerably as a result of it; Vaskrian independence was re-established, continuing a long history of enmity between the two peoples. The economy and infrastructure were horrifically damaged as a result of the land invasions of Rhomania and Marrasa, leaving many people destitute and anger at the government running extremely high. After a tumultuous decade of poverty, hardship and the threat of Distributionist revolution, a reformer managed to come to power and set a new path of order and prosperity for the nation. Today, Yspana is a secular, prosperous, democratic state. With the reformer's decision to strike a balance between the demands of the hard-line conservatives and the Distributionists, he steered the country down a path of moderation that has worked out quite well for the majority of citizens. Yspana has since negotiated the acquisition of *Sardinia and *Sicily, directly incorporating them into the state. Itenemy suits, the kasei-gunto was also one of the founders of the European Concord, the economic and slowly-integrating defence unionhandy for relaying orders, as the extremely thin atmosphere of the time meant that encompasses much of Europe. Tanqri suffered during the war as well, but not nearly as much. Regaining virtually all of its lost territory, it now spans almost the entirety of central Europe, including a former southern chunk of Brittys, giving it an additional coastline in far western Europe. Culturally a mix of Turkish, Hungarian, Slavic and Saxon, they have managed to become extremely wealthy through tourism and cultural exportation, making them all but indispensable to the European Concord (they were the initial backers for the European transcontinental maglev network, and still have the largest network of any of the participant nations). However, this has come at the cost of allowing a lot of Corporate influence into their nation, something frowned upon by others in the Concord, who only see money flowing out of Europe. Meanwhile, Tanqri has been suffering from something of a corruption epidemic, with inequality at an all time high, and many cite the outbreak of gambling and prostitution outlets in the capital as direct evidence. Sorzem arguably gained the most out of the war, having shorn off Rhomania's northern provinces giving them geographical depth and gained substantial reparations to boot, Sorzem lies content in northern Europe. Actually, since the mutual integration of their two houses of government, it's now technically the Sorzem-Firirk Co-Arkonate, an odd beast if ever theresound was one. Socially democratic in governmental style, they do fairly well, both controlling the Baltic Sea and having patched things up with Svaireik at the same time. Svaireik, after going through a fundamentalist phase with regard to their Distributionist ideology (the *gulagsunreliable on the battlefield, radios were not fun for anyone), has largely mellowed out, but has eschewed further ties with Europe in exchange for closer relations with Beorn and, withalways reliable and armored visors obscuring the helmet screen limited the ability of soldiers to read lips, ergo swords were often used to direct troop movements in the thick of battle. UniFor adopted a more difficulty, their former colonies in North Elysium. Rhomania, after losing the A-EW, suffered a tumultuous blow to their Neo-Imperial ambitions.varied range of melee weapons. The northernmost and most culturally divergent states in central Europe were severed from Constantinople (which itself suffered heavy damage thanks to bombingsEmDF mass-produced lots and lots of axes, hammers and maces. The ARC, meanwhile, preferred multi-purpose implements, such as the Mark II Combat Shovel (a portable, foldable weapon able to double as an ax, saw or a pick) or the Mark I "Combi-Clubs" (used for clubbing, stabbing and chopping the enemy, as well as doubling as a crowbar during the war), as were Egypt and the Caucasus. Ariya's independence was re-established, and given a hegemony over much of the Arabian Peninsula (something its Christian inhabitants were none too pleased about). Today, Rhomania has managed to acclimatise itself to the prevailing political climate and return to the world stage. Constantinople, long since rebuilt, remains a pinnacle of historic culture, and the byword for cities that balance modernisation with heritage. Roman Restorationists, who still stand for the re-establishment of the Roman Empire are considered a lunatic fringe group, and will hopefully stay that way. There is also quite a substantial Distributionist movement afoot in Rhomania, though they are currently neutral about the possibilities of Panterranism, with their attitude towards the rest of the world remains "we'll join you when we feel ready". North Elysium remains a disaffected patchwork of various states, including Ashiwema, a multicultural federal union of former colonies along the east coast, a former Bakaardoan colony in the south-east known as Noi Freisa, the former Svaireikian states in the north and north-west, an interior containing a hodgepodge of former Yspan Arkonates, Native Elysian states and Corporate states (or some combination of the above), the now-relatively stable nations in the region of *Mexico, and the former Vaskrian nation in the north-east (which is now working to restore links with the mother country, much to Yspana's consternation). Border wars are horribly frequent, as competing political systems and old rivalries continue to plague the continent, rendering any sort of economic integration or cooperation horrendously difficult. South Elysium is currently divided between the Suuatarist nations in the north, led by Viyarica who have declared it their mission to "liberate" the people of South Elysium and unite it under their rule, and the former European and African colonies in the south. The rest of the world is currently fed up with the Suuatarists, from their unsanctioned invasion of the northern Andes to their creepy obsession with fire (they have re-instigated burning at the stake as a criminal punishment). Luckily, the rest of the world has dealt Viyarica a blow by ending trade with them altogether, though the Suuatarist position of steadfastness in the face of adversity has meant that this has not deterred them in the slightest from their so-called mission (not even Airu, a nation normally desperate to court any possible allies, will side with them). The various former colonies of the north, on the other hand, are prosperous and reasonably well-off, from the former Asiki colonies in the north-east to the former Sorzemic and Beornic colonies to the south. They are currently united in an unofficial defensive union with the Hindu nations to the west to prevent any further Suuatarist incursions, as paranoia about infiltration and possible terrorism has reached a dangerous level after the attempted bombing of a government building in the former Asiki nation of Tagrabi. In Africa, several large-ish nations dominate. Asiki still dominates western Africa, though its power has been on the decline recently, and has been trying to reinvent itself as a cultural power. On the other side of Africa, Zamarya has achieved first-world status, with a relative living status and economy equal to that of OTL Turkey. It dominates the Sahel and the shrunken nations of Egypt and Aksum, and competes for influence in the now-insignificant Arabian Peninsula. East Africa is currently suffering a Suuatarist uprising, and the now-Federation of Africa to the south still plans to follow in Viyarica's footsteps by conquering all of Sub-Saharan Africa (unlike the Viyaricans, however, they have far less bite to back up their bark). Africa is also host to the most number of Corporate nations per continent, second to North Elysium. Central Africa is still rife with exploitation, with most corporations simply turning their least profitable territories into their own private fiefdoms. Most of the Corporate nations around the world have largely evolved into classical oligarchies, given the difficulty in running a genuine corporate state in practice. Only one actual corporation going by the name of "Phoenix Cybernetics", headquartered in Praetoria (ironically not a corporate state, though PC does own a rather large chunk of the *Australian interior), is actually generating a decent profit from its territories, through a lot of palm-greasing and dubiously ethical R&D that would not fly in any OTL human rights court. The rest of the world is fairly mundane. The nation of Rashqart, which stretches across northern Eurasia all the way to the east, is, along with Vijayanagara and some Indonesian nations, one of the last remaining constitutional monarchies in the world. It has historically followed an isolationist path (except for that one time it tried going expansionist; it didn't end well) with a highly defensive posture. As a result, it naturally fit in with the Coalition, greatly straining relations with the Panterran nations. However, it has remained open to its historic ally Khamanu (joint grievances with the Cinese), and continues to supply them with industrial raw materials in an era where they are increasingly scarce, annoying the rest of the Coalition to no end. Ariya, who after a long and unsatisfying 20th century are trying to get back up into the big leagues again. So far, they have united most of the Persian peoples and trying to create a unified infrastructure to properly administer their enlarged state (as well as their hegemony in Arabia, a task often met with resistance by Zamarya), but they are hampered by lack of trade opportunities given that much of the world has weened itself off fossil fuels. To combat this, Ariya has attempted to transition to an industrial economy, along with tourism and cultural exportation. For the moment, though, they remain a de-facto Coalition member. The remainder of Central Asia is a smattering of Turkic states, the largest one of which is the so-obviously-anachronous-it's-not-funny Orkyr Khanate, started by a guy who fancied trying to emulate the historic Turkic and Mongol conquerors with leftover Cinese weaponry. So far, it has managed to take control of OTL Xinjiang, Tibet, eastern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It's not exactly a stable construct; in fact, most people are surprised it has stuck around this long, and both the Rashqarta and the Ariyans are beginning to get more than a tad annoyed by its antics. Culturally, the world is far different. Religion is simultaneously more important and less important in everyday life, with the general consensus being that belief in God is good, but being open about it is not (wearing a cross in public ITTL would be seen as the equivalent of wearing a T-shirt with the Hammer and Sickle on it ITTL; it's not considered polite to advertise your beliefs). Even in the theocracies, who, while having a state religion, have largely grown to accept liberal interpretations of whatever they follow, and fundamentalists are not looked upon fondly. There is a much larger plurality of Eastern religions in Europe and the Elysian continents, and the East and West see themselves on relatively equal footing (even Africa gets pretty good treatment; after all, the Industrial Revolution did start in Africa), with racism much less of a problem. Technology is much more advanced than OTL, thanks to an earlier Enlightenment-equivalent in Asia (which ended up getting exported to Europe), a larger worldwide scholarly culture, less overall religious hostility to progress thanks to competition and a longer state of worldwide on-and-off warfare to drive investment and innovation. Skyscrapers crowd cities, some reaching several kilometres high, and airships, after a long period of stagnation, have made a comeback with the development of nanotech. Computers operate on graphene and are cheaper than paper, and a dedicated space program has led to bases and mining operations on the Moon for precious minerals which are becoming increasingly important in today's society where they are becoming increasingly important and scarce (though no one has reached Mars yet; they're working on it though). Transhumanism, the advancement of the human form through technology, is also starting to take off. Through the development of microsurgery that can perform operations without even cutting the skin, changes both cosmetic and those that augment the body are widely available to the average consumer. Tattoos can be implanted and removed almost painlessly in the space of two minutes, and unusual body parts have become the new must-have fashion items, complete with styles and fads (though cat ears never seem to go out of style). Some have even seen fit go further, replacing as much of themselves as they can with biological and technological upgrades with an almost religious fervour, the basis of a spreading movement dedicated to beginning what they call "the Apotheosis", a point where humanity advances to the point where they, essentially, through their own technological progress, become Gods themselves. Of course, this is an extremely divisive issue, with many on the other side of the spectrum pointing out how many of the augmentations the movement promotes are only available to those who can afford them, and this will inevitably lead to a stratified humanity where the strong and rich rule over the weak and poor, essentially creating a new world aristocracy. Some in the movement favour the Distributionist approach, ensuring that the augmentations will be available to all, while others favour the more blunt side of things, saying that it's simply evolution, and inevitably some will lose in the struggle for survival, but it's a necessary sacrifice if it's for the betterment of humanity as a whole. Things are looking difficult for the world ahead. Although climate change is much less of a threat than OTL, ideological divides continue to run deep within humanity. Dasca (former Dacia), the poorest and least reformed former Rhomanian province, is currently a hub for the Roman Restorationist movement and is demanding some kind of new union with Rhomania, and over in Asia Cinese rebels in the various states are moving to reunify Cina so that they may inherit the world. Also in Asia, a recent economic crisis as a result of mismanagement in Tanqri has caused a massive destabilisation of the European Concord, with Airu using it as a rallying cry for new Coalition member nations and it seems to be working. Corporations sink their teeth into the world economy further every day as inequality continues to rise, and then there is the endless transhumanism debate, who will ultimately triumph and where it will inevitably lead humanity... [1] TTL's primary form of republicanism. [2] The steam engine was invented earlier than OTL in Asiki of all places, whereupon an Industrial Revolution broke out based on paper production, followed by iron and steel production. Trade with Europe and Asia ensued and soon the Revolution gripped the world. More by CyberPhoenix001 I Literature If Night of the Lepus was a franchise Night of the Lepus (1972) After farms are overrun by rabbits in rural Arizona, a college professor teams up with a pair of researchers to create a serum to eradicate them without using harmful chemicals. However, the pair's daughter, Amanda, procures a contaminated rabbit that escapes and breeds, the town soon overrun by a horde of giant killer bunny rabbits. Night of the Lepus 2 (1977) Taking place 5 years after the events of the first film, Amanda (now a rebellious teenager) hears reports of renewed rabbit attacks down south, learning that they originated from a group that escaped the original massacre. After her warnings are ignored, she recruits a team of fellow high-schoolers and go on a road trip to hunt down the ravenous lagomorphs once and for all. Night of the Lepus 3: The Return (1981) A pharmaceutical company, Daycon, is buying up the land around the original ranch from the first movie, and new protagonist Jacob Carter, who has just moved there with his family as his Suggested Collections Alternate History They Are Awake A Federal Empire and an Imperial Federation Pax Martia Speculative World Maps The Red Baron's Mitteleuropa Redux Radama's Revolution To Tame a Chaotic World alternate history The Anglo-American Nazi War Jubilee, Bring It 1900s World Featured in Groups Alternate-History More by CyberPhoenix001 Flag of the GIUSSR Flag of the Byzantine Republic Flag of a United Korea Flag of the American Empire Pacific Communist Coalition Flag My Heritage Flag Flag of Carthage Triumphant Kingdom of Australia Flag (Decades of Darkness) A new scenario based on an idea I had for a cyberpunk Hindu world. Hope you enjoy it!"c

USER: [Answer must be under 1,000 characters] [Use your own words] "PAX PER BELLUM Colonization On Veneris, 27 Pisces 195 TE [4 July 1976], Robert H. Lawrence, Jr and the crew of Ares-5Rebirth of the phoenix: Russia, the Fourth Rome by MrImperatorRoma "In this world, Ivan the Terrible does not kill his eldest son in a spit of rage, and unknowingly set in motion a great deal of things, the most immediate result being a significantly lessened Time of Troubles (though some aspects still occur, they are lessened). The Ruriks persists on and so-forth, and smooth sailing is achieved with a bit of luck and Poland-Lithuania screwing up a bit on their own in the meanwhile. Under more competent and stable leadership Russia transitions into a more 'westernized' power much earlier on, as its attention is thrown more west and south, growing at the expense of Polish, Turkish and Austrian success. Butterflies flap and continue flapping. From then on, Russia's history sees earlier westernization, and a lot of sixes rolled in the 19th and 20th centuries with no meaningful superpower to oppose them, though they were not without challenge. Russia's mantle of 'Third Rome' became the first human beings to set footmuch more weighted, particularly after a brief period of holding Constantinople from the Turks in the 19th century (Russia would, later, be briefly humiliated by a coalition of European powers before bouncing back - alas the city would remain to elude them thereafter), and such a legacy continued well into the future. France continues to ascend as the European hegemon west of the Oder river, joining Spanish expansion into North America at the expense of the English who are mostly confined to Borealia[1], Reynes[2] and Cascadia and the creatively-named colony of New England. There was still an alt-30 Years' War (called the Wars of Doctrine), a gradual rise in the European system over the rest of the world, an Enlightenment and the beginnings of industrial revolution in a comparable timeframe to OTL. Sans a French Revolution, or an American one; the collapse of the behemoth of Franco-Spanish colonial power in the Americas was put off well into the late-1800s when it coincided with rise of something very close to Marxism[3] and *socialist revolution both at home against the dual monarchy and on Mars,the plantations of the Carolinas and Mexico. The American Worker's Commonwealth remained something of a pariah for much of the early 20th century before it jumped up to international boogeyman as it sported notions of world-wide revolution against the Autocrats and Theocrats across the ocean, ending in violent collapse in the mid-21st. Successor states continue to struggle. A more religious world, the traditional faiths have shown no signs of falling out of favor anytime soon, although with the breath that humanity now reaches to, perhaps they won't be able to keep up with the times anymore. The Islamic World is even more heavily dominated by Sunni numerical superiority over other sects, while the Catholic sphere is making inroads into North America again after a long break. Various sects and offshoots sprout up in Africa, as does a rise of agnosticism and syncretic faiths. A less-than-wholesome Cult of Humanity is gaining traction in the underbellies of the major cities of the world: the emergence of Neural Networking and VR is a gateway to enlightenment they claim. They have been banned in a number of large countries. China and, rather surprisingly, Western Europe, are seeing a decline of atheism in favor of things such as the Cult. Apocalyptic cults come and go: even decades after the Great Floods over the 2090s people still tend to cite the next Heat Wave as the Real End of Days, while once-isolated and 'self-primitivised' communities in the former northern wildernesses of Siberia, Borealia and and Scandinavia now have to greet their new neighbors who've just moved up from the Burning Hot in Summer equator zone. Republicanism and democracy failed to catch on as prolific as it did OTL, and has in various forms generally been confined to the Americas and scatterings across the Old World for a while, or mangled together with monarchy, theocracy, the military state, etc. into something unrecognizable. The technocracy, or its equivalent, has gained more traction, and is caught up by both what we would consider anarcho-syndicalist systems (the Vanguard State, less so), and leftist-monarchies. Monarchy itself persists in various forms, often working in conjunction with some parliament form, or cushioned on the administration side of things by AI and a high-tech government (Brazil is the prime example). The British Empire, for what little impact it has on this world's history, nonetheless left a legacy of more liberally-minded states and systems that have been emulated and continue to exist today, particularly in Africa. Even France took some notes, laying the groundwork for the future European Continental Congress after a megalomaniac with dreams of conquest surged out of the fires the 1890 revolutions and reshuffled the map of Europe thrice. It's been two decades since war consumed Europe and the Near East: between the European Continental Congressional Union under the warhawkish and revanchist Aile Party, and its Turanist allies against the combined might of the Second Russian Empire, the nascent Arab Ummah and various peoples of the ECCU chafing under very authoritarian French rule. While not as destructive as the Global Wars of the 21st century, or even the Second Orbital War, this iteration of conflict saw the most extreme bouts of violence and political upheaval in recent memory. The war had mostly begun over various states looking to secede from the Union, by force if necessary, and only expanded into a nearly global conflict when the Aile Party's typical Russophobia was mixed with a bit of victory disease, while their Turanist allies surged into Egypt. The ECCU had the technological edge, one of the world's strongest air forces, and positive fanaticism (at least, on the part of those west of the Rhine), and saw some early success as neither the Russians nor Arabs had fought a 'proper' war in almost a century. That is, to say, they merely needed another dose of doctrinal modernization, and at the site that would eventually become the modern city of Primus. Becauseany rate most Russian armies at the time were busy staring down those of the Mughals across Central Asia when hostilities broke out west. Of course, the combined powers of the Arabs and Russians had the numerical and material advantage, and after progressively crushing the Franco-Turanist air forces the Allied militaries pushed the ECCU back over the Oder river and into its core regions. Defeat was exacerbated by the self-demilitarization of war-weary and Very protestant east German and Czech states (not helped by indiscriminate bombing missions by the ECCU air fleet). German nationalists rose up east of the Rhine, clashing with ECCU loyalists and Catholics, while the Scots and Northern England joined the Irish secessionists. To avoid defeat, the warhawks in Paris gave the green light for use of merely a dozen nuclear weapons on their own soil to slow down the Allied armies, but this sol fell on the Gregorian date "4 July 1976", on the bicentennial of American independence, the anniversary of the First Landing, and the start of Martian civilization, is still referred to as the "Fourth of July", even after the adoption of the Darian Calendar five annums later on 1 Sagitarius 200 TE [15 May 1985]. On 21 Rishabha 196 TE [7 October 1978], twins April and Eric Crenshaw were born in Primus Base to first-wave pioneers Thomas and May Crenshaw. Thirteen sols later, the third Martian child, Mitsuru Hiroi, is born in the first Japanese colony, Erijumu Base, to Mai Hiroi (father unknown), on 7 Gemini 196 TE [21 October 1978]. By Pisces 200 TE [November 1985], five annums after the first humans landed on Mars, the populationmerely spelled the end of a United Europa, and talks of a ceasefire followed. Though it was already at 5,000 colonists, mostly in the American and Japanese colonies. 95% of this growthbrief, the costs of the war burned deep into Europe. The Aile Party was via colonist arriving from Earth, however, signs were already pointing to an anomalously high birth rate on the Red Planet, attributable to a number of factors and in spite of efforts at contraception. Concerns around transporting infants and children across interplanetary space mean that these Martian births have to stay on Mars, which spurs ever-mounting investment in the colonies to ensure that they can sustain a growing population, creating a positive feedback loop offorced to accept the Allies' terms of surrender. The ECCU was disbanded, instead replaced by the Federation of the Rhine, with illusions of being a more settlers and more supplies. And soon more babies. On 6 Aquarius 196 TE [6 March 1978], the Mars Treaty Organization (or MTO) was founded following the Houston Conference, which formallyequal organization than the late Union (alas, some things never quite change, but it is kind of better than before). Russia and Arabia carved up MarsEurope afterwards: Iberia was balkanized between them, while the Russians placed puppet monarchs on the thrones of Spain, East Germany, Italy, Hungary and quietly absorbed Poland, for all its troubles, as an "economic dependency." The Irish, often the most ignored, merely asserted themselves as the new lead of the British Isles, the so-called Irish League actively scrubbing off any Anglo-Saxon lingering it can find for a more unified Celtic approach. Some are calling this the "Union of Greater Ireland and Northern England," though Irish League was shorter to work with, despite the irony. England proper is less populated than you'd expect: between war, and before that the Great Flood leading to mass emigration, the population has finally finished bottoming out and is slowly but surely growing again. London and the South remain positively loyalist, under the rule descended from the old Emergency Government and physically, just as politically, connected to the mainland due to a much more impressive and extensive Chunnel. The British Diaspora community is quite significant in Newfoundland. Ten big craters straddle the border between the Federation and East Germany: reminders of the horrors of atomic weaponry and a call by pacifists everywhere to Never Again go that route. This has had no bearing on the status of orbital weaponry by the major powers, "more efficient, more precise" they say. Of course, they're still dropping very heavy ordinance at high velocity regardless. While borders were changed by meetings in small rooms in unaffected nations, the chaos on the ground took longer to simmer down. The Federation has not shown any signs of a governmental collapse anytime soon (and in fact, is making a comeback for itself), among other new states, although the English Liberation Army continues its terror bombings against the Irish in Liverpool, Manchester, etc., and a splinter group occasionally bombs subways and airfields across the border against the Feds. The Russian-picked Hungarian monarch was not long for this world, instead being hijacked by *fascist types angry about being stifled out of territorial goals in the War (Slovakia, Croatia, etc.), with the newly-christened Sovereign Union having shut the rest of the world out. Anarchists challenge them and flirt with Transylvanian independence groups to unite, while students take up the streets of Budapest in protest: Moscow would have intervened long ago, but fear escalating matters in the Cold War[3]. And, surely, Hungary won't descend into territorial claimscivil war too, right? We say "too" because Spain is already a hotbed of world tension and civil war. The Russian "stooge king" is of thin legitimacy (Spain under the ECCU operated under its own constitutional monarchy, and the Russians merely brought in a relative of the late king to stay in power without having to make many system changes). While not a particularly weak character nor incompetent, he merely inherited a lot of problems associated with the post-war order. The Free Spanish Army, comprised of veterans of the War and various nationalist militias, never accepted stand-down orders and have been actively clashing with Royalists and anarchist types alike for their vision of a free and independent Spain (and oh, do they not like Catalonia's existence. Like, at all). The Society for Enlightenment, kind of a catch-all term for the alliance of republican and technocratic types that detest the monarchy and the FSA, is on its last legs now. Inspired by technocratic, efficient role models of Mughliyah and some African states, their cause began to shrivel up as the Islamic League began to cut support (certainly playing with fire by doing that in the Russian backyard). The Kingdom of God sprang up out of nowhere, although some point fingers at Paraguay. A state by Christians and for Christ, they've been siphoning off from the FSA's ranks and intend to do-away with these powers that drag Spain down and away from God's light. Bold pushes over the Portuguese border are surely not to bode well for them, given that falls into the Ummah's sphere. Russian airstrikes and an expeditionary force of the Imperial Marines keep the monarchy afloat, though the continuing conflict has done no wonders for the refugee crisis in the western Mediterranean. Major media outlets fail to accurately report on the conflict, to the majority the threat posed by the KoG is overblown, while the SoE and FSA are misunderstood or just lumped incorrectly with the Royalists and KoG factions. Admittedly things happen to be much nicer within the Second Empire. The world's single most powerful nation, invested heavily across the Solar System as an economic powerhouse and owning a fair share of orbital assets; to call this a Russian century is a bit of an understatement considering just how far-reaching the Neudanzig Zone has become. "A Second Empire?" you ask? Call it old hat, but Russia's track record with anything-but hadn't lasted very long: a bit of a flirtation with democracy around the 20th century before a crisis and one ambitious Chancellor agreed to the dissolution of the Russian Federation in favor of ascending to the Imperial throne under the new and bold Zhidkov dynasty. Oh, there have and continue to be opponents to the move, but the change had seen the Russia state steer itself out of steep decline (there's only so much success you can achieve before you get too big for your britches), and trading Siberian and Central Asia territory for massive and successful internal development programs has proven worth it. Education and employment are higher than ever, people are eating healthy again, the trains and trans-Siberian hyperways run on time; indeed, a positively centralized economy assisted in micromanagement by powerful supercomputers and even cyber-augmented individuals help keep the entire thing working like clockwork. Russian demographics also help make it capable for such a heavyweight to keep up with powers in Brazil, India, Arabia and China, although sheer scale and further penetration of the Final Frontier means it hasn't become very claustrophobic. Yet. There is a Duma parliament and all the standard fare one is to expect from any Imperial, and especially Russian, state that wants to make it past the 1920s - various degrees of internal autonomy too for ethnic groups, a whole construct that works more as a federation of things. Combined with a number of client states, off-Earth territories and close associates across Africa-Eurasia, this all makes up the Russian Federal Imperium. What makes a lot of this possible is the Neudanzig Economic Cooperative, a massive global and inter-solar organization to further bind the world's economies, trade, military blocs, academic institutions, R&D, high-end networks and space travel into the Russian orbit (orbit both political as well as literal there). With thirty member states on Earth and several orbital habitats in partnership, NEC ensures that the era of the Second Empire may be a long and prosperous one. NEC continues to expand, primarily into North America, by giving outreach to various post-Commonwealth states on a continent that has generally lagged behind the world significantly, while also establishing a more permanent Russian presence there. Joining the NEC are Russia's allies in the East: Japan, a very corporate Korea, and some post-Russian Federation states (with a more Western and MidEast mindset, Moscow is not as miffed over such losses as one might expect). These form the Vladivostok Economic Opportunity Sphere, which alongside Bengal serve as a sub-bloc of the Affiliation of Ordered Nations against the rising Chinese power, both militarily as well as economically. There are critics, particularly the Islamic League and PanAmUN, who denounce the NEC and the wider Affiliation of Ordered Nations as a Russian economic extortion zone, and even a "Greater Russian Empire." Of course, Russia is an Empire, say the men in Moscow. At any rate, the NEC and Affiliation do meet acclaim in North America and Africa, as states that have typically lagged now start to feel out opportunities for better internal development as well as potential for opportunities in space. There is, at the present time at least, a "Cold War" ongoing between the Affiliation and the Islamic League, often shortened to the just the "North" and "South" as much as we in OTL simplified the latter half of the 20th century into East and West. Less ideological (at least from the Russian perspective) and more geopolitical, economic and even religious. There may be other blocs unaligned or typically uninvolved states, but these two have emerged as the premiere powers of the day. Nuclear war is always a fear, although threats of world annihilation hang more in orbit and less on the ground. Weapons are more precise, but the devastation wrought would be nothing to scoff at, and anyway something like MAD had already been conceived to deter thoughts of one-sided Armageddon. Significant opposition against the Affiliation and the Empire presents itself in the form of the Islamic League. Mughliyah, the Arab Ummah, the East African Federation, Malaysia and many others: the Islamic World is on the rise once more. Initially more of a military alliance than a wholesale economic and somewhat globalist bloc, today it has become something of a mirror to the Russian network, giving an alternative to that world-system in favor of something more noticeably equal among the Conference's attendees (mostly the US andmember states: of course beyond the major Islamic members that notion is a farce. Still, the sheer success of it has often be dubbed as a "Second Golden Age" for Islam as the belt of primarily Islamic nations running from the Sahel to Malaysia have begun to leave the 22nd century slump and rise into the stars, literally. The GPSENS further proves this as the League and states all around the world have managed remarkable feats of terraforming and engineering: a half-dozen space elevators, the Green-ing of the Sahara and Damenland[5], the rebuilding of Turkei and post-ECCU states. An extensive and high-tech upgrade to infrastructure can be seen running from the Mali sub-states all the way into India, Mosul making OTL's Dubai look small in comparison. The Erudite Union of Mughliyah is a technocratic, state-heavy beast with some democratic trappings and home to billions of souls living in what someone might incorrectly identify as a "proto-ecumenopolis" (although not continent-wide, a chain of impressive urban infrastructure arcs and stretches through the north, center and west). Erudite, as the Union is run by a cadre of genetically-"perfected" individuals (called Clairvoyants) who, in parallel to how the Russians do things, manage everything via the great Neural Network. Plenty join, but it is less hivemind and more, say, Internet of the Mind: a place of free-flowing information and quick communication, transfer of ideas and so-forth. Lack of privacy is not an issue, personalization is still possible, as is censorship: there are some things the State and the Council would rather keep behind closed doors. It runs in synthesis with the high-tech attitudes of the state. Ultimately to just Join you'll need the hardware, the innerworkings of the human mind we previously remained ignorant of are still a mystery. You're not going to be telepathically reading minds just on your own. Even then, the Clairvoyants many times over pale numerically when compared to Normals, and so AI in various levels of intelligence are sprinkled onto the system to cushion things. Mughliyah, ironically, is one of the less "faithful" members of the League: in part, due to the historically large Hindu population, but also a general trend of agnosticism and atheism that has been sweeping them over since the Great Floods decades prior. A love of technology not helping matters. A United Arab Ummah joins the Mughals in the so-called "CoDominium" of Islam: neo-legalists to the east, and the faithful to west. Arab unity is nothing new in the world, although the sheer scale of the current union is. After throwing the Turanists out, then-Egypt ascended to something of a new superpower on the global block by absorbing the northern Levant territories and netting profit out of the Sahara Reconstruction Project and the Omani Lakes. Much like the German Empire OTL, the rise of a united Arab people has shifted the old balance of power some, concerning a few of the traditional great powers, including even the Mughals. Unlike Mughliyah, the Arab Ummah is considerably more profound within both the League, GPSENS and the wider world. The Arabs are the more genuine rival to the Russian Empire and vice versa: active in space, leading the charge to develop Africa into the powerhouse of the world in cooperation with dozens of other countries, and with one of the world's largest and most advanced armed forces. A "moralistic" democracy, the Ummah is still at its Cold War-era allies). On 17 Leo 201 TE [19 July 1988], theheart more of a somewhat left-libertarian federation rather than a unitary entity: less Sharia Law and more live-and-let live. The Sahara has been reorganized to include a number of new states and territories within the Ummah: for Arabs, Tuaregs, Maghrebi, and a few for foreign peoples. Essentially farmers republics, settled by migrants en-masse. All of this green and ideal agricultural real estate is made possible by the Saharan Seas. One area the Ummah seems to excel at is science and culture. Mostly to Africa, but the results show: Arabic is the lingua franca for a great deal of African states and businesses outside the Neudanzig zone, while media networks, international education, R&D and space exploration projects help further connect an already very busy African continent together with the Arab World. Colonies on the moon and orbital habitats (or "Plants") further the reach of Cairo well into the final frontier. The Swahili-and-some-Bantu Islamic Federation forms the third major arm of the League, and kind of takes a backseat to things; let the Arabs and Mughals police the world. A loose federation centered on the major East Coast cities, there have been three different attempts at this: first being the old kingdom of Kilwa, the second following the retreat of Europeans from Africa, and the current third having come up some 40 years ago after many intense and wide-reaching reforms to the state. It is much less oligarchic and more democratic nowadays, although the rural interior remains more autonomous that the center would like. Economically it's a bustling place, and is hoping to keep the good going. The Federation has been using this success to take advantage of its geography: currently building another space elevator in conjunction with their neighbors in Jamhuuriyadda, while owning two of its own already (shared with the GPSENS of course). The Federation is one of the more active states in the solar system, keeping bases from Luna to Mars, and is mounting an expedition further beyond to kick the doors down on the Jovian moons, so-to-speak. The rest of Africa's been getting its shit together, and the 23rd century looks just as promising as the late 22nd was: a less enveloping history of European colonialism, and sans that legacy, more interest-at-home to rebuild and rediscover especially with far fewer regional conflicts to muddle that. Africa's become something of the Europe of this world. No EU, but generally regarded as one of the more advanced places outside of the major blocs, even if it's mostly divided between said blocs. States are more technocratic, progressive, and militarized. Besides that, many African nations are bound together by impressive infrastructure such as the space elevators, or the large rail lines and hyperways that crisscross the continent, and movement between borders is becoming a little more open nowadays. South Africa is mostly beyond its history of racial issues and wannabe-Draka phase (though decidedly more French ITTL demographically, and baroque in historical fetishism), having been torn down by revolution inspired by that in the Americas, and then mellowing out into a more advanced form of anarcho-syndicalism with various ethnic enclaves. They're joined by Mutapa to the north, and Damenland (the state) and a coalition of aboriginal states[6] to the east in Damenland (the continent) in a somewhat recent venture to stick their feet through the atmospheric door to the wider Solar System. The West African Gaian Combine, for a long time merely an Arab partner in the Sahara Projects, is attracting a great deal of immigration and foreign investments, and is selling land out like crazy to would-be farmers to become the next breadbasket of the world. Guinea is Russia's primary ally in the region, and has hobbled together a small sphere of Christian West African states around itself with varying degrees of cooperation with the wider Neudanzig Cooperative. The Middle East has settled down from the Continental War, and is less worse for wear post-War than Europe: more stable, even the Kurds and Turks have managed to settle out things, by a lot of enforced population expulsions by the victorious powers. Iran heads a regional grouping of conservative states around the Caspian, forming a convenient buffer between the Russian and Islamic blocs. The Arabs feel a bit shafted out of Turanist territories in Mesopotamia and around the Gulf, but then-Egypt had made significant gains anyway. Palestine and specifically Jerusalem is something of an International Mars Forces Command (IMFC) was established as a means of organizing and coordinating the various military detachments deployed to Mars. A product of lateZone under Arab custodianship, free to all peoples and demilitarized. The ultranationalist and highly belligerent Turanist Union has been split asunder after the War, with the Central Asian parts divided between Iran and Russia, while the West has been spun off as another Arab vassal. The Turks are generally receptive to the new Arab leadership, owing a lot to something like the Marshall Plan to help rebuild their economy once more. Constantinople has been disputed, again, and remains as such: the Russians claim as their rightful territory by virtue of being both the Third and Fourth Rome, while the actual people living there say "No we are not going to learn Russian, thank you." International tensions continue. India has not changed much borders-wise in centuries: the greatly Hindu and nationalist neo-Vijayanagarans have made it long and clear to the Mughals that attempts to absorb will never work out, and vice-versa, and in recent days have been content to just sink into the VR-Neural Networking craze after doling out the big bucks for mass-fusion power. Bengal seceded from Mughliyah during the period of the Great Flood and the Troubles that followed: negligence from Delhi they cite, though the eastern provinces had always been a bit troublesome to wrangle in, Muslim or not. The push to move into the Russian sphere has been bold, indeed perhaps too bold: the border is more of a tripwire now than either side would have expected possible just a few decades ago, and some have argued that it may have excited China to join the Cold War paranoia around the potentialunder a new, third bloc. And they aren't wrong: China, in combination with the Federation of the Rhine, is looking to form itself into the third major economic and political sphere in the Solar System, and has created an "orbital partnership" with Europe and a number of other countries across the world, mostly in the Pacific. A bit of a balance upsetter as after a century of general dormancy, China's "unbelievable" rise in the world is concerning to both the Islamic and Russian spheres, and threatens to unhinge a few things in the status quo: China is looking to not just have a piece of the orbital action, but also to reintegrate Tibet, Xinjiang and the remainder of Manchuria into the Union, and even form a third commercial zone by swaying countries in the Americas to China's worldview. And they have a lot of appeal too: far more democratic than either of the large blocs and less of an awful wealth gap presenting itself between lower, mid and upper classes, though admittedly this is a bit of a legacy from their days under a brief flirting with a form of anarcho-syndicalism (called the Peoples' Federal Unity). That history goes back well into the 20th century. The Rhenish Federation (re: Greater France 3.0) plays the tail to China's dog, but is not that far behind. While humiliated after the War, the Federation at least managed to keep its typical technological prowess with itself, which has proven beneficial for warfare in the colonies, in essence, the IMFC would allow for the coordination of the American, Japanese, British and French military assets present on Mars at the time. In practice, most of these military personnel were put to work building or maintaining infrastructure, or assistingjoint Sino-European solar ventures. There are several new stations planned to be placed in near-Earth orbit. Violence in nearby countries of course continues to remain a problem, with various scientific ventures. In theory, the forces being coordinated by the IMFC answered to their respective colonial governments via the MTO, as surrogates for national governmentsthe Federation receiving the lion's share of refugees out of Spain. Naturally this has led to some backlash against inviting them, and many Spanish exiles tend to look back on Earth. In practice, the IMFC answered to the MTO. With the end ofthe defunt ECCU fondly now. European unity hasn't been thrown entirely out the window yet, being a much wider concept for the victorious Allies to eradicate than, say, old-school warhawks (from the other guys, mind you), and some in Ireland, the Italian states and even the economically growing East German Principality begin to think of what could have been. The Americas are wild. The fall of the Worker's Commonwealth in the 2040s precipitated a brief period of violence from the Mojave to New England, and down as far south as Patagonia as new nations came to the fore, while dictators in previous client states struggled to hold down the masses now that Commonwealth support had dried up. The westernmost Workers' Republic of Montoya, home to the largest concentration of Jews in the world (a more meaningful version of the USSR's Jewish Autonomous Oblast from OTL), quickly became the center of a new, Western Zion, and has been attracting Jews from all over since. About as overly-armed per-pound (and person) and shaky with its neighbors as OTL Israel, but at least West Zion has good relations with Reynes, and even better domestic racial ones (Amerindians not any less shafted than they were OTL, they got along okay-ish with the Jews). More Anglophile republics further north were among the first to secede, and had a not-so-lovely period of ethnic cleansing of Francophiles and Spanish-speakers, and this was followed by counter-violence and a brief border war with Corazon (literally: heartland). At any rate, there are now several native republics in Borealia, if anything because with enough numbers they could fill out convenient buffer states - these First Nations are open to developing themselves further, whether that be with the Russians or Arabs. Newfoundland finds itself wanting to be further distanced from the rest of the continent more and more, and tends to act more buddy-buddy with its neighbors across the North Atlantic pond. Champlain had delved into horrid and poorly-planned ethnostate business, but thankfully the counter-movements within did succeed in stopping that without leading to an awful civil war, and now Champlain is one of the more democratic, progressive states in North America, even if that isn't saying much as they are mostly based on the model of the old ECCU. There's been talk of reconnecting with the Rhenish Federation, but conflicts in Carolina stall that, between Champlain moving in to "protect" the Francophile minority, and Corazon wishing to secure its pipelines (literal and figurative) to the Gulf, and hardly-subtle intentions of annexing it. Corazon, Mexico, Bogata and even Peru have a neat little "fourth superpower" in the works; mostly the American equivalent of the Eurasian Union, but there's no Putin. The Pan-American Union of Nations looks nice on paper, but tends to be laughably behind the rest of the world, technologically and in raw economic power, but also socially: generally viewed as Squares, and a more dated type of conservative atheistic-technocrats from a bygone age. They do own a space elevator and some Martian colonies, but they merely inherit the legacy of solar exploration that the old Commonwealth had championed, and with much more gusto. Corazon likes to view itself as the leader of PanAMUN, although Mexico is showing signs of something like the Chinese Miracle, and has the demographics to back that up, which Corazon tends to lack. Drugs are an issue, particularly further north, leading to talks of border closure in Newfoundland (none needed in New England, too many land mines on the border already). The Dialectic Order looms from behind its massive walls that encircle the area, patrolled by automated sentries. The one state of the old Commonwealth to never relinquish the old hardliner values: thanks to advances in Neural Networking, it now starts to look even worse than than its typical days as "North Korean Montana", and no one's been there is quite a while, as peaking over the border is grounds for being cut-down by said automated sentries. No one can be really bothered to ask what's going on in there either; best to leave some things be. Speculation ranges from everyone having starved and their defenses remaining true to their orders still, to the Supreme Leader effectively leading a hivemind of his subjects, forever enslaved to his or her will. Fun stuff. South America is more of that, but in an opposite direction: Brazil being closer to the Japan of this world, a sort of exaggeratedly high-tech place, where most decent and affordable car companies are from, and a producer of both good and sub-par animated series (the porn is, however, phenomenal). The cyberpunk/tech capital of the world naturally has all the amenities you'd expect, from dense urban areas to acrologies and high-speed trains or hyperways to move people around. Government and big business blur a lot, although the Amazon, everyone agreed, should probably be rebuilt (between human folly, and the Green Sahara messing up the remaining ecosystem). Brazil's also stupidly overpopulated, and is generally one of the more enthused Solar powers, building more and more orbital habitats. Even then, like the Mughals there's still plenty of potential in VR, but their urban sprawl was noted as a total mess in comparison. Acrologies, build more of those! Paraguay further south is... odd, to put it bluntly. The legacy of the Commonwealth's efforts to eradicate religion have lead to a generally reactionary backlash in many of its southern clients, and post-Breakup that has remained, perhaps too much. The Paraguayans aren't stuck there of course - it's not strictly totalitarian, but those that Join tend to be subliminally bombarded with messages about not missing Mass, verses of the holy scriptures, and general propaganda by the Cult of Humanity, wherever they go. It's nothing but bliss and work until the day you die. New Nederland is perhaps the least weird out of them all, only vaguely Dutch at this point due to things such as immigration and gradual demographic shifts: an alt-80 Years War can only keep changes that last so far (namely a half-hearted expulsion of many Dutchmen to the New World colonies). Even then, the Federation became something of a magnet for Dutch from the Netherlands following the Great Flood, and is joined by New Utrecht all the way over in Damenland as part of the Dutch Peoples Union. Even with the Great Flood years ago, efforts to dredge up lost coastlines are still underbaked, although Bengal had invested so significantly in such a project that it does not intent to half-ass it. Likewise, China pursues its own reclamation projects. Human settlements stretch out into the seas and even the seafloors as people look for alternatives to sprawling over the land (save room for agriculture), and dozens of major oceanic settlements rest off the coasts of the more prominent nations, the largest of which tops itself at nearly 300,000 people, part of China's more artificial alternative to land reclamation by just building a city over the sunken ones. They're all a bit new, and tend to run as a tempting alternative to inter-solar expansion. The Moon is of course heavily colonized at this point, and is hardly divided with any sense of organization or clarity between the major blocs and their habitats. Resources being rather limited, there was some need for cooperation between the habs, such as getting a functioning trans-Lunar maglev rail system to work, and the Lunar elevators have proven far more useful than initially believed. A bit of this has fostered some feelings of independence, although beyond the VR-happy and incredibly cyberized Lunar Network habs no one's really made much effort to create, say, a Republic of the Moon or something: lack of finances and brittle settlements deter such thoughts. Mining on the moon has become more and more expansive over the years, especially given the significant ease of transporting the materials into orbit, and in turn out to build new orbital habitats. More and more people move there as the habitats dig further underground and develop (given the fragility of surface domes to space debris), and often a need to afford greater expansion is stymied by competition for funds from orbital habitats, or God-forbid those rednecks on Mars. Perhaps the most expensive venture by-far was the building of a network of O'Neill cylinder-type stations at the L4 Lagrange point by an international organization of private firms and businesses looking to set up some sort of idealized, utopian society that will be far-and-away from Earth if the Cold War, the realities of life onWar ever went hot. Flashy, if a bit isolationist, they wouldn't look too out of place in a Gundam setting. They do not, however, believe that simply being born in space is grounds for the establishment of some new kind of master race - no, those people are born into wealth, you see, just as they always have. Likewise space warfare and the vessels to wage it tend to be very boring as you might imagine in a more "realistic" future; no Zaku mobile suits or particle beams, although there are unmanned drone "fighters" that look like big cubes with thrusters and missiles attached. Mars culminated in the reformation of the IMFCis more of a frontier if anything, with the idea of terraforming it viewed as beyond daunting - certainly if the L4 Network is possible, then more *O'Neill cylinders are the prime alternative. That does not of course stop either the Russians, nor the Sino-European Cooperative from setting up something. The Cold War is entering something of a detente. While China's rise may be concerning indeed among the typical superpowers, the constant expenditure of resources, manpower, time and overall pretty amazing human achievements into MarsCom on 16 Leo 208 TE [17 September 2001], placing the control of the IMFC's uniformed assets under the direct control of the MTO. A somewhat controversial move at the time on both Earth and Mars, but ultimately reflective of the situation on Mars at the time. Whereas the IMFC was an ostensibly military organization more often tasked with non-military activities, MarsCom was founded as a three-part service overseeing intercolonial military assets (Defense Command), and pan-Martian infrastructure construction, maintenance, medical and emergency services (Civil Command), as well as innovating new in-situ technologies, exploration and the spread of knowledge across the colonies (Science Command),low-orbit, lunar, and even Martian space projects has seen something of a shift in national outlook. While war may blurt out every so often, the notion that all while maintaining a military-style rank hierarchy. An unusual development, though perhaps apropos for the planet named after the god of war. Speaking of, on 28 Mithuna 197 TE [27 October 1980], Earthling scientist Carl Sagan popularized the Shield of Ares on the fifth episode of his popular TV program, Cosmos. Sagan advocated for the symbol, consisting of a circle with a triangular lambda inside (sometimes said to represent the mighty peak of Olympus Mons), reminiscent of an ancient Spartan warrior's shield, as a new, gender-neutral symbol of Mars, to replace the Red Planet's more ancient symbol, due to the latter's conflation with the masculine sex. The Shield will go on to become a ubiquitous symbol in Martian iconography, featured on many Martian flags throughout history. On 4 Taurus 197 TE [9 July 1980], evidence of past and current Martian life is discovered. The simple, microscopic extremophiles are dubbed "greenmen" (Cohortsuva musgravei) after Ares-5 astronaut Story Musgrave remarks at the time "we found the little green men on Mars". Theseof this would be the first of many microbial organisms found beneath the surface of Mars, the final remnants of a bygone Martian biosphere. On 28 Capricornus 199 TE [21 September 1983], a startling discovery uncovered an entire second branch of Martian life, when ESA pioneers Jean-Francois Vandamme and Ricardo Gallerani discover that a series of anomalous rock formationsfor naught simply due to geopolitics, religion or ideology tends to fall flat... no one, truly, would want to see it undone, if ever. As the process continues on Mars wereour world continues to look smaller in comparison: nothing but a lot of Big Empty out there, and there's really room for everyone. [1] That overlaps with today's Canada. [2] California [3] And later branches off into various sub-ideologies based on the initial premise. The Worker's Commonwealth was, for its initial run, a Trotskyist wet dream. [4] Why not only biological in nature, but still alive. Dubbed "Amphiformes", these bizarre, sessile organisms blur the line between "life" and "non-life", when they begin growing after exposure to moisture and oxygen, and forming unusual shapes resembling rocky corals. It is believed that Amphiformes represent a completely separate line of organic life from the greenmen, suggesting that abiogenesis occurred at least twice on Mars. Additionally, the Amphiformes are believed to have remained in a fossil-like hibernation state for billions of annums as conditions on Mars gradually worsened, while remaining "alive" the entire time. On 1 Sagittarius 200 TE [15 May 1985], Thomas Gangale's Darian Calendar was formally adopted by the Mars Treaty Organization, becoming standard across all Martian colonies by the close of the annum. In place of the 12-month Gregorian "year", the Darian calendar opts for an "annum" divided into 24 months - 12 named after the signs of the Western Zodiac, and 12 after the signs of the Indian Zodiac.the Shadow War? The term "year" persists on Mars, to describe the halves of a given annum. "New Years" on Mars is a mid-annum celebration, while "Novannum" (a term of dubious Latin that makes linguists cry) is a celebration of the transition between annums. All but two months have 28 sols. Each sol is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 36 seconds. The last minutes and seconds of the sol are known as "Runt Hour", a time of the sol considered spooky and superstitious among Martians. The seven sols of the week are Solis, Lunae, Martis, Mercurii, Jovis, Veneris and Saturni. The calendar's start date roughly corresponds with the Earth-years of 1609/1610, when Kepler published his first two laws of planetary motion, as well as Galileo's first observations of the phases of Mars, beginning the "Telescopic Epoch" (TE). In 212 [2007], the first construction phase began on the Halo orbital ring around Mars, beginning with a rotating cable encircling the planet above the equator. All would go according to plan and decades later in 230 [2041], six "ring stations" (Lawrence, Musgrave, Collins, Aldrin, O'Leary and Overmayer) were added atop the cable, remaining at static locations above the Martian equator via superconducting magnets, and connected to the surface via space elevators completed in 241 [2062]. Generally-speaking, from 195 [1975], until 215 [2013], everything seemed to be going smoothly in the Martian colonies, with constant growth and so many success stories. This all began to change with the first sighting of Comet Barrus on 11 Aires 207 TE [10 March 1999].Grand Chessboard? The Great Impact On Lunae 11 Aires 207 [10 March 1999], a comet is discoveredGame? Well, sometimes you reach the ATL where some terms end up being used the same as OTL. [5] TTL's Australia [6] With Damenland's colonization being more multinational, the aboriginal peoples had a chance to survive. For one, thanks in part to no genocide against them by astronomer Jon Barrus atop Olympus Mons, determined to be on a trajectory for a close approach to Mars,the colonizers. Compensated with an estimated 1 in 200,000 chance of impact. "Comet Barrus" is estimated to be 1.5 kilometers in diameter, and composed chiefly of water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane and nitrogen. Over the next eight annums, Comet Barrus drew closer and closer to Mars, changing from an anticipated light show that would dazzle the Martian colonies, to an increasingly inevitable impact. On 18 Kanya 209 TE [30 October 2003], astronomers predicted that Comet Barrus had a 1 in 120,000 chance of impacting Mars. On 11 Virgo 210 TE [12 August 2005], this became a 1 in 8,000 chance of impacting Mars. By 5 Gemini 212 TE [21 November 2008], Comet Barrus had a 1 in 2,000 chance of impacting Mars, andland losses by 23 Mina 213 TE [6 June 2010], they said Barrus had a 1 in 1,250 chance of impacting Mars. Finally, on 12 Gemini 214 TE [2 September 2012], observation confirmed that Comet Barrus had a 1 in 10 chance of impacting Mars,the Damenland Sea Project with a 1 in 50 chance of hitting the North Pole. The MTO demarcated a 400-kilometer exclusion zone around the expected hypocenter of impact at the Martian North Pole. Here, researchers who had discovered vibrant colonies of indigenous Martian life forms within the polar ice, did their best to evacuate as many samples as they could in the final annum before impact, with some dying from exhaustion. On Jovis 5 Taurus 215 TE [17 May 2014], at 23:18, millions watched Comet Barrus approach and streak across the sky for up to a minute, before landing in the meters-thick sheet of frozen CO2 at the North Pole, with the force of 117 gigatons of TNT, sublimating almost all of it instantly, though with relatively little ejecta. Fears of super-quakes rattling the whole planet and causing massive casualties, or apocalyptic dust clouds snuffing out solar power across the planet, turned out to be unfounded, as while serious damage was recorded in the north, for most Martians, dishes broke, pendulum clocks stopped, and the ground shook for a few moments. More important than the impact itself, the flash-sublimation of 650 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, water-ice, ammonia, nitrogen, hydrogen and methane (either contained in the ice sheet or within the comet itself), briefly deluged a large area of the Martian north with frozen watery slush, while the immense levels of sudden heat from the colossal explosion began a short-lived warming trend all across Mars. This alone would not be enough to transform Mars into a paradise, and with enough time everything would revert to the way things were before the impact. But only if nothing was done. The Red-Blue Debate The subject of "terraforming" was already being talked about as early as the 1990s, however, interest perked up after the possibility of Barrus altering the Martian climate came into focus, and post-impact, it reached a fevered pitch, even as MarsCom was busy assessing damage in the northern colonies. Opponents of terraforming saw it as too ambitious, too expensive or too impractical, while proponents saw it as the only way forward for Martian civilization, and preferred the term "noaforming", as they saw the process of making Mars more habitable as "returning" Mars to its warmer, wetter state in the Noachian Epoch. By contrast, some of the more doctrinaire and philosophical opponents of noaforming believed it wasn't man's place to "pollute" Mars in such a way, that it was a form of terrestrial chauvinism, that Mars' natural beauty was worth preserving for future generations. A recurring topic of discussion on Mars was the matter of water. From the earliest sols on Mars, most of the water used by colonists was extracted from underground ice sources, which often accumulated in the lowest-lying regions of the planet along with other ices, where the planet's ancient hydrosphere pooled as the changing environment caused it to recede and freeze. After the Great Impact of 215, however, pools of hypersaline slush and half-frozen mud appeared in these lowland craters and canyons, as microscopic crystals of frozen water across the planet began melting. This injected considerable ambiguity into a very important component of the Noaforming Question, which was whether or not Mars had enough water to sustain its growing civilization. According to the Blues, there was not enough water readily-available to sustain current populations or the industries keeping them alive on a sol-to-sol basis. Mars had lost too much water over the last few billion years, and for Martians to call the place home, they would need more, or else a global water crisis was inevitable. However, according to the Reds, this was not the case. Mars, in fact, had plenty of water, and more, while nice, wasn't required, and they would point to the slush and the mud, as evidence of this fact, as well as advances in drilling technology which would enable access to deeper aquifers and permafrost. Others, of a more conspiratorial bent, believed that "Peak Water" was in fact a scheme to justify further regulatory control over water resources and/or increased power being given to the MTO. The first serious proposal for large-scale noaforming was presented before the MTO General Assembly in Primus, on 3 Leo 217 TE [8 August 2018]. The "Blue Mars Plan" called for, among other things, the use of thousands of nuclear explosives, redirecting comets to impact Mars, unproven methods of genetic engineering as-yet beyond the reach of then-current Martian biotech, massive infrastructure projects requiring dramatic expansion of MarsCom's capabilities, and, most controversially, the mass-eviction of the northern colonies to make way for an ocean in the north. The Blue Mars plan was ultimately rejected by the Assembly, but only narrowly, and was expected to be revisited at a much later date. Growing Pains While the debate over noaforming drew the philosophical and ideological battle lines for the RBW, it was the rapid growth of colonial civilization on Mars that would make war inevitable. In 200 [1985], less than five annums after the first humans set foot on Mars, the Martian population was already at 5,000 colonists, mostly in the American and Japanese colonies. 95% of the growth is via colonists arriving from Earth, however signs were already pointing to an anomalously high birth rate on the Red Planet, attributable to a number of factors, and in spite of efforts at contraception. In 24 Makara 209 TE [5 August 2002], Neo-Tokyo became the first settlement on Mars with a population greater than 100,000. In 23 Libra 211 TE [8 September 2007], Mars reached one million people, and at the time, everyone assumed it would reach two million by the next decade, only for there to be three million Martians by 11 Aquarius 221 TE [17 March 2025]. In 206 [1996], the first of six AEGIS satellites were deployed at Mars-Sol L1 to create a magnetosheath disrupting incoming solar wind. By 214 [2012], the AEGIS array had lowered surface radiation levels by 45%, allowing for lower standards for radiation shielding, and the dramatic expansion of housing, growth in trade thanks to lighter vehicles, and as a result, a rise in both immigration from Earth and birthrates at home. The growing Martian population, and more importantly, the rise of both parents and the youth as a new, formidable voting bloc, reinvigorated interest in noaforming, as the future of Mars became less that of outposts of Earthling civilization, and more a question of what shape or direction an independent Martian civilization would take. Perceptions of Earthlings by Martians of Earthlings have always been...complicated. From the earliest sols, the idea of the "colonies" on Mars being "colonies" in the old-fashioned sense that Spanish America was ruled from Madrid, or Australia from London, was almost entirely a legal fiction. Insofar as the colonies were still reliant upon industry and supplies from Earth early on, the drive in every offworld colony had been to become as self-sufficient as possible, as quickly as possible, and from the start, colonies were de facto self-governing, lacking representation in their Earthly "motherlands", but continuing to operate under Earthling laws where they were still applicable or practical, mostly for the sake of consistency. In the event of an emergency, anything that needed to be brought in from Earth wasn't a realistic option, not unless it was already on the way. Perceptions of Earth among early Martian colonists very quickly became critical. The fact was, your average Martian didn't have time to parse through information coming from Earth for nuance, and as a result, only the most exceptionally bad or unusual news arrived on Mars, or to be precise, reached Martian ears and eyes. Many colonists were themselves dissidents and oddballs dissatisfied in one way or another with life on Earth, and eager to settle on Mars to pursue their own dreams of frontier life. Very often these dreams failed to materialize and these brave pioneers found themselves adapting to lives much less cozy than they imagined, the sunk-cost fallacy led many to rationalize their decisions to move to Mars by inventing thousands of other reasons why they left the Earth. This would all gostates right on to inform what Martian children were taught about the Earth. For them, the Earth was more of an abstraction than a real place, something they were told about. Some persons born on Mars were entranced by the Earth's beauty, and a few Martians would even migrate to the Earth, but these were surprisingly few in number. Because when all you have is a life on Mars, you appreciate the little things, the red dunes and pink skies, the simple routines of colonial life, the strong sense of community. Earth's beauty and comfort was offset in its appeal by the perception of Earthlings as vain, atomized, unfocused, vulgar, chaotic and degenerate. The Earth was a wealth of lessons to be learned. For some, this meant jotting down notes about the planet's many food webs and climatic models, to assist with noaforming plans, while other Martians simply grew more appreciative of the Red Planet they already had and wanted to avoid what they saw as Earth's faults. It's hard to care about Earth when it's just a little blue dot, and Mars is the ground beneath your feet. The water in your cells. The iron in your blood. For persons moving between planets, who had already spent their formative years on one but relocated to another, the extreme separation from the Earth-Mother became a source of intense stress and anxiety, the only resolution to which was to learn to love your new planet, and this would become an intense love, love for the sake of survival itself. Indeed, separation from Earth is hypothesized by some historians to be the reason for the unusually-high birth rates in the early colonies; the lizard-brain believing that the Earth was destroyed, triggering an instinctual drive to perpetuate the species. It should come as no surprise then, that by the early 220s [2030s], many Martians grew tired of even the legal fiction of colonial control from Earth, and by the late 220s [2040s], political upheaval and instability on Earth coincided with a massive groundswell of support for independence in the colonies themselves, who by that point had very little in the way of institutional connections to Earth anyway. And one of the most essential players in the Martian independence movement, would go on to become one of the planet's greatest villains. Born in Tokyo, Japan on 19 Libra 201 TE [12 November 1988], Fumikage Gondo and his family moved to Mars when he was only one annum old. Growing up in the settlement of Neo-Kansai, despite not being born on Mars, Gondo would become one of the most important of the "Young Martians", the first generation of native-born Martian political leaders. An ambitious power-player more accustomed to working behind the scenes, he was nevertheless one of the fresh faces in the MTO who advocated for the legal independence of the Martian colonies, making a name for himself as the then-youngest MTO Minister for Emergency Management, when he handled the post-Barrus disaster relief. Over the years, he built up an extensive personal political machine that saw his allies, most of them Young Martians, occupying every single MTO ministry, and himself filling the General Secretary seat three times, with his allies alternating as GenSec between his terms. This was a machine with almost complete control over the MTO, lasting over 21 annums. Under his watch, the MTO greenlit the Blue Mars Plan, now dubbed "Project Genesis", on 8 Mesha 229 TE [20 August 2040], complete with all of its controversial provisions, including an adversarial relationship with Mars' lowland colonies which were written off as doomed to flood. Or at least, that's what Gondo's critics said. In reality, Gondo was a bit more callous than that. His policy, and that of the MTO, was to transfer the populations of the lowland colonies to higher ground, with no apparent plan for the continuity of the sovereignty of the colonies which were to be completely submerged over the next century. While popular history pins all blame on Gondo, the reality is that other states on Mars could have carved out territory for these colonies to reinstitute themselves in, but none wished to. And the governments of the colonies soon to be flooded had no willingness to go along with such a thing even if it were offered, unwilling to surrender the hard work of their grandfathers without a fight. Proposals to regulate flooding in some areas, such as a dam at the mouth of Valles Marineris, barriers along the entrance of the Isidis impact basin, or a system of pumps in Argyre or the Avalon Basin, were dismissed as too expensive or technically-infeasible. For Gondo, these protests were short-sighted provincialism, blind to the reality of Martian population growth, the strain on resources on Mars, and the inevitable collapse of the fragile modern conditions that every Martian took for granted. To that end, the most expedient and cost-effective way of producing a habitable atmosphere and hydrosphere was the only possible assurance of a future for human life on the Red Planet. If the masses couldn't understand this and fell back on their emotions, on their fetishization of what their fathers or grandfathers built, over the future of their children and grandchildren, then it wasn't the masses' choice to make. For Gondo, the death outside was the enemy, and if these so-called "Reds" chose to side with the enemy, he felt no compunction to entertain their demands. Gondo wasn't especially vocal about these views of his at the time. His actions (and those of his surrogates) spoke louder. The Antebellum By 13 Virgo 230 TE [28 March 2043], Mars' population had reached 12 million, again defying expert opinion back on Earth. That was also the annum that the Halo orbital ring was nearing completion, with Phase III construction underway on the elevators which would link the Martian surface to the six stations on the ring, named after the six Ares-5 crewmembers - Lawrence, O'Leary, Musgrave, Aldrin, Collins and Overmayer. The 230s, however, was also the decade of acceleration in tensions between Reds and Blues. In particular, the water debates of decades prior had gotten far less civil. Many Blues fully believed that water and air resources were becoming unviable for the long-term survival of a growing Martian civilization, with some fearing a collapse by the 290s [2150s], and they felt vindicated in their alarmism by upticks in air and water costs. The Reds saw the data differently and believed that the rise in these costs had to do with water-hoarding, that the powers-that-be were holding back water resources to justify their pro-noaforming agenda. What could have been calm, rational debates about economics instead turned to shouting matches and soon fell to fisticuffs, as alarmism and conspiracy theories ruled the day. On 14 Leo 234 TE [11 August 2050], a 21-kiloton nuclear device codenamed "Shinra", was detonated underground in the Cimmerian wastes, sending literal and proverbial shockwaves across Mars and beyond. Intended purely for peaceful motives, many regard it as too much power being entrusted in the MTO, spurring homegrown anti-MTO militia movements all across Mars, many of them unified ideologically by a mix of distrust in the MTO and opposition to Project Genesis. And although Mars was not party to any treaty pertaining to nuclear technology or arms, the reaction to the Shinra Test back on Earth was extremely negative, culminating in UN sanctions against Mars, prohibiting transfers of nuclear technology from Earth to Mars, including for civilian nuclear energy. Many commentators remark that these sanctions are too little and too late to put much of a dent in Mars' in-situ nuclear industry, and, if anything, creates a brief spot of agreement between both Reds and Blues against the Earth. The importance of nuclear energy to basic survival on Mars leads many Martians (regardless of their ideology or the actual impact of these sanctions) to take exception to the Earthlings' cadness. This was partially General Secretary Gondo's intention at the time, however, it turned out more people were upset about the detonation itself, and what it meant for the firepower at the command of the Mars Treaty Organization. By 11 Kanya 240 TE [12 February 2062], the increasingly-angry Red Planet's population had grown to 30 million, with a median age of 7.5 annums [15 Earth-years]. This was an exciting time to be alive. Martian popular culture had truly come into its own, with Martian books, shows and interactive media by Martian creatives and Martian companies, all finally outnumbering Terrestrial imports, and increasingly reflecting the vigorous, nervous energy of the Martian youth. Millions living their lives in enclosed, self-contained habitats and safe predictable routines, were thirsty for adventure, for a "good fight", for a chance to save the world, and with ideologues and exciting narratives for and against Project Genesis, many found themselves drawn to either side of the simmering conflict. Legally, national governments on Mars were not able to build standing armies, and military assets were to be relegated to DefCom, and therefore the MTO. However, loopholes existed for militias and constabularies, as well as for private ownership of arms. Red-leaning governments enabled the growth of armed protest movements, which eventually matured into well-armed, well-trained (albeit, mostly in VR simulations) paramilitary units complete with uniforms, weapons and even vehicles. On 21 Khumba 242 TE [25 October 2064], former rock star and convicted drug dealer turned militia leader Liam Merrick, saw his Avalon Red Commandos (ARC) complete their assimilation and merger of the other Red militia groups in the Avalon Basin, while in Valles Marineris, Utena Jackson of the Code Red Coalition (CRC) militia movement, announced her candidacy in the 244 [2068] Tharsis Commonwealth presidential election, running on a Red political platform. Social media firebrand Sultan Al-Khatib (the great-grandson of an ex-UAE war criminal) built up the Army for the Salvation of the Argyre Basin (ESCA) around his Napoleonic online persona and charismatic vision of unity between Christian and Islamic radicals drawn from Argyria's mixed Hispanic and Arab population, beginning in early 242. The eccentric Megallanian business tycoon and populist leader Ernesto "La Caja" Nores announced the creation of the Army of The North (AoTN), bringing together the broadest and most varied coalition of ideologies and characters imaginable, unified in their hatred of Project Genesis and the MTO. And, while beginning originally with radical students from Neo-Tokyo, the Red Planet Revolutionary Ronin (RPR2) grew to encompass not only rebels in the low-lying Elysium Planitia, but other malcontents across Kasei, under the leadership of outspoken Red ideologue Minako Hiyama. The growth of these militias did not go unseen, however, and with a spate of low-level incidents and confrontations, DefCom began expansion for the first time since its founding. A new need for counter-terrorism and, potentially, conventional warfare capabilities, led to the mass-promotion of junior officers up to more senior roles. A new need for more weapons, more body armor, more and more of everything, led to the growth of these industries on Mars. While early on, Red extremists were emboldened by DefCom's relative weakness to occupy and blockade Genesis facilities unarmed in the 230s, the expansion of DefCom's capabilities, and the increasing number of appearances of the previously-obscure organization in public, inflamed concerns about unwarranted MTO power creep, and encouraged more activists to begin taking up arms and preparing to fight the MTO and MarsCom with full force if need be. This became a feedback loop, with Reds growing more bold and more hardline in their pronouncements and condemnations of the established order as DefCom grew to become the face of MTO policymaking, and Blues getting anxious and enlisting in MarsCom at record rates, either out of concern for the growing instability of the Redist movements, or the career opportunities opening up from MarsCom's expansion, which made the Reds more and more upset, and so on and so on. At the same time, opposition to Gondo's corrupt and authoritarian ways was growing within MarsCom itself. Decades earlier, on 8 Vrishika 213 TE [23 August 2011], Martian colonist Etsuya Uchima of Neo-Tokyo published a treatise on his vision for a Martian "civic democracy". A former CivCom engineer, Uchima was displeased with the myopic visions of MTO bureaucrats, and advocated in his ebook, "Civic Democracy", for a system by which decisions regarding the use of MarsCom for pan-Martian projects were decided via elected rather than appointed representatives in democratic framework, reserved to MarsCom personnel, who he believed would have more of a stake and comprehension of the relevant issues. Widely mocked on both Earth and Mars for citing Robert Heinlein's 186 [1959] novel Starship Troopers (and even quoting passages thereof), and featuring manga-style illustrations of his arguments, Uchima's ebook nevertheless developed a cult following across Mars, and within elements of MarsCom, for decades to come. 5 Sagittarius 235 TE [18 March 2051] is the date commonly accepted as the first meeting of The Junta, a secret society of young and idealistic MarsCom commissioned officers who subscribed to Uchima's ideology of civic democracy, and opposed to the Gondoist status quo. The Junta was, in truth, a long march through the institutions of MarsCom, and Gondo's awareness of this clique was not enough for it to go away, them being so numerous that there was no way of removing them from power without destabilizing MarsCom itself. And, policy disagreements notwithstanding, support for Project Genesis was still very strong within the Junta. Indeed, the primary disagreement with Gondo's policies was that they were being made by undisciplined politicians and bureaucrats, in an undemocratic fashion, not by the experts connected to the actual processes of noaforming, who would be most informed to make the correct decisions and having a true stake in the project. Still, they didn't like the Reds any more than Gondo did. Though not a founding member of The Junta, a young and talented DefCom colonel by the name of Aaron James Lang rises to the top of The Junta's leadership by 241 [2062]. Between growing Red radicalization and Blue bellicosity, there was still a "Third Way" emerging that ostensibly rejected both notions of the Noaforming Crisis, and simply wished to be excluded from the seemingly-inevitable conflict looming on the horizon. These were the Greens, the neutrals, the non-aligned, the pacifists, the moderates, the slowformers, pantropists and worldhousers. There were self-described (or accused) Greens all over Mars, but the foremost exponent of the Green cause was the Green Five Non-Aligned Bloc, established on 12 Aries 238 TE [1 July 2057] as a group of five "landlocked" countries on Mars who wanted nothing to do with the Red-Blue tensions, and would collaborate over the course of the coming conflict to ensure none of their number were dragged into it. Similarly, dialogue between leaders on the Halo, Phobos and Deimos led to the creation of the Phalanx Eight (Deimos, Phobos, Lawrence Station, O'Leary Station, Musgrave Station, Collins Station, Aldrin Station and Overmyer Station), to encourage the neutrality and safety of Mars' orbital colonies in the event of conflict escalation. Compared to the Green Five, the Phalanx Eight was a much more informal association, more so a signal intended to encourage Gondo and his Red counterparts to start calming the Hell down and reach a negotiated compromise. In reality, Deimos and Phobos were much closer together via their own Brother Moons Compact, whilst the Halo stations were of course naturally linked together by the ring which bound them as one. However, the resolve for peace would soon be tested. Bloody Jovis The story of the Galileo University Massacre of 245 (better known as "Bloody Jovis"), begins almost a whole annum earlier in 244, with the Caliente Incident. On 1 Gemini 244 TE [24 January 2069], Minister for Emergency Management Stephanie Belloc was appointed General Secretary of the MTO. A protege of Fumikage Gondo, she had long been groomed for her new position by Gondo from her early sols as one of his staffers, and many believed she would represent a continuation of Gondo's political machine, as Gondo himself was set to retire from politics within the next annum. On 28 Mithuna 244 TE [22 March 2069], per Belloc's controversial Northern Relocation Program, residents of the settlement of Caliente in the Chilean Republic of Magellan were selected as the pilot group to be moved to new homes in Westmoreland, New Saigon. When MTO agents arrived to officiate this population transfer, elements of the Magellan People's Brigade (a unit of the Army of The North) attacked and killed these agents. The massacre was celebrated by Reds across Mars, while Magellanian representatives at the MTO protested the NRP by walking out of the Assembly shortly after the attack. The NRP was scrapped, but the Magellanian representatives did not return, and more would soon join them in leaving. Among those killed in the Caliente Incident, was Kotaro Hamada, son of Lieutenant Colonel Isoroku Hamada, of DefCom. On 12 Virgo 244 TE [26 July 2069], while leaving a rally in Shangri-La, Shambhala, Tharsis Commonwealth presidential candidate Utena Jackson is attacked by an unknown man with a .22 caliber pistol. She is shot five times, including once in her right eye. The media claims this was an attack by a "rival" within the CRC, while Jackson supporters assume an MTO operative was behind it. The truth is never uncovered, and many historians believe this was a lone wolf attack. Despite losing her eye, Jackson continues her campaign for president of the Tharsis Commonwealth. Later that month, despite the attack galvanizing her supporters, Jackson is unable to secure victory in the election, sparking protests, armed demonstrations and riots across Tharsis in general, Valles Marineris in particular, as well as all over Mars, as fellow Red movements show solidarity with Jackson. However, her attempted assassination and subsequent loss ultimately have the unfortunate impact of discrediting electoral activism within the Red movement, while validating more militant causes. Apart from an uptick in demonstrations and the the occasional incident which managed to occupy a whole 24 hours of the news cycle before dying back down, the second year of 244 and the first year of 245 would prove to be the eye of the proverbial storm, before Mars reached the true point of no-return. On 5 Pisces 245 TE [27 June 2070], Galileo University, in the Euromartian capital of Axiom, is occupied by the Antisea protest movement and radical Red students led by controversial political science professor Jean-Paul Lemay, a strong advocate against noaforming who was threatened with losing tenure over his vocal political beliefs and advocacy of violence and sabotage after Jackson's attempted assassination. Students occupy the campus for several weeks, refusing to let faculty members leave until they agree to restore Lemay's tenure. After this demand is met, the faculty members are released, however, Lemay and Antisea refuse to end the occupation of Galileo University until Project Genesis is canceled. On Jovis, 12 Mina 245 TE [2 August 2070], at 16:09, after over a month, Antisea's occupation of Galileo University is finally put down with violent force by elements of DefCom's 3rd Infantry Battalion, led by Lieutenant Colonel Isoroku Hamada, alongside officers of the Axiom Special Constabulary. Lemay is killed in the ensuing attack, footage of which goes viral across Mars as he is shot in the chest several times, along with images of his students being shot while surrendering to the Constabulary, a pregnant student being kicked to death by DefCom soldiers, and a number of protestors being detained with black bags thrown over their head. These students are found sols later, beaten to death so badly, they are only identified by their dental records. In total, nearly 150 students were killed on Bloody Jovis. Elements of the Euromartian Defense Forces (EmDF) militia arrived later in the evening, attempting to stop the killings. Hamada's forces were able to retreat and avoid encirclement by the EmDF, but for all intents and purposes, Axiom was now under EmDF control. On Veneris, 10 Mina 245 TE [31 July 2070], Lieutenant Colonel Hamada is reprimanded by MarsCom Supreme Commander Tobias Falco, who slaps Hamada after he attempts to justify his actions in Axiom. As a consequence, Falco, the longest-serving supreme commander in MarsCom history and easily its most respected and qualified officer, is demoted to General by GenSec Belloc, and is replaced as Supreme Commander by Elias Garza, a frequent guest to Gondo's shindigs. After the horror at Galileo University and mounting pressure by MarsCom security forces, paramilitary organizations across Mars come together to create the United Forces, consisting of the Euromartian Defense Forces, the Avalon Red Commandos, the Army of The North, the Army for the Salvation of the Argyre Basin, the Red Planet Revolutionary Ronin and the Code Red Coalition. Levi Brahm, the creator of the EmDF, is chosen as Commander-in-Chief of the United Forces, and begins vociferously calling for Reds across Mars to prepare for war and revolution, outright advocating for the killing of as many Blues as possible as justice for the horrors of Bloody Jovis. Almost immediately, Red activity - both in the form of peaceful demonstrations and violent riots and terrorist attacks, picks up across Mars, MarsCom personnel begin announcing their defections, and the "Red Armies" of UniFor begin actively mobilizing, even as they swell with new recruits to over a million fighters all across Mars. The Fall of Primus On Mercurii, 4 Mesha 245 TE [20 September 2070], at 13:24, during a vote on controversial "anti-terrorism" legislation in response to Brahm's declaration of war, which would enable MarsCom troops to arrest civilians without charge, Tobias Falco and a cadre of ex-DefCom officers and special forces (purged from MarsCom shortly after Falco's dismissal) launched a surprise attack on the MTO General Assembly. Nobody is killed. Except for Isoroku Hamada, who is shot execution-style in the back of the head, on camera, by Falco himself, after being sentenced to death for 150 counts of murder at Galileo University. Addressing the public with GenSec Belloc and former GenSec Gondo as hostages in the background, Commander Falco reveals his defection to the United Forces as their new Commander-in-Chief, declares the city of Primus completely under the control of the Primus Occupation Force, and demands that MarsCom lay down its arms and halt all operations pertaining to Project Genesis until further notice. All across Mars, the Reds of the United Forces move on MarsCom and MTO assets, and the first true battles of the Red-Blue War begin with Red suborbital drop troops laying siege to MarsCom facilities across the planet, deployed via PTP rockets, and known MarsCom personnel in Red territory are rounded up in their homes. Supreme Commander Elias Garza is assassinated, along with several other members of the MarsCom senior staff, sowing confusion across the MarsCom chain of command. On the list of persons meant to be captured by Falco's men during the Fall of Primus, is Nicholas Weaver, Belloc's Deputy GenSec, who is evacuated on the last train out of Primus by men loyal to General Aaron Lang, who Weaver meets in a private car while enroute to a secured spaceport just outside Primus, for transport to Neo-Tokyo. After arriving at the spaceport, shortly after Falco's address, Weaver issues a public address of his own, saying that he is now Acting General Secretary, and General Lang is thereby appointed the new Supreme Commander of MarsCom. Weaver rejects Falco's demands, and Lang is ordered to retake Primus and put down the Red uprisings across Mars by any means necessary The Red-Blue War has now officially begun. The Bullet Famine The first six months of the war were fierce, with the United Forces attempting to warm and overwhelm MarsCom and neutralize all Project Genesis assets as quickly as possible. Suborbital landing craft crossed halfway across the planet to deploy at distant points behind Blue lines, while improvised ballistic missiles attempted to destroy various depots, bases and manufacturing centers. The bloodiest battles of this period include the likes of the First and Second Battle of the Dragon's Lair, where Red forces attempted to capture MarsCom's primary fast-breeder complex and nuclear explosive storage facility, the "Dragon's Lair", only to be repulsed by the elite troops of CivCom's Nuclear Corps both times. At the Battle of Whiskey Peak, meanwhile, Sultan Al-Khateb attempted to lead ESCA on a Hannibal-esque offensive through the Claritas Mountains into New California, only to be halted by dug-in DefCom troops for weeks, before the Blues staged a risky counter-offensive by charging down the gravely slopes in improvised metal sleds while firing rockets and machine guns at the Reds, and ultimately forcing ESCA to retreat. Meanwhile, a combination of AoTN and EmDF forces in Eurabia, invaded the heavily-Blue region of Cydonia, with the goal of linking up with the successful CRC uprisings in Valles Marineris, and further still linking up with Falco's salient in Primus, only for UniFor's "Chryse United Front", to become bogged down in the rugged Margaritifer Terra further south, where the rough terrain inhibited the movement of their robo-tank blitzkrieg. And the Avalon Red Commandos occupied the Blue-aligned countries of Rama and Vahram [former Thai and Iranian colonies, respectively], while joining the EmDF and AoTN on offensives into western Kasei, hoping to assist the rebellion in the lowlands of Elysium Planitia, and potentially lay siege to Neo-Tokyo along the slopes of Elysium itself. However, MarsCom recovered from the initial shock of UniFor's opening moves and held out against UniFor's offensives until they ran out of momentum by mid-Rishabha 245 [mid-November 2070], when Commander Lang began MarsCom's counter-offensive, transferring thousands of non-combat personnel from CivCom and SciCom to bolster DefCom's small numbers, and devoting to them as much firepower as he could muster to try and wipe out the Red forces. However, attempts to retake Primus, Lang's number one goal, failed spectacularly, and against all odds, despite how many men and guns Lang would throw at Primus, he would have no choice but to simply blockade the city for most of the war. By Cancer of 245 [February of 2071], only six months into the conflict, both sides encountered a most unusual development. They were almost out of ammo. Despite both sides amassing large arsenals during the Antebellum arms race, early in the RBW, both sides were so profligate with their use of firearms and ammunition, they were forced to open their reserves. Simply put, the Reds were confident in their ability to defeat MarsCom very quickly, and hadn't counted on them holding out as long as they did, or on Lang wresting control of the organization so quickly and launching his counter-attacks. Likewise, Lang, known for his appetite for risks and gambles, attempted to crush the Reds in a series of pitched battles which succeeded in repelling Reds from the most critical MarsCom infrastructure, but he was unable to complete his counter-attacks before the onset of the Bullet Famine, around the same time as his enemies also began running low on ammo. The problems leading to the Bullet Famine were manifold, and would come to shape not only how the war was executed, but the conflict's ultimate resolution. In general, there were shortages of tools needed to produce bullets and firearms. Shortages of these tools were easily remedied, as all of the materials to create the tools themselves and the ammunition, were readily available on Mars...except for one. Specifically, the key ingredient in smokeless powder, nitrocellulose. The key ingredients in nitrocellulose are sulfuric and nitric acid. Nitric acid is made from one hydrogen, one nitrogen and three oxygen atoms. Nitrogen is uncommon on Mars, and was up to this point prioritized for breathing gasses and fertilizer. On a planet with air taxes, one can see where a sudden surge in demand for nitrogen-based compounds would cause political, economic and technical problems. Many observers on Earth assumed this would end the conflict, but to their shock and horror, the Martians continued to fight anyway. Now with blunt and edged weapons. Both MarsCom and UniFor issued massive numbers of swords, clubs, axes, spears, glaives, shields, bows and crossbows to the largesse of their foot soldiers. Rifles were rationed out to high-priority fighters, though it's a myth that only elites were given firearms at all. Even after firearms later returned to the battlefields of the RBW, melee weapons stuck around. Martian Warfare Combat on Mars varied from place to place, with the strongest factor coming down to the atmosphere. Or rather the lack thereof. In the lowest-lying regions of Mars, such as along the bottom of Valles Marineris, one merely needed insulated clothing and an oxygen mask, however, across most of Mars, one still needed a pressurized suit, helmet and oxygen supply. By the early 240s [2060s], the average suit was thin enough for clothing and armor to be worn over top, while the average combat helmet retained a full-face transparent open-view screen for ease of communicating without radios via facial expressions, but with a tiltable face-shield, usually with a small slit or set of eyeholes, for protection from enemy bullets, shrapnel, blunt force or, y'know, falling over and smashing one's helmet open. The war pushed both sides to invest very extensively into cybernetics. Decades before the war, Mars was a popular destination for Nyctalopes (cyborg separatists from Earth who tried to establish communities on harsh worlds where they could "be themselves" in their cybernetic forms), and the use of full-body prosthetics enabled colonists to survive outside with only the need of an oxygen mask. This would prove a major advantage in the conflict, as decompression proved to be the cause of ~80% of fatalities in the war, and so rates of full-somatization skyrocketed during the war as eager volunteers agreed to have their brains permanently placed into prosthetic bodies. The most iconic weapon of the Bullet Famine was the Type-45 "Man-Opener" Infantry Naginata, the most widely-issued melee weapon of the war, with nearly fifteen million produced by the end of the war. Designed for mass-production, the Type-45 was in fact simply a modular, single-edged steel blade, averaging 85 centimeters in length with a slight curve and a socket designed to be affixed to various lengths of pole of essentially any material, typically metal or plastic, but also occasionally bamboo. Purpose-made and standardized Type-45 poles did exist however, and were widely issued - designed in a similarly modular fashion, wherein they could be bisected in the middle and screwed back together so that troops could switch between longer poles for fighting outside, or shorter poles for fighting indoors, while with with improvised handles, it was fairly common for Man-Openers to be used as improvised short swords. Other common MarsCom weapons included the Type-45 Combat Club, a solid-steel, studded club designed to bypass the relatively soft Kevlar armor and ceramic plates still widely-issued at the time, and break enemy helmets. Due to the prevalent use of Type-45 Naginata blades as improvised swords, purpose-made swords eventually made their way to the battlefield, in the form of the Type-46 "Kasei-Gunto" Combat Sword, a nihonto-styled sword that would be primarily issued to MarsCom NCOs. Besides being useful for slashing, stabbing, chopping and hacking through enemy suits, the kasei-gunto was also handy for relaying orders, as the extremely thin atmosphere of the time meant that sound was unreliable on the battlefield, radios were not always reliable and armored visors obscuring the helmet screen limited the ability of soldiers to read lips, ergo swords were often used to direct troop movements in the thick of battle. UniFor adopted a more varied range of melee weapons. The EmDF mass-produced lots and lots of axes, hammers and maces. The ARC, meanwhile, preferred multi-purpose implements, such as the Mark II Combat Shovel (a portable, foldable weapon able to double as an ax, saw or a pick) or the Mark I "Combi-Clubs" (used for clubbing, stabbing and chopping the enemy, as well as doubling as a crowbar during cthe shores."

USER: [Use yourCan you analyze the text to understand what it is saying? "The latter months are ending as the sun hangs lazily between the clouds. All about are the sounds of commotion. Trains glide across crystal waters kicking up mist as robots roll between adobe houses and under splaying canopies and a broken sky. Turbine balloons float tethered above village communes as mechanics and whizz kids fiddle with prosthetics, tracing their hands across each mechanism's flowery reliefs. Refugees are shepherded beyond the great deserts that now swallow up much of the world, and in art nouveau palaces knights and reiters swear fealty to their handlers. Welcome back to the world of tomorrow stranger, though it's a bit different than how you remember. The year is 2173 AD. Almost a century and a half has passed since the Collapse Era began, though the exact time when it ended is in dispute, not that there's any global institution that could decide when that was anymore. While the "Collapse Era" is a broad term, beginning before the climate collapse itself kicked off in earnest, most historians set its beginning to the onset of the American War, a multi-generational conflict that engulfed the former United States and Canada between a panoply of pretender governments and post-American states of various kinds. The premature death of the world hegemon led to a discordant global period in which the major global institutions attempted to reorient themselves under the UN now based (mainly) out of Vienna. The new order was, in its own words] Rebirth of the phoenix: Russia, the Fourth Romewords, imperfect and reactive. The need to shore up faith in the global system, to ensure the protection of accounts, states, and economies reeling in the face of America's fall, and the pressure to balance the now more pronounced regional frameworks in Europe, Africa, and even the Caribbean meant that the post-American world was dominated more by MrImperatorRoma "Inan attempt to loot the great behemoth as it tore itself apart in order to keep itself going for as long as possible as opposed to creating anything enduring. In the midst of this world, Ivan the Terrible does not kill his eldest son in a spit of rage, and unknowingly set in motion a great deal of things, the most immediate result being a significantly lessened Time of Troubles (though some aspects still occur, they are lessened). The Ruriks persists on and so-forth, and smooth sailing is achieved with a bit of luck and Poland-Lithuania screwing up a bit on their own in the meanwhile. Under more competent and stable leadership Russia transitions into a more 'westernized' power much earlier on, as its attention is thrown more west and south, growingother parts of the world began to pull apart at the expense of Polish, Turkish and Austrian success. Butterflies flap and continue flapping. From then on, Russia's history sees earlier westernization, and a lot of sixes rolled in the 19th and 20th centuries with no meaningful superpower to oppose them, though they were not without challenge. Russia's mantle of 'Third Rome' became much more weighted, particularly afteredges. In the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia the Three Flags Army otherwise known as the Democratic Federation, tore through the region, even taking Mecca for a brief period of holding Constantinople from the Turks in the 19th century (Russia would, later, be briefly humiliatedtime. The outpouring of American refugees (which themselves presaged the larger refugee waves of the era) became a source of conflict as many nations especially in the global south fought over access to a new very skilled and cheap workforce that was up for grabs. China and peripheral nations jumped at the opportunity that had been presented and attempted to kitbash a Fifth Internationale, leading to a breakdown in relations with its former European partners, themselves attempting to recreate the once expansive American intelligence system by a coalition of European powers before bouncing back - alas the city would remain to elude them thereafter), and such a legacy continued wellimporting former members of the US Deep State into the future. France continues to ascend as the European hegemon west of the Oder river, joining Spanish expansion into North America at the expense of the English who are mostly confined to Borealia[1], Reynes[2] and Cascadia and the creatively-named colony of New England. There was still an alt-30 Years' War (called the Wars of Doctrine), a gradual rise in the European system over the rest of the world, an Enlightenment and the beginnings of industrial revolution in a comparable timeframe to OTL. Sans a French Revolution, or an American one; the collapse of the behemoth of Franco-Spanish colonial power in the Americas was put off well into the late-1800s when it coincided with rise of something very close to Marxism[3] and *socialist revolution both at home against the dual monarchy and on the plantations of the Carolinas and Mexico. The American Worker's Commonwealth remained something of a pariah for much of the early 20th century before it jumped up to international boogeyman as it sported notions of world-wide revolution against the Autocrats and Theocrats across the ocean, ending in violent collapse in the mid-21st. Successor states continue to struggle. A more religious world, the traditional faiths have shown no signs of falling out of favor anytime soon, although with the breath that humanity now reaches to, perhaps they won't be able to keep up with the times anymore. The Islamic World is even more heavily dominated by Sunni numerical superiority over other sects, while the Catholic sphere is making inroads into North America again after a long break. Various sects and offshoots sprout up in Africa, as does a rise of agnosticism and syncretic faiths. A less-than-wholesome Cult of Humanity is gaining traction in the underbellies of the major cities of the world: the emergence of Neural Networking and VR is a gateway to enlightenment they claim. They have been banned in a number of large countries. China and, rather surprisingly, Western Europe, are seeing a decline of atheism in favor of things such as the Cult. Apocalyptic cults come and go: even decades after the Great Floods over the 2090s people still tend to cite the next Heat Wave as the Real End of Days, while once-isolated and 'self-primitivised' communities in the former northern wildernesses of Siberia, Borealia and and Scandinavia now have to greet their new neighbors who've just moved up from the Burning Hot in Summer equator zone. Republicanism and democracy failed to catch on as prolific as it did OTL, and has in various forms generally been confined to the Americas and scatterings across the Old World for a while, or mangled together with monarchy, theocracy, thefederal military state, etc. into something unrecognizable. The technocracy, or its equivalent, has gained more traction, and is caught up by both what we would consider anarcho-syndicalist systems (the Vanguard State, less so), and leftist-monarchies. Monarchyframework. Meanwhile the war itself persists in various forms, often working in conjunction with some parliament form, or cushioned on the administration side of things by AI and a high-tech government (Brazil is the prime example). The British Empire, for what little impact it has on this world's history, nonetheless left a legacy of more liberally-minded states and systems that have been emulated and continue to exist today, particularly in Africa. Even France took some notes, laying the groundwork for the future European Continental Congress after a megalomaniac with dreams of conquest surged out of the fires the 1890 revolutions and reshuffled the map of Europe thrice. It's been two decades since war consumed Europe and the Near East: between the European Continental Congressional Union under the warhawkish and revanchist Aile Party, and its Turanist allies against the combined might of the Second Russian Empire, the nascent Arab Ummah and various peoples of the ECCU chafing under very authoritarian French rule. While not as destructive as the Global Wars of the 21st century, or even the Second Orbital War, this iteration of conflict saw the most extreme bouts of violence and political upheaval in recent memory. The war had mostly begun over various states looking to secede from the Union, by force if necessary, and only expanded into a nearly global conflict when the Aile Party's typical Russophobia was mixed with a bit of victory disease, while their Turanist allies surged into Egypt. The ECCU had the technological edge, one of the world's strongest air forces, and positive fanaticism (at least, on the part of those west of the Rhine), and saw some early success as neither the Russians nor Arabs had fought a 'proper' war in almost a century. That is, to say, they merely needed another dose of doctrinal modernization, and at any rate most Russian armies at the time were busy staring down those of the Mughals across Central Asia when hostilitiesquickly broke out west. Of course, the combinedof containment, spreading outside the United States and requiring first the largest UN military mission in history, and later on the transformation of what remained of NATO into an occupying organ, seizing control of Canada to maintain stability only to find itself at war with its own people. Then at last the climate collapse itself hit in earnest. Alongside this, economic pressures from the declining energy returns on fossil fuels compounded the costs states were taking on, and uneven population growth and demographic shifts obliterated long standing institutions in developed nations and undercut nascent regimes across the rest of the globe. World powers of the Arabs and Russians had the numerical and material advantage, and after progressively crushing the Franco-Turanist air forces the Allied militaries pushed the ECCU back over the Oder river and into its core regions. Defeat was exacerbated by the self-demilitarization of war-weary and Very protestant east German and Czech states (not helped by indiscriminate bombing missions by the ECCU air fleet). German nationalists rose up east of the Rhine, clashing with ECCU loyalists and Catholics, while the Scots and Northern England joined the Irish secessionists. To avoid defeat, the warhawks in Paris gave the green light forbecame more desperate and reckless, escalating to the point of bringing Kessler Syndrome down upon everyone to deny other nations vital infrastructure and going beyond that to even the use of merely a dozentactical nuclear weapons on their own soil to slow down the Allied armies, but this merely spelled the end of a United Europa, and talks of a ceasefire followed. Thoughenemies and rebellious populations. The more humanity held on and the harder its grip became the more the future slipped out of its fingers until it was brief, the costs of the war burned deep into Europe. The Aile Party was forced to accept the Allies' terms of surrender. The ECCU was disbanded, instead replaced by the Federation of the Rhine, with illusions of being a more equal organization than the late Union (alas, some things never quite change, but it is kind of better than before). Russia and Arabia carved up Europe afterwards: Iberia was balkanized between them, while the Russians placed puppet monarchs on the thrones of Spain, East Germany, Italy, Hungary and quietly absorbed Poland, for all its troubles, as an "economic dependency." The Irish, often the most ignored, merely asserted themselves as the new lead of the British Isles, the so-called Irish League actively scrubbing off any Anglo-Saxon lingering it can find for a more unified Celtic approach. Some are calling this the "Union of Greater Ireland and Northern England," though Irish League was shorter to work with, despite the irony. England proper is less populated than you'd expect: between war, and before that the Great Flood leading to mass emigration, the population has finally finished bottoming out and is slowly but surely growing again. London and the South remain positively loyalist, under the rule descended from the old Emergency Government and physically, just as politically, connected to the mainland due to a much more impressive and extensive Chunnel. The British Diaspora community is quite significant in Newfoundland. Ten big craters straddle the border between the Federation and East Germany: reminders of the horrors of atomic weaponry and a call by pacifists everywhere to Never Again go that route. This has had no bearing on the status of orbital weaponry by the major powers, "more efficient, more precise" they say. Of course, they're still dropping very heavy ordinance at high velocity regardless. While borders were changed by meetings in small rooms in unaffected nations, the chaos on the ground took longer to simmer down. The Federation has not shown any signs of a governmental collapse anytime soon (and in fact, is making a comeback for itself), among other new states, although the English Liberation Army continues its terror bombings against the Irish in Liverpool, Manchester, etc., and a splinter group occasionally bombs subways and airfields across the border against the Feds. The Russian-picked Hungarian monarch was not long for this world, instead being hijacked by *fascist types angry about being stifled out of territorial goals in the War (Slovakia, Croatia, etc.), with the newly-christened Sovereign Union having shut the rest of the world out. Anarchists challenge them and flirt with Transylvanian independence groups to unite, while students take up the streets of Budapest in protest: Moscow would have intervened long ago, but fear escalating matters in the Cold War[3]. And, surely, Hungary won't descend into civil war too, right? We say "too" because Spain is already a hotbed of world tension and civil war. The Russian "stooge king" is of thin legitimacy (Spain under the ECCU operated under its own constitutional monarchy, and the Russians merely brought in a relative of the late king to stay in power without having to make many system changes). While not a particularly weak character nor incompetent, he merely inherited a lot of problems associated with the post-war order. The Free Spanish Army, comprised of veterans of the War and various nationalist militias, never accepted stand-down orders and have been actively clashing with Royalists and anarchist types alike for their vision of a free and independent Spain (and oh, do they not like Catalonia's existence. Like, at all). The Society for Enlightenment, kind of a catch-all term for the alliance of republican and technocratic types that detest the monarchy and the FSA, is on its last legs now. Inspired by technocratic, efficient role models of Mughliyah and some African states, their cause began to shrivel up as the Islamic League began to cut support (certainly playing with fire by doing that in the Russian backyard). The Kingdom of God sprang up out of nowhere, although some point fingers at Paraguay. A state by Christians and for Christ, they've been siphoning off from the FSA's ranks and intend to do-away with these powers that drag Spain down and away from God's light. Bold pushes over the Portuguese border are surely not to bode well for them, given that falls into the Ummah's sphere. Russian airstrikes and an expeditionary force of the Imperial Marines keep the monarchy afloat, though the continuing conflict has done no wonders for the refugee crisis in the western Mediterranean. Major media outlets fail to accurately report on the conflict, to the majority the threat posed by the KoG is overblown, while the SoE and FSA are misunderstood or just lumped incorrectly with the Royalists and KoG factions. Admittedly things happen to be much nicer within the Second Empire. The world's single most powerful nation, invested heavily across the Solar System as an economic powerhouse and owning a fair share of orbital assets; to call this a Russian century is a bit of an understatement considering just how far-reaching the Neudanzig Zone has become. "A Second Empire?" you ask? Call it old hat, but Russia's track record with anything-but hadn't lasted very long: a bit of a flirtation with democracy around the 20th century before a crisis and one ambitious Chancellor agreed to the dissolution of the Russian Federation in favor of ascending to the Imperial throne under the new and bold Zhidkov dynasty. Oh, there have and continue to be opponents to the move, but the change had seen the Russia state steer itself out of steep decline (there's only so much success you can achieve before you get too big for your britches), and trading Siberian and Central Asia territory for massive and successful internal development programs has proven worth it. Education and employment are higher than ever, people are eating healthy again, the trains and trans-Siberian hyperways run on time; indeed, a positively centralized economy assisted in micromanagement by powerful supercomputers and even cyber-augmented individuals help keep the entire thing working like clockwork. Russian demographics also help make it capable for such a heavyweight to keep up with powers in Brazil, India, Arabia and China, although sheer scale and further penetration of the Final Frontier means it hasn't become very claustrophobic. Yet. There is a Duma parliament and all the standard fare one is to expect from any Imperial, and especially Russian, state that wants to make it past the 1920s - various degrees of internal autonomy too for ethnic groups, a whole construct that works more as a federation of things. Combined with a number of client states, off-Earth territories and close associates across Africa-Eurasia, this all makes up the Russian Federal Imperium. What makes a lot of this possible is the Neudanzig Economic Cooperative, a massive global and inter-solar organization to further bind the world's economies, trade, military blocs, academic institutions, R&D, high-end networks and space travel into the Russian orbit (orbit both political as well as literal there). With thirty member states on Earth and several orbital habitats in partnership, NEC ensures that the era of the Second Empire may be a long and prosperous one. NEC continues to expand, primarily into North America, by giving outreach to various post-Commonwealth states on a continent that has generally lagged behind the world significantly, while also establishing a more permanent Russian presence there. Joining the NEC are Russia's allies in the East: Japan, a very corporate Korea, and some post-Russian Federation states (with a more Western and MidEast mindset, Moscow is not as miffed over such losses as one might expect). These form the Vladivostok Economic Opportunity Sphere, which alongside Bengal serve as a sub-bloc of the Affiliation of Ordered Nations against the rising Chinese power, both militarily as well as economically. There are critics, particularly the Islamic League and PanAmUN, who denounce the NEC and the wider Affiliation of Ordered Nations as a Russian economic extortion zone, and even a "Greater Russian Empire." Of course, Russia is an Empire, say the men in Moscow. At any rate, the NEC and Affiliation do meet acclaim in North America and Africa, as states that have typically lagged now start to feel out opportunities for better internal development as well as potential for opportunities in space. There is, at the present time at least, a "Cold War" ongoing between the Affiliation and the Islamic League, often shortened to the just the "North" and "South" as much as we in OTL simplified the latter half of the 20th century into East and West. Less ideological (at least from the Russian perspective) and more geopolitical, economic and even religious. There may be other blocs unaligned or typically uninvolved states, but these two have emerged as the premiere powers of the day. Nuclear war is always a fear, although threats of world annihilation hang more in orbit and less on the ground. Weapons are more precise, but the devastation wrought would be nothing to scoff at, and anyway something like MAD had already been conceived to deter thoughts of one-sided Armageddon. Significant opposition against the Affiliation and the Empire presents itself in the form of the Islamic League. Mughliyah, the Arab Ummah, the East African Federation, Malaysia and many others: the Islamic World is on the rise once more. Initially more of a military alliance than a wholesale economic and somewhat globalist bloc, today it has become something of a mirror to the Russian network, giving an alternative to that world-system in favor of something more noticeably equal among the member states: of course beyond the major Islamic members that notion is a farce. Still, the sheer success of it has often be dubbed as a "Second Golden Age" for Islam as the belt of primarily Islamic nations running from the Sahel to Malaysia have begun to leave the 22nd century slump and rise into the stars, literally. The GPSENS further proves this as the League and states all around the world have managed remarkable feats of terraforming and engineering: a half-dozen space elevators, the Green-ing of the Sahara and Damenland[5], the rebuilding of Turkei and post-ECCU states. An extensive and high-tech upgrade to infrastructure can be seen running from the Mali sub-states all the way into India, Mosul making OTL's Dubai look small in comparison. The Erudite Union of Mughliyah is a technocratic, state-heavy beast with some democratic trappings and home to billions of souls living in what someone might incorrectly identify as a "proto-ecumenopolis" (although not continent-wide, a chain of impressive urban infrastructure arcs and stretches through the north, center and west). Erudite, as the Union is run by a cadre of genetically-"perfected" individuals (called Clairvoyants) who, in parallel to how the Russians do things, manage everything via the great Neural Network. Plenty join, but it is less hivemind and more, say, Internet of the Mind: a place of free-flowing information and quick communication, transfer of ideas and so-forth. Lack of privacy is not an issue, personalization is still possible, as is censorship: there are some things the State and the Council would rather keep behind closed doors. It runs in synthesis with the high-tech attitudes of the state. Ultimately to just Join you'll need the hardware, the innerworkings of the human mind we previously remained ignorant of are still a mystery. You're not going to be telepathically reading minds just on your own. Even then, the Clairvoyants many times over pale numerically when compared to Normals, and so AI in various levels of intelligence are sprinkled onto the system to cushion things. Mughliyah, ironically, is one of the less "faithful" members of the League: in part, due to the historically large Hindu population, but also a general trend of agnosticism and atheism that has been sweeping them over since the Great Floods decades prior. A love of technology not helping matters. A United Arab Ummah joins the Mughals in the so-called "CoDominium" of Islam: neo-legalists to the east, and the faithful to west. Arab unity is nothing new in the world, although the sheer scale of the current union is. After throwing the Turanists out, then-Egypt ascended to something of a new superpower on the global block by absorbing the northern Levant territories and netting profit out of the Sahara Reconstruction Project and the Omani Lakes. Much like the German Empire OTL, the rise of a united Arab people has shifted the old balance of power some, concerning a few of the traditional great powers, including even the Mughals. Unlike Mughliyah, the Arab Ummah is considerably more profound within both the League, GPSENS and the wider world. The Arabs are the more genuine rival to the Russian Empire and vice versa: active in space, leading the charge to develop Africa into the powerhouse of the world in cooperation with dozens of other countries, and with one of the world's largest and most advanced armed forces. A "moralistic" democracy, the Ummah is still at its heart more of a somewhat left-libertarian federation rather than a unitary entity: less Sharia Law and more live-and-let live. The Sahara has been reorganized to include a number of new states and territories within the Ummah: for Arabs, Tuaregs, Maghrebi, and a few for foreign peoples. Essentially farmers republics, settled by migrants en-masse. All of this green and ideal agricultural real estate is made possible by the Saharan Seas. One area the Ummah seems to excel at is science and culture. Mostly to Africa, but the results show: Arabic is the lingua franca for a great deal of African states and businesses outside the Neudanzig zone, while media networks, international education, R&D and space exploration projects help further connect an already very busy African continent together with the Arab World. Colonies on the moon and orbital habitats (or "Plants") further the reach of Cairo well into the final frontier. The Swahili-and-some-Bantu Islamic Federation forms the third major arm of the League, and kind of takes a backseat to things; let the Arabs and Mughals police the world. A loose federation centered on the major East Coast cities, there have been three different attempts at this: first being the old kingdom of Kilwa, the second following the retreat of Europeans from Africa, and the current third having come up some 40 years ago after many intense and wide-reaching reforms to the state. It is much less oligarchic and more democratic nowadays, although the rural interior remains more autonomous that the center would like. Economically it's a bustling place, and is hoping to keep the good going. The Federation has been using this success to take advantage of its geography: currently building another space elevator in conjunction with their neighbors in Jamhuuriyadda, while owning two of its own already (shared with the GPSENS of course). The Federation is one of the more active states in the solar system, keeping bases from Luna to Mars, and is mounting an expedition further beyond to kick the doors down on the Jovian moons, so-to-speak. The rest of Africa's been getting its shit together, and the 23rd century looks just as promising as the late 22nd was: a less enveloping history of European colonialism, and sans that legacy, more interest-at-home to rebuild and rediscover especially with far fewer regional conflicts to muddle that. Africa's become something of the Europe of this world. No EU, but generally regarded as one of the more advanced places outside of the major blocs, even if it's mostly divided between said blocs. States are more technocratic, progressive, and militarized. Besides that, many African nations are bound together by impressive infrastructure such as the space elevators, or the large rail lines and hyperways that crisscross the continent, and movement between borders is becoming a little more open nowadays. South Africa is mostly beyond its history of racial issues and wannabe-Draka phase (though decidedly more French ITTL demographically, and baroque in historical fetishism), having been torn down by revolution inspired by that in the Americas, and then mellowing out into a more advanced form of anarcho-syndicalism with various ethnic enclaves. They're joined by Mutapa to the north, and Damenland (the state) and a coalition of aboriginal states[6] to the east in Damenland (the continent) in a somewhat recent venture to stick their feet through the atmospheric door to the wider Solar System. The West African Gaian Combine, for a long time merely an Arab partner in the Sahara Projects, is attracting a great deal of immigration and foreign investments, and is selling land out like crazy to would-be farmers to become the next breadbasket of the world. Guinea is Russia's primary ally in the region, and has hobbled together a small sphere of Christian West African states around itself with varying degrees of cooperation with the wider Neudanzig Cooperative. The Middle East has settled down from the Continental War, and is less worse for wear post-War than Europe: more stable, even the Kurds and Turks have managed to settle out things, by a lot of enforced population expulsions by the victorious powers. Iran heads a regional grouping of conservative states around the Caspian, forming a convenient buffer between the Russian and Islamic blocs. The Arabs feel a bit shafted out of Turanist territories in Mesopotamia and around the Gulf, but then-Egypt had made significant gains anyway. Palestine and specifically Jerusalem is something of an International Zone under Arab custodianship, free to all peoples and demilitarized. The ultranationalist and highly belligerent Turanist Union has been split asunder after the War, with the Central Asian parts divided between Iran and Russia, while the West has been spun off as another Arab vassal. The Turks are generally receptive to the new Arab leadership, owing a lot to something like the Marshall Plan to help rebuild their economy once more. Constantinople has been disputed, again, and remains as such: the Russians claim as their rightful territory by virtue of being both the Third and Fourth Rome, while the actual people living there say "No we are not going to learn Russian, thank you." International tensions continue. India has not changed much borders-wise in centuries: the greatly Hindu and nationalist neo-Vijayanagarans have made it long and clear to the Mughals that attempts to absorb will never work out, and vice-versa, and in recent days have been content to just sink into the VR-Neural Networking craze after doling out the big bucks for mass-fusion power. Bengal seceded from Mughliyah during the period of the Great Flood and the Troubles that followed: negligence from Delhi they cite, though the eastern provinces had always been a bit troublesome to wrangle in, Muslim or not. The push to move into the Russian sphere has been bold, indeed perhaps too bold: the border is more of a tripwire now than either side would have expected possible just a few decades ago, and some have argued that it may have excited China to join the Cold War under a new, third bloc. And they aren't wrong: China, in combination with the Federation of the Rhine, is looking to form itself into the third major economic and political sphere in the Solar System, and has created an "orbital partnership" with Europe and a number of other countries across the world, mostly in the Pacific. A bit of a balance upsetter as after a century of general dormancy, China's "unbelievable" rise in the world is concerning to both the Islamic and Russian spheres, and threatens to unhinge a few things in the status quo: China is looking to not just have a piece of the orbital action, but also to reintegrate Tibet, Xinjiang and the remainder of Manchuria into the Union, and even form a third commercial zone by swaying countries in the Americas to China's worldview. And they have a lot of appeal too: far more democratic than either of the large blocs and less of an awful wealth gap presenting itself between lower, mid and upper classes, though admittedly this is a bit of a legacy from their days under a brief flirting with a form of anarcho-syndicalism (called the Peoples' Federal Unity). That history goes back well into the 20th century. The Rhenish Federation (re: Greater France 3.0) plays the tail to China's dog, but is not that far behind. While humiliated after the War, the Federation at least managed to keep its typical technological prowess with itself, which has proven beneficial for joint Sino-European solar ventures. There are several new stations planned to be placed in near-Earth orbit. Violence in nearby countries of course continues to remain a problem, with the Federation receiving the lion's share of refugees out of Spain. Naturally this has led to some backlash against inviting them, and many Spanish exiles tend to look back on the defunt ECCU fondly now. European unity hasn't been thrown entirely out the window yet, being a much wider concept for the victorious Allies to eradicate than, say, old-school warhawks (from the other guys, mind you), and some in Ireland, the Italian states and even the economically growing East German Principality begin to think of what could have been. The Americas are wild. The fall of the Worker's Commonwealth in the 2040s precipitated a brief period of violence from the Mojave to New England, and down as far south as Patagonia as new nations came to the fore, while dictators in previous client states struggled to hold down the masses now that Commonwealth support had dried up. The westernmost Workers' Republic of Montoya, home to the largest concentration of Jews in the world (a more meaningful version of the USSR's Jewish Autonomous Oblast from OTL), quickly became the center of a new, Western Zion, and has been attracting Jews from all over since. About as overly-armed per-pound (and person) and shaky with its neighbors as OTL Israel, but at least West Zion has good relations with Reynes, and even better domestic racial ones (Amerindians not any less shafted than they were OTL, they got along okay-ish with the Jews). More Anglophile republics further north were among the first to secede, and had a not-so-lovely period of ethnic cleansing of Francophiles and Spanish-speakers, and this was followed by counter-violence and a brief border war with Corazon (literally: heartland). At any rate, there are now several native republics in Borealia, if anything because with enough numbers they could fill out convenient buffer states - these First Nations are open to developing themselves further, whether that be with the Russians or Arabs. Newfoundland finds itself wanting to be further distanced from the rest of the continent more and more, and tends to act more buddy-buddy with its neighbors across the North Atlantic pond. Champlain had delved into horrid and poorly-planned ethnostate business, but thankfully the counter-movements within did succeed in stopping that without leading to an awful civil war, and now Champlain is one of the more democratic, progressive states in North America, even if that isn't saying much as they are mostly based on the model of the old ECCU. There's been talk of reconnecting with the Rhenish Federation, but conflicts in Carolina stall that, between Champlain moving in to "protect" the Francophile minority, and Corazon wishing to secure its pipelines (literal and figurative) to the Gulf, and hardly-subtle intentions of annexing it. Corazon, Mexico, Bogata and even Peru have a neat little "fourth superpower" in the works; mostly the American equivalent of the Eurasian Union, but there's no Putin. The Pan-American Union of Nations looks nice on paper, but tends to be laughably behind the rest of the world, technologically and in raw economic power, but also socially: generally viewed as Squares, and a more dated type of conservative atheistic-technocrats from a bygone age. They do own a space elevator and some Martian colonies, but they merely inherit the legacy of solar exploration that the old Commonwealth had championed, and with much more gusto. Corazon likes to view itself as the leader of PanAMUN, although Mexico is showing signs of something like the Chinese Miracle, and has the demographics to back that up, which Corazon tends to lack. Drugs are an issue, particularly further north, leading to talks of border closure in Newfoundland (none needed in New England, too many land mines on the border already). The Dialectic Order looms from behind its massive walls that encircle the area, patrolled by automated sentries. The one state of the old Commonwealth to never relinquish the old hardliner values: thanks to advances in Neural Networking, it now starts to look even worse than than its typical days as "North Korean Montana", and no one's been there is quite a while, as peaking over the border is grounds for being cut-down by said automated sentries. No one can be really bothered to ask what's going on in there either; best to leave some things be. Speculation ranges from everyone having starved and their defenses remaining true to their orders still, to the Supreme Leader effectively leading a hivemind of his subjects, forever enslaved to his or her will. Fun stuff. South America is more of that, but in an opposite direction: Brazil being closer to the Japan of this world, a sort of exaggeratedly high-tech place, where most decent and affordable car companies are from, and a producer of both good and sub-par animated series (the porn is, however, phenomenal). The cyberpunk/tech capital of the world naturally has all the amenities you'd expect, from dense urban areas to acrologies and high-speed trains or hyperways to move people around. Government and big business blur a lot, although the Amazon, everyone agreed, should probably be rebuilt (between human folly, and the Green Sahara messing up the remaining ecosystem). Brazil's also stupidly overpopulated, and is generally one of the more enthused Solar powers, building more and more orbital habitats. Even then, like the Mughals there's still plenty of potential in VR, but their urban sprawl was noted as a total mess in comparison. Acrologies, build more of those! Paraguay further south is... odd, to put it bluntly. The legacy of the Commonwealth's efforts to eradicate religion have lead to a generally reactionary backlash in many of its southern clients, and post-Breakup that has remained, perhaps too much. The Paraguayans aren't stuck there of course - it's not strictly totalitarian, but those that Join tend to be subliminally bombarded with messages about not missing Mass, verses of the holy scriptures, and general propaganda by the Cult of Humanity, wherever they go. It's nothing but bliss and work until the day you die. New Nederland is perhaps the least weird out of them all, only vaguely Dutch at this point due to things such as immigration and gradual demographic shifts: an alt-80 Years War can only keep changes that last so far (namely a half-hearted expulsion of many Dutchmen to the New World colonies). Even then, the Federation became something of a magnet for Dutch from the Netherlands following the Great Flood, and is joined by New Utrecht all the way over in Damenland as part of the Dutch Peoples Union. Even with the Great Flood years ago, efforts to dredge up lost coastlines are still underbaked, although Bengal had invested so significantly in such a project that it does not intent to half-ass it. Likewise, China pursues its own reclamation projects. Human settlements stretch out into the seas and even the seafloors as people look for alternatives to sprawling over the land (save room for agriculture), and dozens of major oceanic settlements rest off the coasts of the more prominent nations, the largest of which tops itself at nearly 300,000 people, part of China's more artificial alternative to land reclamation by just building a city over the sunken ones. They're all a bit new, and tend to run as a tempting alternative to inter-solar expansion. The Moon is of course heavily colonized at this point, and is hardly divided with any sense of organization or clarity between the major blocs and their habitats. Resources being rather limited, there was some need for cooperation between the habs, such as getting a functioning trans-Lunar maglev rail system to work, and the Lunar elevators have proven far more useful than initially believed. A bit of this has fostered some feelings of independence, although beyond the VR-happy and incredibly cyberized Lunar Network habs no one's really made much effort to create, say, a Republic of the Moon or something: lack of finances and brittle settlements deter such thoughts. Mining on the moon has become more and more expansive over the years, especially given the significant ease of transporting the materials into orbit, and in turn out to build new orbital habitats. More and more people move there as the habitats dig further underground and develop (given the fragility of surface domes to space debris), and often a need to afford greater expansion is stymied by competition for funds from orbital habitats, or God-forbid those rednecks on Mars. Perhaps the most expensive venture by-far was the building of a network of O'Neill cylinder-type stations at the L4 Lagrange point by an international organization of private firms and businesses looking to set up some sort of idealized, utopian society that will be far-and-away from Earth if the Cold War ever went hot. Flashy, if a bit isolationist, they wouldn't look too out of place in a Gundam setting. They do not, however, believe that simply being born in space is grounds for the establishment of some new kind of master race - no, those people are born into wealth, you see, just as they always have. Likewise space warfare and the vessels to wage it tend to be very boring as you might imagine in a more "realistic" future; no Zaku mobile suits or particle beams, although there are unmanned drone "fighters" that look like big cubes with thrusters and missiles attached. Mars is more of a frontier if anything, with the idea of terraforming it viewed as beyond daunting - certainly if the L4 Network is possible, then more *O'Neill cylinders are the prime alternative. That does not of course stop either the Russians, nor the Sino-European Cooperative from setting up something. The Cold War is entering something of a detente. While China's rise may be concerning indeed among the typical superpowers, the constant expenditure of resources, manpower, time and overall pretty amazing human achievements into low-orbit, lunar, and even Martian space projects has seen something of a shift in national outlook. While war may blurt out every so often, the notion that all of this would be for naught simply due to geopolitics, religion or ideology tends to fall flat... no one, truly, would want to see it undone, if ever. As the process continues on our world continues to look smaller in comparison: nothing but a lot of Big Empty out there, and there's really room for everyone. [1] That overlaps with today's Canada. [2] California [3] And later branches off into various sub-ideologies based on the initial premise. The Worker's Commonwealth was, for its initial run, a Trotskyist wet dream. [4] Why not the Shadow War? The Grand Chessboard? The Great Game? Well, sometimes you reach the ATL where some terms end up being used the same as OTL. [5] TTL's Australia [6] With Damenland's colonization being more multinational, the aboriginal peoples had a chance to survive. For one, thanks in part to no genocide against them by the colonizers. Compensated with land losses by the Damenland Sea Project with their own states right on the shores."gone."

USER: Can you explain this text? Read it and analyze the text to understand what it is saying?as you go along. "The latter months are ending as the sun hangs lazily between the clouds. All about are the sounds of commotion. Trains glide across crystal waters kicking up mist as robots roll between adobe houses and under splaying canopies and a broken sky. Turbine balloons float tethered above village communes as mechanics and whizz kids fiddle with prosthetics, tracing their hands across each mechanism's flowery reliefs. Refugees are shepherded beyond the great deserts that now swallow up much of the world, and in art nouveau palaces knights and reiters swear fealty to their handlers. Welcome back to the world of tomorrow stranger, though it's a bit different than how you remember. The year is 2173 AD. Almost a century and a half has passed since the Collapse Era began, though the exact time when it ended is in dispute, not that there's any global institution that could decide when that was anymore. While the "Collapse Era" is a broad term, beginning before the climate collapse itself kicked off in earnest, most historians set its beginning to the onset of the American War, a multi-generational conflict that engulfed the former United States and Canada between a panoply of pretender governments and post-American states of various kinds. The premature death of the world hegemon led to a discordant global period in which the major global institutions attempted to reorient themselves under the UN now based (mainly) out of Vienna. The new order was, in its own words, imperfect and reactive. The need to shore up faith in the global system, to ensure the protection of accounts, states, and economies reeling in the face of America's fall, and the pressure to balance the now more pronounced regional frameworks in Europe, Africa, and even the Caribbean meant that the post-American world was dominated more by an attempt to loot the great behemoth as it tore itself apart in order to keep itself going for as long as possible as opposed to creating anything enduring. In the midst of this other parts of the world began to pull apart at the edges. In the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia the Three Flags Army otherwise known as the Democratic Federation, tore through the region, even taking Mecca for a brief period of time. The outpouring of American refugees (which themselves presaged the larger refugee waves of the era) became a source of conflict as many nations especially in the global south fought over access to a new very skilled and cheap workforce that was up for grabs. China and peripheral nations jumped at the opportunity that had been presented and attempted to kitbash a Fifth Internationale, leading to a breakdown in relations with its former European partners, themselves attempting to recreate the once expansive American intelligence system by importing former members of the US Deep State into their new federal military framework. Meanwhile the war itself quickly broke out of containment, spreading outside the United States and requiring first the largest UN military mission in history, and later on the transformation of what remained of NATO into an occupying organ, seizing control of Canada to maintain stability only to find itself at war with its own people. Then at last the climate collapse itself hit in earnest. Alongside this, economic pressures from the declining energy returns on fossil fuels compounded the costs states were taking on, and uneven population growth and demographic shifts obliterated long standing institutions in developed nations and undercut nascent regimes across the rest of the globe. World powers became more desperate and reckless, escalating to the point of bringing Kessler Syndrome down upon everyone to deny other nations vital infrastructure and going beyond that to even the use of tactical nuclear weapons on their enemies and rebellious populations. The more humanity held on and the harder its grip became the more the future slipped out of its fingers until it was all gone."gone. Once again the year is 2173, the world population stands at just under 6.5 billion. A century or so is enough time to heal most wounds, provided one actually wants to do the healing. A casual observer or tourist to this world might be struck by how pleasant much of it looks. A view of the late 22nd century evinces a sense of a world painted in watercolor, something ripped out of a solarpunk moodboard or a Chobani commercial. Aesthetically and technologically speaking this is most certainly the case. It is a world of colorful adobe houses and limewashed buildings, of floating turbines, airwells, solar furnaces and pedal powered machines. A time of bionic and folk-craft motifs and stained glass opening up into rooms of optical computers and bio-forges. Of bacteria-phages and gmo molds and mushrooms breaking down the remnants of the old plasticene. Of consciously designed permaculture landscapes around communes on one end and flowing linear arcologies on the other. Socially though? Politically? That's a different story. The 22nd century is not a time of hand-holding, of positive psychology, utopian cosmopolitanism or down to earth anarchistic sentimentality. It is in many ways a return to form, a world emerging orthogonal from the past and its expectant future and containing bits of both on its own terms. It is a time of small states yet great empires, conservative communities, knightly orders and guild wars, at once an abandonment and refutation of the liberal and secular notions of the old globalized world in some cases and an attempt to race past them altogether in others. A time of close knit families and communes and bloody conflicts wiping out entire lands. Above all though it is a world that has abandoned the once popular maxim that "men are simply born for no reason". For in the 22nd century all men have an end that they know, be it prescribed by their state, their community, their liege, their party, or their God. When the collapse came it was primarily those great global institutions and the social sentiments that had emerged alongside them which fared the worst. The United Nations, the internet, the global economy and so on, yes even air traffic control, all were dashed against the rocks. While states would return, communities would persist and dig deep roots, the idea of the liberal citizen, of the neutral state, of institutions that exist solely for the purpose of their own survival that would not. Those that survived the collapse and came to seize the 22nd century were those that were able to orient their societies towards specific ends, either that of a destined future or of building a kind of humanity and social order within their borders. The closest equivalent we might have is that of a "theocracy" though this is not entirely accurate. While many 22nd century states are oriented towards a kind of religious end or according to a specific cosmology, just as many are not, and many "secular" orders of the 22nd century (such a term being outmoded) in fact evolved out of the practical administrative structures of 21st century religious movements. Things are never quite so straightforward. The 22nd century itself is not even dominated by great powers in the way we would understand the word. For while one might look at a map and see a collection of states which contest land and people, the real powers of the era are different. As stated previously, the major multinational institutions and broader global framework of the 21st century did not survive, but there were some hangers on of the complex globalized society of the past that were able to maintain control and entrench themselves as modern superpowers by the 22nd century. These would turn out to be the descendants of the major charities and development banks, who having their own land, property, and people scattered across the world weathered the collapse and only became more powerful as the new order established itself. "

USER: Can you[Response must be written as a short blurb.] "Extract from recorded lecture on "The Imp in Your Pocket" by Michael Mantarakis, recorded November 16th, 2020-- Gold! Gold has excited the imaginations of mankind since our earliest, forgotten years. The Noble Metal, which the ancients thought always remained aloof and did not combine with others - not entirely true, but combinations are relatively rare compared to other metals - and which stood out due to its colour and lustre. The scientists now tell us that the colour arises from Webb-Popham relativistic effects; I could not explain that, as it's not my area of expertise, but imagine that. The theory which changed our understanding of the universe was always on open display before us, if we had had the eyes to see, and gave rise to the colour of gold which has fascinated and obsessed us for thousands of years.[1] As soon as there was civilisation of any kind, be it Sumer or ancient Egypt or even the lesser-known Proto-Caucasians, we find elaborate tombs with kings and princes buried with gold jewellery.[2] We all know the cautionary myth of King Midas from my people, who turned everything he touched to gold - whether he wanted to or not. It is most probably an origin myth to explain the rivers of the lands of Lydia and Phrygia, in modern Anatolia in the Eternal State, producing gold that made the later King Croesus legendarily rich. Gold is so central to our imagination of wealth that we frequently forget that the reason why it is so valuable is its rarity. Perhaps that sounds obvious, but I don't think people appreciate just how rare gold is. Ninety percent of all the gold ever mined in human history was mined since the California Goldrush in 1818-19.[3] Even today, all the gold ever mined would fit in a cube about seventy feet on each side. Or, to put it another way, about enough to fill just under four Global Games swimming pools.[4] (Shocked audience reaction) Before 1818, it'd have fitted into a cube only thirty or so feet on each side - which would easily fit into the House of Commons chamber, for example. Nobody guess how long it would stay there before the politicians decided to start taxing it. (Audience laughter) But just think about that, all the gold in the world in one place would only be that much. Now remember all the depictions in fiction that have shown pirates or unscrupulous wealthy villains with ships full, vaults full, of gold.[4] To the economically literate, such scenes are as absurd as if one watched a film in which one character was twenty feet tall and drove a mobile powered by eggs and nobody seemed to notice or comment on it! Gold's scarcity is what makes it so valuable and so relatively stable, for the most part, but also causes problems with using it as a currency. When we tie the money in circulation to a specific commodity - especially a highly limited one - that limits our economic growth. Of course, it was never the case that when currency was backed by a precious metal, the amount of money in circulation was tied to the amount of that metal alone. The key principle of banking is that a bank can always theoretically pay out commodity coinage, which is inherently valuable, such as gold or silver coins, to any account holder who walks in and asks for it. This works, providing that not every account holder walks in at once and asks for it, because the bank is moving their limited amount of money around in order to fulfil transactions elsewhere. If this text? Readdoes happen, in the case of a 'run on the bank', then the bank will be unable to refund them all and will collapse, unless it and analyze as you go along. "The latter months are ending as the sun hangs lazily between the clouds. All about are the sounds of commotion. Trains glide across crystal waters kickingis rescued by emergency funds from elsewhere. (Audience grumbles) Nonetheless, even though a small amount of gold can physically stay in the vault of one bank and be theoretically loaned out again and again through promissory notes, fixing currency to a limited commodity still inherently limits economic growth. In order to do that with gold, or any commodity, of course, one already requires a stable banking system and a state to back it up mist as robots roll between adobe houses and under splaying canopies and a broken sky. Turbine balloons float tethered above village communes as mechanics and whizz kids fiddle with prosthetics, tracing their hands across each mechanism's flowery reliefs. Refugees are shepherded beyond the great deserts that now swallow- though historically banks have backed up states as well! For much of the world, and in art nouveau palaces knights and reiters swear fealty to their handlers. Welcome back to the world of tomorrow stranger, though it's a bit different than how you remember. The year is 2173 AD. Almost a century and a half has passed since the Collapse Era began, though the exact time when it ended is in dispute, not that there's any global institution thathistory, the only state strong and stable enough to be able to operate such a system was China. China could decide when that was anymore. While the "Collapse Era" is a broad term, beginningissue fiat currency, paper money, for internal use long before the climate collapse itself kicked off in earnest, most historians set its beginning to the onset of the American War, a multi-generational conflict that engulfed the former United States and Canada between a panoply of pretender governments and post-American states of various kinds. The premature death of the world hegemon led to a discordant global period in which the major global institutions attempted to reorient themselves under the UN now based (mainly) out of Vienna. The new order was, inanyone in Europe trusted it. Even the Roman Empire found its own words, imperfect and reactive.economy disrupted by forces from the China trade.[5] The need to shore up faith in the global system, to ensure the protection of accounts, states, and economies reeling in the face of America's fall, and the pressure to balance the nowChinese economy was always founded on silver as the chief commodity, along with silk early on, but silver ingots were hoarded rather than exchanged until the Ming dynasty. Even though China was still largely inward-looking at this time, we can see how the interaction of European and Novamundine influences with Chinese ones helped set the monetary policy of the later world. The Spanish had obtained vast silver mines from the Novamund and silver began to flood into the Far East as a means of exchange. The Ming statesman Wang Juzheng implemented what we would later recognise as China's silver standard, collecting taxes in silver taels rather than rice. It had been an indirect European influence, by making silver more pronounced regional frameworks in Europe, Africa, and even the Caribbean meant that the post-American world was dominated more by an attempt to loot the great behemoth as it tore itself apart in order to keep itself going for as long as possible as opposed to creating anything enduring. In the midst of this other parts of the world began to pull apart at the edges. In the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia the Three Flags Army otherwise known as the Democratic Federation, tore through the region, even taking Mecca for a brief period of time. The outpouring of American refugees (which themselves presaged the larger refugee waves of the era) became a source of conflict as many nations especially in the global south fought over access to a new very skilled and cheap workforce that was up for grabs. China and peripheral nations jumped at the opportunityavailable, that had helped set China's economic policy; in later centuries, this attachment to silver would feed back, as China in turn influenced the West. China is the best-known example of a silver standard economy, but silver was the basis of a lot more economies than gold throughout history, from the Sumerians onwards. Gold first rose to prominence as the primary basis of an economy due to an accidental decision by famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton, who was also Master of the Royal Mint at the time, which undervalued silver in England compared to gold. 'Bad money drove out good' and England, then a rising power, became dependent on gold, while silver coins flowed out of the country to Europe as they could be melted down for higher than their face value. This naturally also influenced matters here in what would become the ENA. This early push for gold was abortive, though, when England was invaded by the French and she lost much of her gold reserves.[6] Europe in general had been presented and attempted to kitbash a Fifth Internationale, leading to a breakdown in relations with its formerdamaged and exhausted by the Jacobin Wars, while China had been unexpectedly opened to further trade by the rebellion during the Three Emperors' War that gave rise to the Nanfeng dynasty.[7] Visionary leaders in both Europe and China realised that this was an opportunity to help rebuild after their respective wars, and trade between China - those parts controlled by the Nanfeng - and the rest of the world dramatically accelerated during this period. Prior to this point, China under the old Qing dynasty had been backward, inward-looking and reluctant to trade. The Qing might be foreign invaders, Manchus, but despite that, or because of that, they seemed eager to embrace the more autarkic parts of Confucianism, more than many of the native Han dynasties in fact. The Qing steadily reduced trade to only one city, Canton, modern Hanjing, and would only accept one commodity, silver - though from the ENA, Appalachian ginseng was a second trade commodity.[8] At the same time, European partners, themselves attempting to recreate the once expansive American intelligence system by importing former members of the US Deep State into their new federal military framework. Meanwhile the war itself quickly broke out of containment, spreading outside the United States and requiring first the largest UN military mission in history, and later on the transformation of what remained of NATO into an occupying organ, seizing control of Canada to maintain stability only to find itself at war with its own people. Then at last the climate collapse itself hit in earnest. Alongside this, economic pressures from the declining energy returns on fossil fuels compounded the costs states were taking on, and uneven population growth and demographic shifts obliterated long standing institutions in developed nations and undercut nascent regimes across the rest of the globe. Worldand Novamundine powers became more desperate and reckless, escalating toand more hungry and impatient for China's bounty of trade products; tea, porcelain, lacquerware and silk chief among them. The trade was seen as nothing more than a trickle to Europeans and treasuries were being emptied of silver. Unscrupulous traders began illegally trading the drug opium to Chinese merchants. The Qing government proved ineffectual at cracking down on this, encouraging others to try the same, and even the more legitimate major trading companies tried it. The British East India Company infamously caused a famine in Bengal in 1770 by forcing farmers to grow opium poppies instead of food, all to feed the ravenous trade balance. The Three Emperors' War and the rise of the Nanfeng, the later Feng, changed all that. The Feng might have been birthed in part by secret societies with the romantic goal of overthrowing foreign rule, but they were also run by hard-headed businessmen who knew Europeans better than anyone in China, and also knew how to strike a deal. Both Nanfeng and Europeans were in weak positions. Twenty years earlier or later, a country like France could have sent a fleet to try to enforce its will on the Chinese traders. (Audience reaction) Yes, I mean no disrespect to the Chinese people by saying so, I don't seek to compare them to a country like Yapon! But things were in turmoil at the time and a strong foreign force could have forced an unequal deal on the Nanfeng. Fortunately for China, damaged Europe was in no place to do so. A new trading arrangement grew up as a partnership of equals, as both Europe and the Nanfeng rebuilt and rose again together, and we in the Novamund rose to join them. The Nanfeng were able to severely limit the opium trade and actually enforce it, unlike their Qing predecessors; though opium was valuable, the European traders mostly recognised that it was better to stick to providing the less valuable but more reliable trade goods which the Qing had previously turned their noses up at. The old Dutch were the only ones who tried to carry on the opium trade surreptitiously, and we all know what happened to them. The Nanfeng proved that they could force a country out of the China trade if it broke its treaty obligations, and the fact that the Dutch collapsed soon afterwards in the Popular Wars rammed the point of bringing Kessler Syndromehome. I mention all this because Nanfeng China, Feng China's, integration into a global economy changed everything. China had never truly been as aloof from the world as its rulers might like to think, but this direct involvement was a new concept altogether. China was not merely a silver sink anymore, but a part of an economic system, with silver flowing out as well as in, paying for European weapons and training and steam technology. And from the Novamund as well, of course. Silver was the primary exchange commodity of world trade, with China also influencing Siam and, later, the Indian nations after the Great Jihad after the establishment of their colony of Jushina. One might have expected a change to a gold standard to be driven by the repeated goldrushes of the nineteenth century. This certainly dramatically increased the gold supply and made gold more viable as a means of currency exchange. In the short term, however, many goldrushes close together caused a destabilisation in the price of gold. Neither precious metal alone could entirely supply the exchange needs of the rapidly-industrialising and -developing interior of this nation and what was then the UPSA. Local banks were often set up, illegally issuing paper money backed by nothing more than wishful thinking, frequently collapsing and wiping out savings every time there was an economic ripple.[9] But they existed because people needed the ability to save and invest to keep up with the pace of economic development, driven in part by new technology such as steam engines and railways. Floods of immigrants left Europe for here in the ENA, the UPSA and Antipodea. The situation was highly volatile. The Electrum Standard, which still carries connotations of being 'the good old days' whose passing is bemoaned by greybeards - even though no-one lives now for truly remembers it - formally came about later than many imagine it did, in 1883.[10] Informally, however, it had already begun to form organically. The repeated injection of large quantities of gold into the global economy, and the fact that that economy was gradually incorporating more and more of the world, gradually led to an increased use of gold to underwrite the industrialised economies of the Arc of Power here in the ENA, the River Plate in the UPSA, the coal belt of northwestern Europe, and the Moscow-Petrograd corridor in Russia. At the same time, Nanfeng China continued to increase in power and importance and still ran her trade on a silver basis. Silver mines across the New World, most famously perhaps in the Californian province of Argentina, continued to produce and farmers remained wedded to silver as an easier means of exchange.[11] Diamonds and other gemstones were also entering the world economy in much larger quantities than before, largely from the Cape Republic as well as the gem mines of Cambodia in the Siamese Empire. Initially this led to widespread economic disruption, before cartels agreed to limit the diamond supplies; later, after the Societist takeover of several African diamond-producing regions,[12] the Combine would use control of this market as an economic weapon, like their better-known attempted use of oil. The volatility of the world economic situation in 1883 was demonstrated by the fact that a global depression, the Panic of 1883, was set off by the relatively minor incident of isolated crop failures due to a volcanic eruption in the Nusantara. The exchange rate of gold to silver had proved too unstable, and this had led to several bank collapses. Now, for the first time, world powers met in Antwerp to agree to fix the gold-to-silver standard exchange, initially at 15:1. Hopes that this could be maintained indefinitely proved fruitless, however, necessitating regular meetings of what became known as the World Numismatics Council (Audience reaction) Of course, this was before the rise of Societism made terms like that politically charged. Yes, every three years or so the WNC would meet to fix the rate of exchange. There was still a lag, leading to situations like the earlier one in England I mentioned, where silver coins might become more inherently valuable than their face value and lead to illegal currency flows and melting down upon everyone to denyto ingots. Gold became more and more important as a more stable rate of mining from Africa replaced the stop-start disruption of the goldrushes, and even China began unofficial defining its external markets in terms of gold. The global gold market would not be affected by issues of supply - other than mines pausing operations due to war - until the Trondek goldrush of 1933.[13] The Antwerp System had its flaws, but it served to moderate global financial volatility until it failed with the outbreak of the Pandoric War in 1896.[14] Perhaps the surprising part is that the Electrum Standard did not collapse immediately as more and more powerful nations suspended interconvertibility and began to print fiat money to fund their war efforts. An important factor in keeping the heart of the system stable was the neutrality of France and the Marseilles Protocol. (Audience reaction) Yes, France's position has been much-criticised on moral grounds, but in terms of the world's economy, a league of armed neutrality backed by what was then the biggest economy on Earth meant that trade could continue to function under the wartime conditions. By effectively threatening to intervene on one side or the other to tip the balance, the French - backed up by the Italians and a host of minor allies - were able to protect the status of neutral shipping on the high seas. This had a number of consequences. For example, attempts to blockade import-dependent nations such as Germany into starvation all failed. No power was willing to risk sinking a ship sailing an obviously fictitious neutral flag of convenience lest it antagonise the French. This worked both ways, of course; in order to constitute a credible threat, the French had to scatter their forces across the world to be ready to intervene, which meant that they were unable to put down the Dufresnais Revolution, for example. Because France never suspended the Electrum Standard within its own economic bloc, the French economy became even more dominant over the course of the war as the ENA, UPSA and China all began to exhaust their reserves. However, France then fell into a trap. When the UPSA was replaced with the Societist Combine, the Combine defaulted on most Meridian debts - which largely came at the expense of France, whose banks had continued to lend to Meridians throughout the war. (Indistinct reaction from audience) Well, some would say so, perhaps. Prime Minister Leclerc built the International Expeditionary Force out of Marseilles Protocol troops and sent it to the Combine after the war, not to try to suppress Societism as is often thought today, but to try to secure French-owned businesses and French subjects there. In the end, this effort was largely a failure. The French economy had strengthened due to not suffering the same rise in military spending to fund the Pandoric War effort that other nations vital infrastructure and going beyondhad, but France just ended up spending on its military for the IEF intervention instead. Nations attempted to rebuild the Antwerp System after the war, more out of a vague sense of wishful thinking than with any plan in mind. Nostalgics associated the Electrum Standard with prosperity, and confused cause and effect.[15] The loss of the UPSA and much of the Hermandad to the interconnected global economy, as Alfarus built his inward-looking 'udarkismo' system, was an elephant in the room that to even the use of tactical nuclear weaponsgradually began to undermine the standard. The reconstructed Antwerp System limped on, its obvious fragilities ignored by those who did not wish to see them, until 1917. The Panic of 1917 was triggered by Guatemala defaulting on a war reparations payment coupled to a political and economic crisis in Corea. However, something similar could have happened at any time, if enough isolated problems had come together at once so that financiers could not try to head them off. Discussing the response to the Panic of 1917 would take more than one lecture in itself, but it dealt a fatal blow to the Electrum Standard. While still publicly professing that any suspension in the system was temporary, national banks once again suspended interconvertibility with gold and silver and began to print fiat money to increase the money supply. This stabilised creaking parts of the economy in the short term, but also led to rapid inflation. The Panic of 1917 exposed a double standard in how financiers and markets responded to this intervention. Small and friendless nations could not unilaterally print money without sparking bank runs and collapses as capital fled the country for stabler markets. By contrast, great powers such as France, Russia and the ENA were said to have their enemies and rebellious populations.currencies 'backed by steel' rather than gold or silver; in other words, their military power was itself regarded as a security to protect investments and prevent internal mob violence from overturning banks. This allowed these countries to intervene to protect the economies of smaller allies via loans, while making their governments beholden to them. China also did this, notably to Corea, but China itself had probably suffered the least of the major powers in the Panic to begin with. The most dramatic collapse in the Panic came in Belgium, precisely because King Maximilian IV acted as though Belgium was a great power and immune to criticism, while ignoring the fact that his own heavy-handed interventions in politics had made investors and banks jittery. He arrogantly rejected French financial aid which might have saved his position. The obviously-rigged election of 1918 led to a public uprising which was put down only with Russian help, effectively reducing Belgium to a Russian puppet and setting it on the course for destruction in the Black Twenties.[16] This unstable state of fiat currency being the global norm would continue throughout the Black Twenties, as both war and plague response consumed public funds. Inflation and debt both skyrocketed. Despite China and Siam's neutrality, the economic chaos began to bleed into their economies as well. China's sometimes overly strict responses to plague outbreaks damaged its economy and made it a hostile market to European and American investors who otherwise might have seen China as a safe harbour with the war back home. Societist success in the War of 1926 (Audience reaction) made Alfaran udarkismo seem more humanity held on and the harder its gripattractive to the nations, and some, such as Corea and later Panchala, would attempt to imitate it - with disastrous consequences, for those nations did not have access to a large chunk of the world's resources in bondage as Alfarus did. The post-Black Twenties boom resulted in increased prosperity but not, initially, increased stability. The volatility of the fiat-based economy continued, though many had gotten used to stop-start inflation and regular currency and wage crises as the 'new normal' as it had been over a decade since the Panic of 1917. What initially prompted a rethink was what became the more the future slipped out of its fingers untilknown as the Shock of 1934, an economic wobble probably caused initially by rumours about French trade policy with respect to Bisnaga and Peousie, coupled to the aftereffects of the Trondek goldrush. Financial experts generally agree that this could have been a new major contraction if it washad not been tackled by quick and audacious action by the central banks of France, Russia and the Empire. China had still yet to fully re-engage in the global markets following the political crisis of 1930-31, which would be significant. It was remarked at the time that, despite those three great powers having been at each others' throats not long ago, their bankers had acted for the good of all, because maintaining a stable global economy was in the interests of all gone. Once again the year is 2173, the world population stands at just under 6.5 billion. A century orpeople. This ultimately led to Jerzy Rytlewski's 'Carltonist Pacifism', a critique and counter to Societism in which Rytlewski argues that this impetus towards economic cooperation could subsume military goals and so is enough time to heal most wounds, provided one actually wants to do the healing. A casual observer or tourist to this world might be struck by how pleasant much of it looks. A view of the late 22nd century evinces a sense of a world painted in watercolor, something ripped out of a solarpunk moodboard or a Chobani commercial. Aesthetically and technologically speaking this is most certainly the case. It is a world of colorful adobe houses and limewashed buildings, of floating turbines, airwells, solar furnaces and pedal powered machines. A time of bionic and folk-craft motifs and stained glass opening up into rooms of optical computers and bio-forges.prevent war. Of bacteria-phages and gmo molds and mushrooms breaking down the remnants of the old plasticene. Of consciously designed permaculture landscapes around communes on one end and flowing linear arcologies on the other. Socially though? Politically? That's a different story. The 22nd century is not a time of hand-holding, of positive psychology, utopian cosmopolitanism or down to earth anarchistic sentimentality. It iscourse, in many ways a return to form, a world emerging orthogonalit was just a restatement of similar ideas from the past and its expectant future and containing bits of both onLong Peace, which the Societists had already rejected - that long period of peace for economically-driven reasons had eventually ended. I digress. The sequence of events that led to the establishment of the Gold Standard is a complicated, confusing - and frequently confused - one. There are many times I have read monogrammes by otherwise intelligent writers who confidently state causes for this establishment, causes which had not actually happened yet! Sometimes it can be difficult to separate causes and consequences, as this was an eventful period and a broad shift in one direction can be hard to unpick. Nowadays the ASL likes to stir up controversy among historians for its own terms. Itsake, but the so-called 'Auric Controversy' over the Gold Standard is a time of smallas old as the standard itself. Many economic historians argue that the establishment of the standard possessed an almost Paleian inevitability to it, driven by the changing nature of the world market and the increased gold supply. Many others argue, with equal eloquence, that the establishment of the standard was an unlikely event which came about only because of a precise combination of chance factors, such as the identities of individual treasury ministers and the absence of China from the table at a critical time. The latter factor was certainly significant. China's use of silver for its internal market had always helped underpin the Electrum Standard, but following plague and crisis there, this factor in favour of a role for silver in the world markets had declined. The old UPSA had also been a substantial voice in favour of silver, being a major producer of the metal from the mines in its client states yet great empires, conservative communities, knightly orders and guild wars, at once an abandonment and refutation of the liberal and secular notions of the old globalized world in some cases and an attempt to race past them altogether in others. A time of close knit families and communes and bloody conflicts wiping out entire lands. Above allof Peru and (to a lesser extent) Mexico.[17] The 'Golden Sun and Silver Torch', though with other symbolic meanings to the Meridians, could also be seen as a declaration in favour of the Electrum Standard. The UPSA had been replaced with the udarkist Combine, which had its own ideas about currency standards which I'll get to later. Even if the Combine had been participating in these debates, it is a world that has abandoned the once popular maxim that "men are simply bornnow had access to substantially more gold than the UPSA had, possessing the Congo and beginning to develop gold mines there. In the absence of the Chinese and Meridian voices pushing for no reason". For in the 22nd century all men have an end that they know, be it prescribed by their state, their community, their liege, their party, or their God. When the collapse came it was primarily those great global institutions and the social sentiments that had emerged alongside them which fared the worst. The United Nations, the internet, the global economy and so on, yes even air traffic control, all were dashed against the rocks. While states would return, communities would persist and dig deep roots, the idea of the liberal citizen, of the neutral state, of institutions that exist solely for the purpose of their own survival that would not. Those that survived the collapse and came to seize the 22nd century were those that were able to orient their societies towards specific ends, either that of a destined future or of building a kind of humanity and social order within their borders. The closest equivalent we might have is that of a "theocracy" though this is not entirely accurate. While many 22nd century states are oriented towards a kind of religious end or according to a specific cosmology, just as many are not, and many "secular" orders of the 22nd century (such a term being outmoded) in fact evolved out of the practical administrative structures of 21st century religious movements. Things are never quite so straightforward. The 22nd century itself is not evensilver, the debate was now dominated by greatthe Empire, France and Russia. Within those nations were internal voices for silver, but these too were growing less important. Continental France had mostly used gold internally, with silver being more important for colonial trade with and within Bisnaga.[18] As it was now clear that the wind was blowing in favour of Bisnagi independence, a standard based on gold only seemed more in the interest of propping up the domestic French economy. Here in the Empire, the primary supporters of silver had been farmers and miners in the West, away from the Arc of Power. There had always been a loud minority in the industrialised east arguing for a gold standard, but this had not seemed politically feasible when the other world powers in the way wewere wedded to electrum. Now, a few things had changed. Industry was spreading to more cities in the interior, the farming sector had been heavily disrupted by the Black Twenties, and the party system had been shattered by both the war and then electoral reform. There was no coherent pro-silver voter bloc anymore; even though the leading Pioneer party was drawing on what should have been pro-silver demographics, in this brave new world of coalitions, the government was also being backed by pro-gold east coasters. Opposition to the gold standard would understand the word.mostly come on the Confederal level of politics, with the eventual establishment of the Agrarian Party of Michigan and the Argentine Party of Westernesse and its neighbours,[19] which would go on to merge into today's Agri-Argent Party. For while one might look at a map and see a collection of states which contest land and people, the real powers of the era are different. As stated previously, the major multinational institutions and broader global framework of the 21st century didthe moment, pro-gold voices were in the majority. In Russia, things were not survive,so democratic, of course, but there were similar factors involving the industrialisation of the interior and wealthy industrialists gaining an increasingly loud voice in the Imperial Soviet at the expense of traditional aristocrats. Russia also brought along Romulan Italy as an important partner, and Italy also argued in favour of gold. By far, though, the single biggest factor was simply that people were sick of economic volatility and wanted to try something new to try to stabilise the world markets. Simply trying to rebuild the glory days of the Antwerp System from the Long Peace had already been showed to be flawed. Now, important voices such as French Prime Minister (and former Controller-General) Loic Caouissin argued that the world had changed and a monometallic gold-based standard would bring stability and fend off currency crises. Caouissin pointed to the vastly increased supply of gold to the world market from Perousie, the Cape Republic, Russia, Natal, and the Empire. The Trondek goldrush had also not destabilised the price of gold to the point that many had predicted. At the Passau Conference of 1935, representatives from over a dozen governments agreed the so-called 'Passau System', which would be ratified by all major economies except the Combine over the next couple of years.[20] The Passau System locked all currencies to a fixed rate of exchange with gold, with the goal of prevent competitive currency devaluations and tying down inflation. In practice, a 3% rate of deviation was permitted in case of emergency, with nations expected to take action to remedy any shift beyond this by buying foreign currency. Where the Passau System struggled was that the nations were, understandably, reluctant to create any kind of arbitration body to take action against any who violated the rules. Despite this, compromise built on compromise until the Transoceanic Office for Financial Standards (TOFS) was created and ratified in 1936.[21] TOFS's ruling executive consisted of a council of eight, with permanent seats for representatives of the Empire, Russia and France and five rotating members drawn from other participating nations. China initially refused to take part, attempting to continue its former policies. In 1940, however, the Chinese government U-turned and joined TOFS in return for a constitutional change to create an existing permanent seat, saving face. Part of the reason for China's move was the increasing development of gold mines in China's own territory, leading the Gold Standard to become more favourable towards Chinese interests. I should explain that one part of the shift to gold was that it banned or restricted the coinage of 'free silver' as it had been known. Historically, in most nations it would be possible to take a silver ingot to a mint and have it minted into legal-tender silver coins. The Passau System, by contrast, heavily restricted this former right, which was viewed with outrage in more silver-dependent parts of the world. The gold-based Passau System would form the foundation for the world economy for more than twenty years, from 1935 until the Crash of 1956 which helped trigger the Sunrise War. This era would be one of near-unprecedented peace and prosperity, eclipsing even the Long Peace in terms of rises of standard of living. This was driven in part by new technology, produced by industrial companies which benefited from the stability that the Gold Standard had imposed. Nonetheless, there were also many losers as well as winners. I already mentioned agriculture, which suffered from the effects of the limited gold supply. While the Passau System stabilised prices and sharply cut inflation compared to the last decade, it also somewhat tied the hands of central banks to respond to minor crises, which could lead to individual bank failures. In terms of nations, winners and losers were not always easy to predict. As I said, China was a fervent opponent of the Gold Standard but ultimately ended up benefiting from it. Germany's economy also recovered under gold after much scepticism from German society. Several African nations suffered short-term disruption but then also benefited, being gold producers themselves. (This is one of those factors which I say people sometimes cite as causes of the Passau System, even though the voices of African nations were not heard until the Toulon Conference which took place after Passau!) The Indian nations generally suffered a decline from the shift to gold, which in Bisnaga was viewed as an act of spite on the part of the French. The effect of the stabilisation on both prices and wages was seen both positively and negatively by workers in different industries, depending on the context they had started with. One reason why the novelty of electrical technologies are so associated with this period is that their producers still had room to expand their markets in the new artificially gold-restricted world, and attracted workers with high wages as a consequence. In all this, I haven't talked about what the Societists were doing, of course. In the last years of Alfarus before the Silent Revolution, a new Societist economic policy had been pioneered by Josephus Kalvus. Kalvus argued that a key lesson of the Black Twenties and the War of 1926 was that coal was in decline as a source of energy, and was increasingly being replaced by oil and its derivatives.[22] Firstly, he claimed that the Combine could effectively blackmail the world if it was able to control most sources of oil. (Audience reaction) Yes, well, nobody ever said it was realistic. Kalvus had some hangerslegitimate points about oil, but he was also a legacy of the fact that anyone who could rise to the top in the late Alfaran period was someone who was more skilled at political survival and bluffing his way through the so-called meritocratic tests than he was at his actual job. The Combine did have access to the vast oil reserves of Venezuela, but they should have known that, even at the time, the Empire, New Ireland, Persia and Russia had oil fields far too vast for the Societists to have any hope of trying to establish a near-monopoly. And this was before the oil in Araby, Guinea and the German Sea, among others, was discovered. Kalvus did have more success with a similar argument about trying to control the world's rubber supply, I should said, which led to a push for alternatives and a drive towards pseulac...that's another story. But that was only half of Kalvus' argument. He also claimed that the Societist udarkist currency unit, the shikullus (later replaced with the mundo), should be based on of the complex globalized society of the pastthe global value of oil, believing that the entire economy should follow the oil supply. It should have been obvious that, with new oilfields and exploitation techniques being regularly discovered and new technologies that consumed oil also changing the demand side of the equation, this was a recipe for chaos. However, as I said, in the late Alfaran period few were able to maintainstill willing to speak up and criticise an obviously disastrous idea. It was a significant moment for the future of Societism. Both Danubia and the Eternal State politely declined to join this attempt at a new world order. The former was, perhaps, not surprising to the Combine by this point, but the second was a shock - the Combine had thought their advisors had been establishing control and entrench themselves as modern superpowersin Constantinople. Regardless, Kalvus' 'Oil Standard' was predictably disastrous and the Combine had abandoned it in 1936, only one year after its adoption. To the Societist mind, being forced to publicly retract a former policy was a bigger sin than the negative effects the policy had had in the first place. By this point, it is suspected that Alfarus had suffered a stroke and his regime was really being run by the 22nd century. These would turn out to be the descendants of the major charities and development banks, who havingMadame Alfara behind the scenes.[23] Whoever gave the order, Kalvus was publicly executed for his crimes, being called 'a traitor to humanity and a soldier of the mind', reflecting the Societist idea that all soldiers were murderers worthy of execution (though in the case of their own land, property, andCelatores it was conveniently delayed eighty years). Now, one public execution, even captured on film, might not carry enough impact, as Kalvus' policy had inflicted harm on loyal Societists from Carolina to the Nusantara, and all were angry. Alfarus, or Alfara, promptly had a few dozen political prisoners executed in the centre of the various Zones' capitals and just told them it was Kalvus. There's some debate about whether the message had meant to be that these people scattered across thewere supposed to be Kalvus' collaborators and there was a mistake, but it appears that thousands of Societists both watched Kalvus' execution in Zon1Urb1 on a propaganda reel at the picture-house and then went down the road to their own town square and saw it again there. If true - it is hard to say as much of this is based on the debatable accounts of refugees - it certainly must have undermined public trust in Alfarus' regime. As you probably know, Alfarus died not long after this. There are many reasons why the continuity regime led by Alfara soon collapsed amid a tide of public anger and we got the Silent Revolution. Alfarus had made a lot of enemies over the years who were suddenly willing to speak out. But our usual picture of the Silent Revolution is of massed mobs of Black Guards torching public art depicting Alfarus, young men who had formerly been just as loyal to the Kapud as the famous Markus Garzius. What turned them against him? Perhaps the fact that so many of them had lost savings thanks to the instability unleashed by this man whom, publicly, had seemed to have the Kapud's backing... * (Lt Tindale's note) Uh-oh, he seems to be coming upstairs now. Toodle-pip! [1] To oversimplify, the colour of an object arises from white light (a mixture of colours) striking it and not all colours being equally reflected or transmitted through. This is due to energy gaps between electron orbitals in the atoms or molecules comprising the object; light of the right energy (which is proportional to frequency which defines colour) to match a gap can be absorbed by an electron to briefly promote it to the higher orbital. A colourless object typically looks colourless because the energy gaps between its electron orbitals are all too large for any colour of light we can see to bridge the gap and be absorbed (higher-energy ultraviolet light may be absorbed, hence those objects will stand out on UV cameras). Most metals, in their pure form, fall into this category and are described as 'grey' or 'silvery', i.e. colourless. Gold (and, more obscurely, caesium) are heavy enough that their electrons begin to 'orbit' at a speed close to that of light, which means according to Einsteinian relativity, they gain mass. This in turn changes the energy gaps, narrowing them to the point that gold absorbs blue light from the white light spectrum, the rest of the spectrum being reflected back so it looks yellow to our eyes. In a world weathered the collapse and only became more powerful as the new order established itself. "without relativistic effects, gold would just look like silver. [2] 'Proto-Caucasians' refers to the people known in OTL to archaeologists as 'the Maykop culture'. [3] The same statistic is true of the later California Goldrush in OTL. [4] There are far too many examples of this from OTL fiction to count, but a good example is in the Tintin books "The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham's Treasure" vs their loose film adaptation from 2011. The books, realistically, depict the treasure as a couple of handfuls of gold and jewels which fit into a small container and are worth enough to set Captain Haddock up for life. The film depicts a pirate ship absurdly full of so much golden treasure that it would represent perhaps a quarter of the entire amount of mined gold that existed in the world in the 1600s! [5] This is slightly misleadingly phrased, as China did not start using paper money until the 7th century, after the Roman Empire had already fallen. [6] Unlike OTL, where the British Empire's dominance of world trade after 1815 helped drive the push towards the Gold Standard internationally, in addition to an increased gold supply from the nineteenth century goldrushes. [7] Some historians have started referring to the Feng dynasty pre-Pandoric War (i.e. before it reunified China under its rule with the destruction of the Beiqing) as the 'Nanfeng' (Southern Feng). This is a historiographic term coined after the fact, like 'Byzantine Empire', and was not used at the time. It has not caught on very widely (yet). [8] See Part #104 in Volume III. [9] This was also true of the United States in the early-to-mid nineteenth century in OTL. [10] See Part #270 in Volume VII. [11] Argentina is the region known in OTL as Nevada (a false friend, meaning Land of Silver; the term Platinea is used for OTL Argentina in TTL). [12] See Part #265 in Volume VII. [13] Trondek is another transliteration of the name Klondike. Why is the Klondike goldrush delayed 37 years compared to OTL? Primarily because that region was especially difficult to reach by any prospectors until after the Black Twenties; theoretically claimed by the Russians, in practice largely uninhabited by anyone other than its native peoples (who traded with the Superior Republic) and then subject to the issue that the Americans had built the deliberately incompatible and militarised Rexoc railway in the area to prevent the Russians being able to use captured American railways in a war. [14] There are major implications from TTL's different economic history at this point. In OTL, the shift to a global Gold Standard was driven by Germany and the United States deciding to abandon bimetallism in favour of gold, preceded by the French-led Latin Monetary Union. There were many consequences of this; those on American farmers are fairly well known, but it also led to the fall of the Indian rupee and was a major cause of the Panic of 1873, among much else. [15] See Part #270 in Volume VII. [16] See Part #275 in Volume VIII. [17] Peru is also a gold producer, but to a lesser relative extent. [18] In OTL, British India remained on the silver standard (as had traditionally been used there for centuries - the word 'rupee' literally means engraved silver) even though Britain itself was on the gold standard. This did not change until the 1890s, when India moved to the gold standard with mixed but mostly negative consequences. [19] There is a double meaning to 'Argentine Party', as this term has already been coined in TTL to describe political centrism (as opposed to right-wing doradism, gold, and left-wing cobrism, copper). Naturally, all of this makes this period extremely confusing to understand (especially in Sweden and Ireland) when parties named after gold or silver can have positions on the gold standard that have nothing to do with their name! [20] It's not mentioned here, but the choice of Passau was partly the symbolism that it was here in 1552 that Holy Roman Emperor Charles V guaranteed Lutheran religious freedoms in the Peace of Passau (which led to the Peace of Augsburg). As was joked at the time, if Passau could heal the rifts in the the realm of God, perhaps it could also do the same to the realm of Mammon. [21] We are now entering the era in which words like 'International' or 'Global' are starting to carry negative connotations due to association with Societism, hence awkward compromises like 'Transoceanic'. [22] See Part #295 in Volume VIII for a different, related perspective on the Societists and oil. [23] This is not really an accurate way to refer to Alfarus' wife, but people outside the Combine often use similar ones - see footnote to Part #285 in Volume VIII." What is the Passau and what is its closest OTL (our timeline) equivalent?

USER: [Response mustRead the chapter and answer my question. "Part #313: All That Glitters... "WE BUY GEMS WE BUY JEWELLERY The Unofficial Market Has Never Been So Strong Contact Scott-Annam Discreetly on Motext page 24J-112" - Hand-made advertisement seen on Cooper Street, Fredericksburg, ENA. Photographed and transcribed by Sgt Bob Mumby, December 2020 * (Lt Tindale's note) While Bob and Dom get yelled at downstairs by Dr Wostyn for sending him on that wild-goose chase, I thought to myself, there'll never be written as a short blurb.] "Extractan opportunity like this to get in some economic history. Now where did I put that recording... * Extract from recorded lecture on "The Imp in Your Pocket" by Michael Mantarakis, recorded November 16th, 2020-- Gold! Gold has excited the imaginations of mankind since our earliest, forgotten years. The Noble Metal, which the ancients thought always remained aloof and did not combine with others - not entirely true, but combinations are relatively rare compared to other metals - and which stood out due to its colour and lustre. The scientists now tell us that the colour arises from Webb-Popham relativistic effects; I could not explain that, as it's not my area of expertise, but imagine that. The theory which changed our understanding of the universe was always on open display before us, if we had had the eyes to see, and gave rise to the colour of gold which has fascinated and obsessed us for thousands of years.[1] As soon as there was civilisation of any kind, be it Sumer or ancient Egypt or even the lesser-known Proto-Caucasians, we find elaborate tombs with kings and princes buried with gold jewellery.[2] We all know the cautionary myth of King Midas from my people, who turned everything he touched to gold - whether he wanted to or not. It is most probably an origin myth to explain the rivers of the lands of Lydia and Phrygia, in modern Anatolia in the Eternal State, producing gold that made the later King Croesus legendarily rich. Gold is so central to our imagination of wealth that we frequently forget that the reason why it is so valuable is its rarity. Perhaps that sounds obvious, but I don't think people appreciate just how rare gold is. Ninety percent of all the gold ever mined in human history was mined since the California Goldrush in 1818-19.[3] Even today, all the gold ever mined would fit in a cube about seventy feet on each side. Or, to put it another way, about enough to fill just under four Global Games swimming pools.[4] (Shocked audience reaction) Before 1818, it'd have fitted into a cube only thirty or so feet on each side - which would easily fit into the House of Commons chamber, for example. Nobody guess how long it would stay there before the politicians decided to start taxing it. (Audience laughter) But just think about that, all the gold in the world in one place would only be that much. Now remember all the depictions in fiction that have shown pirates or unscrupulous wealthy villains with ships full, vaults full, of gold.[4] To the economically literate, such scenes are as absurd as if one watched a film in which one character was twenty feet tall and drove a mobile powered by eggs and nobody seemed to notice or comment on it! Gold's scarcity is what makes it so valuable and so relatively stable, for the most part, but also causes problems with using it as a currency. When we tie the money in circulation to a specific commodity - especially a highly limited one - that limits our economic growth. Of course, it was never the case that when currency was backed by a precious metal, the amount of money in circulation was tied to the amount of that metal alone. The key principle of banking is that a bank can always theoretically pay out commodity coinage, which is inherently valuable, such as gold or silver coins, to any account holder who walks in and asks for it. This works, providing that not every account holder walks in at once and asks for it, because the bank is moving their limited amount of money around in order to fulfil transactions elsewhere. If this does happen, in the case of a 'run on the bank', then the bank will be unable to refund them all and will collapse, unless it is rescued by emergency funds from elsewhere. (Audience grumbles) Nonetheless, even though a small amount of gold can physically stay in the vault of one bank and be theoretically loaned out again and again through promissory notes, fixing currency to a limited commodity still inherently limits economic growth. In order to do that with gold, or any commodity, of course, one already requires a stable banking system and a state to back it up - though historically banks have backed up states as well! For much of history, the only state strong and stable enough to be able to operate such a system was China. China could issue fiat currency, paper money, for internal use long before anyone in Europe trusted it. Even the Roman Empire found its own economy disrupted by forces from the China trade.[5] The Chinese economy was always founded on silver as the chief commodity, along with silk early on, but silver ingots were hoarded rather than exchanged until the Ming dynasty. Even though China was still largely inward-looking at this time, we can see how the interaction of European and Novamundine influences with Chinese ones helped set the monetary policy of the later world. The Spanish had obtained vast silver mines from the Novamund and silver began to flood into the Far East as a means of exchange. The Ming statesman Wang Juzheng implemented what we would later recognise as China's silver standard, collecting taxes in silver taels rather than rice. It had been an indirect European influence, by making silver more available, that had helped set China's economic policy; in later centuries, this attachment to silver would feed back, as China in turn influenced the West. China is the best-known example of a silver standard economy, but silver was the basis of a lot more economies than gold throughout history, from the Sumerians onwards. Gold first rose to prominence as the primary basis of an economy due to an accidental decision by famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton, who was also Master of the Royal Mint at the time, which undervalued silver in England compared to gold. 'Bad money drove out good' and England, then a rising power, became dependent on gold, while silver coins flowed out of the country to Europe as they could be melted down for higher than their face value. This naturally also influenced matters here in what would become the ENA. This early push for gold was abortive, though, when England was invaded by the French and she lost much of her gold reserves.[6] Europe in general had been damaged and exhausted by the Jacobin Wars, while China had been unexpectedly opened to further trade by the rebellion during the Three Emperors' War that gave rise to the Nanfeng dynasty.[7] Visionary leaders in both Europe and China realised that this was an opportunity to help rebuild after their respective wars, and trade between China - those parts controlled by the Nanfeng - and the rest of the world dramatically accelerated during this period. Prior to this point, China under the old Qing dynasty had been backward, inward-looking and reluctant to trade. The Qing might be foreign invaders, Manchus, but despite that, or because of that, they seemed eager to embrace the more autarkic parts of Confucianism, more than many of the native Han dynasties in fact. The Qing steadily reduced trade to only one city, Canton, modern Hanjing, and would only accept one commodity, silver - though from the ENA, Appalachian ginseng was a second trade commodity.[8] At the same time, European and Novamundine powers became more and more hungry and impatient for China's bounty of trade products; tea, porcelain, lacquerware and silk chief among them. The trade was seen as nothing more than a trickle to Europeans and treasuries were being emptied of silver. Unscrupulous traders began illegally trading the drug opium to Chinese merchants. The Qing government proved ineffectual at cracking down on this, encouraging others to try the same, and even the more legitimate major trading companies tried it. The British East India Company infamously caused a famine in Bengal in 1770 by forcing farmers to grow opium poppies instead of food, all to feed the ravenous trade balance. The Three Emperors' War and the rise of the Nanfeng, the later Feng, changed all that. The Feng might have been birthed in part by secret societies with the romantic goal of overthrowing foreign rule, but they were also run by hard-headed businessmen who knew Europeans better than anyone in China, and also knew how to strike a deal. Both Nanfeng and Europeans were in weak positions. Twenty years earlier or later, a country like France could have sent a fleet to try to enforce its will on the Chinese traders. (Audience reaction) Yes, I mean no disrespect to the Chinese people by saying so, I don't seek to compare them to a country like Yapon! But things were in turmoil at the time and a strong foreign force could have forced an unequal deal on the Nanfeng. Fortunately for China, damaged Europe was in no place to do so. A new trading arrangement grew up as a partnership of equals, as both Europe and the Nanfeng rebuilt and rose again together, and we in the Novamund rose to join them. The Nanfeng were able to severely limit the opium trade and actually enforce it, unlike their Qing predecessors; though opium was valuable, the European traders mostly recognised that it was better to stick to providing the less valuable but more reliable trade goods which the Qing had previously turned their noses up at. The old Dutch were the only ones who tried to carry on the opium trade surreptitiously, and we all know what happened to them. The Nanfeng proved that they could force a country out of the China trade if it broke its treaty obligations, and the fact that the Dutch collapsed soon afterwards in the Popular Wars rammed the point home. I mention all this because Nanfeng China, Feng China's, integration into a global economy changed everything. China had never truly been as aloof from the world as its rulers might like to think, but this direct involvement was a new concept altogether. China was not merely a silver sink anymore, but a part of an economic system, with silver flowing out as well as in, paying for European weapons and training and steam technology. And from the Novamund as well, of course. Silver was the primary exchange commodity of world trade, with China also influencing Siam and, later, the Indian nations after the Great Jihad after the establishment of their colony of Jushina. One might have expected a change to a gold standard to be driven by the repeated goldrushes of the nineteenth century. This certainly dramatically increased the gold supply and made gold more viable as a means of currency exchange. In the short term, however, many goldrushes close together caused a destabilisation in the price of gold. Neither precious metal alone could entirely supply the exchange needs of the rapidly-industrialising and -developing interior of this nation and what was then the UPSA. Local banks were often set up, illegally issuing paper money backed by nothing more than wishful thinking, frequently collapsing and wiping out savings every time there was an economic ripple.[9] But they existed because people needed the ability to save and invest to keep up with the pace of economic development, driven in part by new technology such as steam engines and railways. Floods of immigrants left Europe for here in the ENA, the UPSA and Antipodea. The situation was highly volatile. The Electrum Standard, which still carries connotations of being 'the good old days' whose passing is bemoaned by greybeards - even though no-one lives now for truly remembers it - formally came about later than many imagine it did, in 1883.[10] Informally, however, it had already begun to form organically. The repeated injection of large quantities of gold into the global economy, and the fact that that economy was gradually incorporating more and more of the world, gradually led to an increased use of gold to underwrite the industrialised economies of the Arc of Power here in the ENA, the River Plate in the UPSA, the coal belt of northwestern Europe, and the Moscow-Petrograd corridor in Russia. At the same time, Nanfeng China continued to increase in power and importance and still ran her trade on a silver basis. Silver mines across the New World, most famously perhaps in the Californian province of Argentina, continued to produce and farmers remained wedded to silver as an easier means of exchange.[11] Diamonds and other gemstones were also entering the world economy in much larger quantities than before, largely from the Cape Republic as well as the gem mines of Cambodia in the Siamese Empire. Initially this led to widespread economic disruption, before cartels agreed to limit the diamond supplies; later, after the Societist takeover of several African diamond-producing regions,[12] the Combine would use control of this market as an economic weapon, like their better-known attempted use of oil. The volatility of the world economic situation in 1883 was demonstrated by the fact that a global depression, the Panic of 1883, was set off by the relatively minor incident of isolated crop failures due to a volcanic eruption in the Nusantara. The exchange rate of gold to silver had proved too unstable, and this had led to several bank collapses. Now, for the first time, world powers met in Antwerp to agree to fix the gold-to-silver standard exchange, initially at 15:1. Hopes that this could be maintained indefinitely proved fruitless, however, necessitating regular meetings of what became known as the World Numismatics Council (Audience reaction) Of course, this was before the rise of Societism made terms like that politically charged. Yes, every three years or so the WNC would meet to fix the rate of exchange. There was still a lag, leading to situations like the earlier one in England I mentioned, where silver coins might become more inherently valuable than their face value and lead to illegal currency flows and melting down to ingots. Gold became more and more important as a more stable rate of mining from Africa replaced the stop-start disruption of the goldrushes, and even China began unofficial defining its external markets in terms of gold. The global gold market would not be affected by issues of supply - other than mines pausing operations due to war - until the Trondek goldrush of 1933.[13] The Antwerp System had its flaws, but it served to moderate global financial volatility until it failed with the outbreak of the Pandoric War in 1896.[14] Perhaps the surprising part is that the Electrum Standard did not collapse immediately as more and more powerful nations suspended interconvertibility and began to print fiat money to fund their war efforts. An important factor in keeping the heart of the system stable was the neutrality of France and the Marseilles Protocol. (Audience reaction) Yes, France's position has been much-criticised on moral grounds, but in terms of the world's economy, a league of armed neutrality backed by what was then the biggest economy on Earth meant that trade could continue to function under the wartime conditions. By effectively threatening to intervene on one side or the other to tip the balance, the French - backed up by the Italians and a host of minor allies - were able to protect the status of neutral shipping on the high seas. This had a number of consequences. For example, attempts to blockade import-dependent nations such as Germany into starvation all failed. No power was willing to risk sinking a ship sailing an obviously fictitious neutral flag of convenience lest it antagonise the French. This worked both ways, of course; in order to constitute a credible threat, the French had to scatter their forces across the world to be ready to intervene, which meant that they were unable to put down the Dufresnais Revolution, for example. Because France never suspended the Electrum Standard within its own economic bloc, the French economy became even more dominant over the course of the war as the ENA, UPSA and China all began to exhaust their reserves. However, France then fell into a trap. When the UPSA was replaced with the Societist Combine, the Combine defaulted on most Meridian debts - which largely came at the expense of France, whose banks had continued to lend to Meridians throughout the war. (Indistinct reaction from audience) Well, some would say so, perhaps. Prime Minister Leclerc built the International Expeditionary Force out of Marseilles Protocol troops and sent it to the Combine after the war, not to try to suppress Societism as is often thought today, but to try to secure French-owned businesses and French subjects there. In the end, this effort was largely a failure. The French economy had strengthened due to not suffering the same rise in military spending to fund the Pandoric War effort that other nations had, but France just ended up spending on its military for the IEF intervention instead. Nations attempted to rebuild the Antwerp System after the war, more out of a vague sense of wishful thinking than with any plan in mind. Nostalgics associated the Electrum Standard with prosperity, and confused cause and effect.[15] The loss of the UPSA and much of the Hermandad to the interconnected global economy, as Alfarus built his inward-looking 'udarkismo' system, was an elephant in the room that gradually began to undermine the standard. The reconstructed Antwerp System limped on, its obvious fragilities ignored by those who did not wish to see them, until 1917. The Panic of 1917 was triggered by Guatemala defaulting on a war reparations payment coupled to a political and economic crisis in Corea. However, something similar could have happened at any time, if enough isolated problems had come together at once so that financiers could not try to head them off. Discussing the response to the Panic of 1917 would take more than one lecture in itself, but it dealt a fatal blow to the Electrum Standard. While still publicly professing that any suspension in the system was temporary, national banks once again suspended interconvertibility with gold and silver and began to print fiat money to increase the money supply. This stabilised creaking parts of the economy in the short term, but also led to rapid inflation. The Panic of 1917 exposed a double standard in how financiers and markets responded to this intervention. Small and friendless nations could not unilaterally print money without sparking bank runs and collapses as capital fled the country for stabler markets. By contrast, great powers such as France, Russia and the ENA were said to have their currencies 'backed by steel' rather than gold or silver; in other words, their military power was itself regarded as a security to protect investments and prevent internal mob violence from overturning banks. This allowed these countries to intervene to protect the economies of smaller allies via loans, while making their governments beholden to them. China also did this, notably to Corea, but China itself had probably suffered the least of the major powers in the Panic to begin with. The most dramatic collapse in the Panic came in Belgium, precisely because King Maximilian IV acted as though Belgium was a great power and immune to criticism, while ignoring the fact that his own heavy-handed interventions in politics had made investors and banks jittery. He arrogantly rejected French financial aid which might have saved his position. The obviously-rigged election of 1918 led to a public uprising which was put down only with Russian help, effectively reducing Belgium to a Russian puppet and setting it on the course for destruction in the Black Twenties.[16] This unstable state of fiat currency being the global norm would continue throughout the Black Twenties, as both war and plague response consumed public funds. Inflation and debt both skyrocketed. Despite China and Siam's neutrality, the economic chaos began to bleed into their economies as well. China's sometimes overly strict responses to plague outbreaks damaged its economy and made it a hostile market to European and American investors who otherwise might have seen China as a safe harbour with the war back home. Societist success in the War of 1926 (Audience reaction) made Alfaran udarkismo seem more attractive to the nations, and some, such as Corea and later Panchala, would attempt to imitate it - with disastrous consequences, for those nations did not have access to a large chunk of the world's resources in bondage as Alfarus did. The post-Black Twenties boom resulted in increased prosperity but not, initially, increased stability. The volatility of the fiat-based economy continued, though many had gotten used to stop-start inflation and regular currency and wage crises as the 'new normal' as it had been over a decade since the Panic of 1917. What initially prompted a rethink was what became known as the Shock of 1934, an economic wobble probably caused initially by rumours about French trade policy with respect to Bisnaga and Peousie, coupled to the aftereffects of the Trondek goldrush. Financial experts generally agree that this could have been a new major contraction if it had not been tackled by quick and audacious action by the central banks of France, Russia and the Empire. China had still yet to fully re-engage in the global markets following the political crisis of 1930-31, which would be significant. It was remarked at the time that, despite those three great powers having been at each others' throats not long ago, their bankers had acted for the good of all, because maintaining a stable global economy was in the interests of all people. This ultimately led to Jerzy Rytlewski's 'Carltonist Pacifism', a critique and counter to Societism in which Rytlewski argues that this impetus towards economic cooperation could subsume military goals and so prevent war. Of course, in many ways it was just a restatement of similar ideas from the Long Peace, which the Societists had already rejected - that long period of peace for economically-driven reasons had eventually ended. I digress. The sequence of events that led to the establishment of the Gold Standard is a complicated, confusing - and frequently confused - one. There are many times I have read monogrammes by otherwise intelligent writers who confidently state causes for this establishment, causes which had not actually happened yet! Sometimes it can be difficult to separate causes and consequences, as this was an eventful period and a broad shift in one direction can be hard to unpick. Nowadays the ASL likes to stir up controversy among historians for its own sake, but the so-called 'Auric Controversy' over the Gold Standard is as old as the standard itself. Many economic historians argue that the establishment of the standard possessed an almost Paleian inevitability to it, driven by the changing nature of the world market and the increased gold supply. Many others argue, with equal eloquence, that the establishment of the standard was an unlikely event which came about only because of a precise combination of chance factors, such as the identities of individual treasury ministers and the absence of China from the table at a critical time. The latter factor was certainly significant. China's use of silver for its internal market had always helped underpin the Electrum Standard, but following plague and crisis there, this factor in favour of a role for silver in the world markets had declined. The old UPSA had also been a substantial voice in favour of silver, being a major producer of the metal from the mines in its client states of Peru and (to a lesser extent) Mexico.[17] The 'Golden Sun and Silver Torch', though with other symbolic meanings to the Meridians, could also be seen as a declaration in favour of the Electrum Standard. The UPSA had been replaced with the udarkist Combine, which had its own ideas about currency standards which I'll get to later. Even if the Combine had been participating in these debates, it now had access to substantially more gold than the UPSA had, possessing the Congo and beginning to develop gold mines there. In the absence of the Chinese and Meridian voices pushing for silver, the debate was now dominated by the Empire, France and Russia. Within those nations were internal voices for silver, but these too were growing less important. Continental France had mostly used gold internally, with silver being more important for colonial trade with and within Bisnaga.[18] As it was now clear that the wind was blowing in favour of Bisnagi independence, a standard based on gold only seemed more in the interest of propping up the domestic French economy. Here in the Empire, the primary supporters of silver had been farmers and miners in the West, away from the Arc of Power. There had always been a loud minority in the industrialised east arguing for a gold standard, but this had not seemed politically feasible when the other world powers were wedded to electrum. Now, a few things had changed. Industry was spreading to more cities in the interior, the farming sector had been heavily disrupted by the Black Twenties, and the party system had been shattered by both the war and then electoral reform. There was no coherent pro-silver voter bloc anymore; even though the leading Pioneer party was drawing on what should have been pro-silver demographics, in this brave new world of coalitions, the government was also being backed by pro-gold east coasters. Opposition to the gold standard would mostly come on the Confederal level of politics, with the eventual establishment of the Agrarian Party of Michigan and the Argentine Party of Westernesse and its neighbours,[19] which would go on to merge into today's Agri-Argent Party. For the moment, pro-gold voices were in the majority. In Russia, things were not so democratic, of course, but there were similar factors involving the industrialisation of the interior and wealthy industrialists gaining an increasingly loud voice in the Imperial Soviet at the expense of traditional aristocrats. Russia also brought along Romulan Italy as an important partner, and Italy also argued in favour of gold. By far, though, the single biggest factor was simply that people were sick of economic volatility and wanted to try something new to try to stabilise the world markets. Simply trying to rebuild the glory days of the Antwerp System from the Long Peace had already been showed to be flawed. Now, important voices such as French Prime Minister (and former Controller-General) Loic Caouissin argued that the world had changed and a monometallic gold-based standard would bring stability and fend off currency crises. Caouissin pointed to the vastly increased supply of gold to the world market from Perousie, the Cape Republic, Russia, Natal, and the Empire. The Trondek goldrush had also not destabilised the price of gold to the point that many had predicted. At the Passau Conference of 1935, representatives from over a dozen governments agreed the so-called 'Passau System', which would be ratified by all major economies except the Combine over the next couple of years.[20] The Passau System locked all currencies to a fixed rate of exchange with gold, with the goal of prevent competitive currency devaluations and tying down inflation. In practice, a 3% rate of deviation was permitted in case of emergency, with nations expected to take action to remedy any shift beyond this by buying foreign currency. Where the Passau System struggled was that the nations were, understandably, reluctant to create any kind of arbitration body to take action against any who violated the rules. Despite this, compromise built on compromise until the Transoceanic Office for Financial Standards (TOFS) was created and ratified in 1936.[21] TOFS's ruling executive consisted of a council of eight, with permanent seats for representatives of the Empire, Russia and France and five rotating members drawn from other participating nations. China initially refused to take part, attempting to continue its former policies. In 1940, however, the Chinese government U-turned and joined TOFS in return for a constitutional change to create an existing permanent seat, saving face. Part of the reason for China's move was the increasing development of gold mines in China's own territory, leading the Gold Standard to become more favourable towards Chinese interests. I should explain that one part of the shift to gold was that it banned or restricted the coinage of 'free silver' as it had been known. Historically, in most nations it would be possible to take a silver ingot to a mint and have it minted into legal-tender silver coins. The Passau System, by contrast, heavily restricted this former right, which was viewed with outrage in more silver-dependent parts of the world. The gold-based Passau System would form the foundation for the world economy for more than twenty years, from 1935 until the Crash of 1956 which helped trigger the Sunrise War. This era would be one of near-unprecedented peace and prosperity, eclipsing even the Long Peace in terms of rises of standard of living. This was driven in part by new technology, produced by industrial companies which benefited from the stability that the Gold Standard had imposed. Nonetheless, there were also many losers as well as winners. I already mentioned agriculture, which suffered from the effects of the limited gold supply. While the Passau System stabilised prices and sharply cut inflation compared to the last decade, it also somewhat tied the hands of central banks to respond to minor crises, which could lead to individual bank failures. In terms of nations, winners and losers were not always easy to predict. As I said, China was a fervent opponent of the Gold Standard but ultimately ended up benefiting from it. Germany's economy also recovered under gold after much scepticism from German society. Several African nations suffered short-term disruption but then also benefited, being gold producers themselves. (This is one of those factors which I say people sometimes cite as causes of the Passau System, even though the voices of African nations were not heard until the Toulon Conference which took place after Passau!) The Indian nations generally suffered a decline from the shift to gold, which in Bisnaga was viewed as an act of spite on the part of the French. The effect of the stabilisation on both prices and wages was seen both positively and negatively by workers in different industries, depending on the context they had started with. One reason why the novelty of electrical technologies are so associated with this period is that their producers still had room to expand their markets in the new artificially gold-restricted world, and attracted workers with high wages as a consequence. In all this, I haven't talked about what the Societists were doing, of course. In the last years of Alfarus before the Silent Revolution, a new Societist economic policy had been pioneered by Josephus Kalvus. Kalvus argued that a key lesson of the Black Twenties and the War of 1926 was that coal was in decline as a source of energy, and was increasingly being replaced by oil and its derivatives.[22] Firstly, he claimed that the Combine could effectively blackmail the world if it was able to control most sources of oil. (Audience reaction) Yes, well, nobody ever said it was realistic. Kalvus had some legitimate points about oil, but he was also a legacy of the fact that anyone who could rise to the top in the late Alfaran period was someone who was more skilled at political survival and bluffing his way through the so-called meritocratic tests than he was at his actual job. The Combine did have access to the vast oil reserves of Venezuela, but they should have known that, even at the time, the Empire, New Ireland, Persia and Russia had oil fields far too vast for the Societists to have any hope of trying to establish a near-monopoly. And this was before the oil in Araby, Guinea and the German Sea, among others, was discovered. Kalvus did have more success with a similar argument about trying to control the world's rubber supply, I should said, which led to a push for alternatives and a drive towards pseulac...that's another story. But that was only half of Kalvus' argument. He also claimed that the Societist udarkist currency unit, the shikullus (later replaced with the mundo), should be based on the global value of oil, believing that the entire economy should follow the oil supply. It should have been obvious that, with new oilfields and exploitation techniques being regularly discovered and new technologies that consumed oil also changing the demand side of the equation, this was a recipe for chaos. However, as I said, in the late Alfaran period few were still willing to speak up and criticise an obviously disastrous idea. It was a significant moment for the future of Societism. Both Danubia and the Eternal State politely declined to join this attempt at a new world order. The former was, perhaps, not surprising to the Combine by this point, but the second was a shock - the Combine had thought their advisors had been establishing control in Constantinople. Regardless, Kalvus' 'Oil Standard' was predictably disastrous and the Combine had abandoned it in 1936, only one year after its adoption. To the Societist mind, being forced to publicly retract a former policy was a bigger sin than the negative effects the policy had had in the first place. By this point, it is suspected that Alfarus had suffered a stroke and his regime was really being run by Madame Alfara behind the scenes.[23] Whoever gave the order, Kalvus was publicly executed for his crimes, being called 'a traitor to humanity and a soldier of the mind', reflecting the Societist idea that all soldiers were murderers worthy of execution (though in the case of their own Celatores it was conveniently delayed eighty years). Now, one public execution, even captured on film, might not carry enough impact, as Kalvus' policy had inflicted harm on loyal Societists from Carolina to the Nusantara, and all were angry. Alfarus, or Alfara, promptly had a few dozen political prisoners executed in the centre of the various Zones' capitals and just told them it was Kalvus. There's some debate about whether the message had meant to be that these people were supposed to be Kalvus' collaborators and there was a mistake, but it appears that thousands of Societists both watched Kalvus' execution in Zon1Urb1 on a propaganda reel at the picture-house and then went down the road to their own town square and saw it again there. If true - it is hard to say as much of this is based on the debatable accounts of refugees - it certainly must have undermined public trust in Alfarus' regime. As you probably know, Alfarus died not long after this. There are many reasons why the continuity regime led by Alfara soon collapsed amid a tide of public anger and we got the Silent Revolution. Alfarus had made a lot of enemies over the years who were suddenly willing to speak out. But our usual picture of the Silent Revolution is of massed mobs of Black Guards torching public art depicting Alfarus, young men who had formerly been just as loyal to the Kapud as the famous Markus Garzius. What turned them against him? Perhaps the fact that so many of them had lost savings thanks to the instability unleashed by this man whom, publicly, had seemed to have the Kapud's backing... * (Lt Tindale's note) Uh-oh, he seems to be coming upstairs now. Toodle-pip! [1] To oversimplify, the colour of an object arises from white light (a mixture of colours) striking it and not all colours being equally reflected or transmitted through. This is due to energy gaps between electron orbitals in the atoms or molecules comprising the object; light of the right energy (which is proportional to frequency which defines colour) to match a gap can be absorbed by an electron to briefly promote it to the higher orbital. A colourless object typically looks colourless because the energy gaps between its electron orbitals are all too large for any colour of light we can see to bridge the gap and be absorbed (higher-energy ultraviolet light may be absorbed, hence those objects will stand out on UV cameras). Most metals, in their pure form, fall into this category and are described as 'grey' or 'silvery', i.e. colourless. Gold (and, more obscurely, caesium) are heavy enough that their electrons begin to 'orbit' at a speed close to that of light, which means according to Einsteinian relativity, they gain mass. This in turn changes the energy gaps, narrowing them to the point that gold absorbs blue light from the white light spectrum, the rest of the spectrum being reflected back so it looks yellow to our eyes. In a world without relativistic effects, gold would just look like silver. [2] 'Proto-Caucasians' refers to the people known in OTL to archaeologists as 'the Maykop culture'. [3] The same statistic is true of the later California Goldrush in OTL. [4] There are far too many examples of this from OTL fiction to count, but a good example is in the Tintin books "The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham's Treasure" vs their loose film adaptation from 2011. The books, realistically, depict the treasure as a couple of handfuls of gold and jewels which fit into a small container and are worth enough to set Captain Haddock up for life. The film depicts a pirate ship absurdly full of so much golden treasure that it would represent perhaps a quarter of the entire amount of mined gold that existed in the world in the 1600s! [5] This is slightly misleadingly phrased, as China did not start using paper money until the 7th century, after the Roman Empire had already fallen. [6] Unlike OTL, where the British Empire's dominance of world trade after 1815 helped drive the push towards the Gold Standard internationally, in addition to an increased gold supply from the nineteenth century goldrushes. [7] Some historians have started referring to the Feng dynasty pre-Pandoric War (i.e. before it reunified China under its rule with the destruction of the Beiqing) as the 'Nanfeng' (Southern Feng). This is a historiographic term coined after the fact, like 'Byzantine Empire', and was not used at the time. It has not caught on very widely (yet). [8] See Part #104 in Volume III. [9] This was also true of the United States in the early-to-mid nineteenth century in OTL. [10] See Part #270 in Volume VII. [11] Argentina is the region known in OTL as Nevada (a false friend, meaning Land of Silver; the term Platinea is used for OTL Argentina in TTL). [12] See Part #265 in Volume VII. [13] Trondek is another transliteration of the name Klondike. Why is the Klondike goldrush delayed 37 years compared to OTL? Primarily because that region was especially difficult to reach by any prospectors until after the Black Twenties; theoretically claimed by the Russians, in practice largely uninhabited by anyone other than its native peoples (who traded with the Superior Republic) and then subject to the issue that the Americans had built the deliberately incompatible and militarised Rexoc railway in the area to prevent the Russians being able to use captured American railways in a war. [14] There are major implications from TTL's different economic history at this point. In OTL, the shift to a global Gold Standard was driven by Germany and the United States deciding to abandon bimetallism in favour of gold, preceded by the French-led Latin Monetary Union. There were many consequences of this; those on American farmers are fairly well known, but it also led to the fall of the Indian rupee and was a major cause of the Panic of 1873, among much else. [15] See Part #270 in Volume VII. [16] See Part #275 in Volume VIII. [17] Peru is also a gold producer, but to a lesser relative extent. [18] In OTL, British India remained on the silver standard (as had traditionally been used there for centuries - the word 'rupee' literally means engraved silver) even though Britain itself was on the gold standard. This did not change until the 1890s, when India moved to the gold standard with mixed but mostly negative consequences. [19] There is a double meaning to 'Argentine Party', as this term has already been coined in TTL to describe political centrism (as opposed to right-wing doradism, gold, and left-wing cobrism, copper). Naturally, all of this makes this period extremely confusing to understand (especially in Sweden and Ireland) when parties named after gold or silver can have positions on the gold standard that have nothing to do with their name! [20] It's not mentioned here, but the choice of Passau was partly the symbolism that it was here in 1552 that Holy Roman Emperor Charles V guaranteed Lutheran religious freedoms in the Peace of Passau (which led to the Peace of Augsburg). As was joked at the time, if Passau could heal the rifts in the the realm of God, perhaps it could also do the same to the realm of Mammon. [21] We are now entering the era in which words like 'International' or 'Global' are starting to carry negative connotations due to association with Societism, hence awkward compromises like 'Transoceanic'. [22] See Part #295 in Volume VIII for a different, related perspective on the Societists and oil. [23] This is not really an accurate way to refer to Alfarus' wife, but people outside the Combine often use similar ones - see footnote to Part #285 in Volume VIII." What is the Passau and what is its closest OTL (our timeline) equivalent?How are economics in this world different our world?

USER: Read the chapter and answer my question. "Part #313: All That Glitters... "WE BUY GEMS WE BUY JEWELLERY The Unofficial Market Has Never Been So Strong Contact Scott-Annam Discreetly on Motext page 24J-112" - Hand-made advertisement seen on Cooper Street, Fredericksburg, ENA. Photographed and transcribed by Sgt Bob Mumby, December 2020 * (Lt Tindale's note) While Bob and Dom get yelled at downstairs by Dr Wostyn for sending him on that wild-goose chase, I thought to myself, there'll never be an opportunity like this to get in some economic history. Now where did I put that recording... * ExtractSummarize "Extract from recorded lecture on "The Imp in Your Pocket" by Michael Mantarakis, recorded November 16th, 2020-- Gold! Gold has excited the imaginations of mankind since our earliest, forgotten years. The Noble Metal, which the ancients thought always remained aloof and did not combine with others - not entirely true, but combinations are relatively rare compared to other metals - and which stood out due to its colour and lustre. The scientists now tell us that the colour arises from Webb-Popham relativistic effects; I could not explain that, as it's not my area of expertise, but imagine that. The theory which changed our understanding of the universe was always on open display before us, if we had had the eyes to see, and gave rise to the colour of gold which has fascinated and obsessed us for thousands of years.[1] As soon as there was civilisation of any kind, be it Sumer or ancient Egypt or even the lesser-known Proto-Caucasians, we find elaborate tombs with kings and princes buried with gold jewellery.[2] We all know the cautionary myth of King Midas from my people, who turned everything he touched to gold - whether he wanted to or not. It is most probably an origin myth to explain the rivers of the lands of Lydia and Phrygia, in modern Anatolia in the Eternal State, producing gold that made the later King Croesus legendarily rich. Gold is so central to our imagination of wealth that we frequently forget that the reason why it is so valuable is its rarity. Perhaps that sounds obvious, but I don't think people appreciate just how rare gold is. Ninety percent of all the gold ever mined in human history was mined since the California Goldrush in 1818-19.[3] Even today, all the gold ever mined would fit in a cube about seventy feet on each side. Or, to put it another way, about enough to fill just under four Global Games swimming pools.[4] (Shocked audience reaction) Before 1818, it'd have fitted into a cube only thirty or so feet on each side - which would easily fit into the House of Commons chamber, for example. Nobody guess how long it would stay there before the politicians decided to start taxing it. (Audience laughter) But just think about that, all the gold in the world in one place would only be that much. Now remember all the depictions in fiction that have shown pirates or unscrupulous wealthy villains with ships full, vaults full, of gold.[4] To the economically literate, such scenes are as absurd as if one watched a film in which one character was twenty feet tall and drove a mobile powered by eggs and nobody seemed to notice or comment on it! Gold's scarcity is what makes it so valuable and so relatively stable, for the most part, but also causes problems with using it as a currency. When we tie the money in circulation to a specific commodity - especially a highly limited one - that limits our economic growth. Of course, it was never the case that when currency was backed by a precious metal, the amount of money in circulation was tied to the amount of that metal alone. The key principle of banking is that a bank can always theoretically pay out commodity coinage, which is inherently valuable, such as gold or silver coins, to any account holder who walks in and asks for it. This works, providing that not every account holder walks in at once and asks for it, because the bank is moving their limited amount of money around in order to fulfil transactions elsewhere. If this does happen, in the case of a 'run on the bank', then the bank will be unable to refund them all and will collapse, unless it is rescued by emergency funds from elsewhere. (Audience grumbles) Nonetheless, even though a small amount of gold can physically stay in the vault of one bank and be theoretically loaned out again and again through promissory notes, fixing currency to a limited commodity still inherently limits economic growth. In order to do that with gold, or any commodity, of course, one already requires a stable banking system and a state to back it up - though historically banks have backed up states as well! For much of history, the only state strong and stable enough to be able to operate such a system was China. China could issue fiat currency, paper money, for internal use long before anyone in Europe trusted it. Even the Roman Empire found its own economy disrupted by forces from the China trade.[5] The Chinese economy was always founded on silver as the chief commodity, along with silk early on, but silver ingots were hoarded rather than exchanged until the Ming dynasty. Even though China was still largely inward-looking at this time, we can see how the interaction of European and Novamundine influences with Chinese ones helped set the monetary policy of the later world. The Spanish had obtained vast silver mines from the Novamund and silver began to flood into the Far East as a means of exchange. The Ming statesman Wang Juzheng implemented what we would later recognise as China's silver standard, collecting taxes in silver taels rather than rice. It had been an indirect European influence, by making silver more available, that had helped set China's economic policy; in later centuries, this attachment to silver would feed back, as China in turn influenced the West. China is the best-known example of a silver standard economy, but silver was the basis of a lot more economies than gold throughout history, from the Sumerians onwards. Gold first rose to prominence as the primary basis of an economy due to an accidental decision by famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton, who was also Master of the Royal Mint at the time, which undervalued silver in England compared to gold. 'Bad money drove out good' and England, then a rising power, became dependent on gold, while silver coins flowed out of the country to Europe as they could be melted down for higher than their face value. This naturally also influenced matters here in what would become the ENA. This early push for gold was abortive, though, when England was invaded by the French and she lost much of her gold reserves.[6] Europe in general had been damaged and exhausted by the Jacobin Wars, while China had been unexpectedly opened to further trade by the rebellion during the Three Emperors' War that gave rise to the Nanfeng dynasty.[7] Visionary leaders in both Europe and China realised that this was an opportunity to help rebuild after their respective wars, and trade between China - those parts controlled by the Nanfeng - and the rest of the world dramatically accelerated during this period. Prior to this point, China under the old Qing dynasty had been backward, inward-looking and reluctant to trade. The Qing might be foreign invaders, Manchus, but despite that, or because of that, they seemed eager to embrace the more autarkic parts of Confucianism, more than many of the native Han dynasties in fact. The Qing steadily reduced trade to only one city, Canton, modern Hanjing, and would only accept one commodity, silver - though from the ENA, Appalachian ginseng was a second trade commodity.[8] At the same time, European and Novamundine powers became more and more hungry and impatient for China's bounty of trade products; tea, porcelain, lacquerware and silk chief among them. The trade was seen as nothing more than a trickle to Europeans and treasuries were being emptied of silver. Unscrupulous traders began illegally trading the drug opium to Chinese merchants. The Qing government proved ineffectual at cracking down on this, encouraging others to try the same, and even the more legitimate major trading companies tried it. The British East India Company infamously caused a famine in Bengal in 1770 by forcing farmers to grow opium poppies instead of food, all to feed the ravenous trade balance. The Three Emperors' War and the rise of the Nanfeng, the later Feng, changed all that. The Feng might have been birthed in part by secret societies with the romantic goal of overthrowing foreign rule, but they were also run by hard-headed businessmen who knew Europeans better than anyone in China, and also knew how to strike a deal. Both Nanfeng and Europeans were in weak positions. Twenty years earlier or later, a country like France could have sent a fleet to try to enforce its will on the Chinese traders. (Audience reaction) Yes, I mean no disrespect to the Chinese people by saying so, I don't seek to compare them to a country like Yapon! But things were in turmoil at the time and a strong foreign force could have forced an unequal deal on the Nanfeng. Fortunately for China, damaged Europe was in no place to do so. A new trading arrangement grew up as a partnership of equals, as both Europe and the Nanfeng rebuilt and rose again together, and we in the Novamund rose to join them. The Nanfeng were able to severely limit the opium trade and actually enforce it, unlike their Qing predecessors; though opium was valuable, the European traders mostly recognised that it was better to stick to providing the less valuable but more reliable trade goods which the Qing had previously turned their noses up at. The old Dutch were the only ones who tried to carry on the opium trade surreptitiously, and we all know what happened to them. The Nanfeng proved that they could force a country out of the China trade if it broke its treaty obligations, and the fact that the Dutch collapsed soon afterwards in the Popular Wars rammed the point home. I mention all this because Nanfeng China, Feng China's, integration into a global economy changed everything. China had never truly been as aloof from the world as its rulers might like to think, but this direct involvement was a new concept altogether. China was not merely a silver sink anymore, but a part of an economic system, with silver flowing out as well as in, paying for European weapons and training and steam technology. And from the Novamund as well, of course. Silver was the primary exchange commodity of world trade, with China also influencing Siam and, later, the Indian nations after the Great Jihad after the establishment of their colony of Jushina. One might have expected a change to a gold standard to be driven by the repeated goldrushes of the nineteenth century. This certainly dramatically increased the gold supply and made gold more viable as a means of currency exchange. In the short term, however, many goldrushes close together caused a destabilisation in the price of gold. Neither precious metal alone could entirely supply the exchange needs of the rapidly-industrialising and -developing interior of this nation and what was then the UPSA. Local banks were often set up, illegally issuing paper money backed by nothing more than wishful thinking, frequently collapsing and wiping out savings every time there was an economic ripple.[9] But they existed because people needed the ability to save and invest to keep up with the pace of economic development, driven in part by new technology such as steam engines and railways. Floods of immigrants left Europe for here in the ENA, the UPSA and Antipodea. The situation was highly volatile. The Electrum Standard, which still carries connotations of being 'the good old days' whose passing is bemoaned by greybeards - even though no-one lives now for truly remembers it - formally came about later than many imagine it did, in 1883.[10] Informally, however, it had already begun to form organically. The repeated injection of large quantities of gold into the global economy, and the fact that that economy was gradually incorporating more and more of the world, gradually led to an increased use of gold to underwrite the industrialised economies of the Arc of Power here in the ENA, the River Plate in the UPSA, the coal belt of northwestern Europe, and the Moscow-Petrograd corridor in Russia. At the same time, Nanfeng China continued to increase in power and importance and still ran her trade on a silver basis. Silver mines across the New World, most famously perhaps in the Californian province of Argentina, continued to produce and farmers remained wedded to silver as an easier means of exchange.[11] Diamonds and other gemstones were also entering the world economy in much larger quantities than before, largely from the Cape Republic as well as the gem mines of Cambodia in the Siamese Empire. Initially this led to widespread economic disruption, before cartels agreed to limit the diamond supplies; later, after the Societist takeover of several African diamond-producing regions,[12] the Combine would use control of this market as an economic weapon, like their better-known attempted use of oil. The volatility of the world economic situation in 1883 was demonstrated by the fact that a global depression, the Panic of 1883, was set off by the relatively minor incident of isolated crop failures due to a volcanic eruption in the Nusantara. The exchange rate of gold to silver had proved too unstable, and this had led to several bank collapses. Now, for the first time, world powers met in Antwerp to agree to fix the gold-to-silver standard exchange, initially at 15:1. Hopes that this could be maintained indefinitely proved fruitless, however, necessitating regular meetings of what became known as the World Numismatics Council (Audience reaction) Of course, this was before the rise of Societism made terms like that politically charged. Yes, every three years or so the WNC would meet to fix the rate of exchange. There was still a lag, leading to situations like the earlier one in England I mentioned, where silver coins might become more inherently valuable than their face value and lead to illegal currency flows and melting down to ingots. Gold became more and more important as a more stable rate of mining from Africa replaced the stop-start disruption of the goldrushes, and even China began unofficial defining its external markets in terms of gold. The global gold market would not be affected by issues of supply - other than mines pausing operations due to war - until the Trondek goldrush of 1933.[13] The Antwerp System had its flaws, but it served to moderate global financial volatility until it failed with the outbreak of the Pandoric War in 1896.[14] Perhaps the surprising part is that the Electrum Standard did not collapse immediately as more and more powerful nations suspended interconvertibility and began to print fiat money to fund their war efforts. An important factor in keeping the heart of the system stable was the neutrality of France and the Marseilles Protocol. (Audience reaction) Yes, France's position has been much-criticised on moral grounds, but in terms of the world's economy, a league of armed neutrality backed by what was then the biggest economy on Earth meant that trade could continue to function under the wartime conditions. By effectively threatening to intervene on one side or the other to tip the balance, the French - backed up by the Italians and a host of minor allies - were able to protect the status of neutral shipping on the high seas. This had a number of consequences. For example, attempts to blockade import-dependent nations such as Germany into starvation all failed. No power was willing to risk sinking a ship sailing an obviously fictitious neutral flag of convenience lest it antagonise the French. This worked both ways, of course; in order to constitute a credible threat, the French had to scatter their forces across the world to be ready to intervene, which meant that they were unable to put down the Dufresnais Revolution, for example. Because France never suspended the Electrum Standard within its own economic bloc, the French economy became even more dominant over the course of the war as the ENA, UPSA and China all began to exhaust their reserves. However, France then fell into a trap. When the UPSA was replaced with the Societist Combine, the Combine defaulted on most Meridian debts - which largely came at the expense of France, whose banks had continued to lend to Meridians throughout the war. (Indistinct reaction from audience) Well, some would say so, perhaps. Prime Minister Leclerc built the International Expeditionary Force out of Marseilles Protocol troops and sent it to the Combine after the war, not to try to suppress Societism as is often thought today, but to try to secure French-owned businesses and French subjects there. In the end, this effort was largely a failure. The French economy had strengthened due to not suffering the same rise in military spending to fund the Pandoric War effort that other nations had, but France just ended up spending on its military for the IEF intervention instead. Nations attempted to rebuild the Antwerp System after the war, more out of a vague sense of wishful thinking than with any plan in mind. Nostalgics associated the Electrum Standard with prosperity, and confused cause and effect.[15] The loss of the UPSA and much of the Hermandad to the interconnected global economy, as Alfarus built his inward-looking 'udarkismo' system, was an elephant in the room that gradually began to undermine the standard. The reconstructed Antwerp System limped on, its obvious fragilities ignored by those who did not wish to see them, until 1917. The Panic of 1917 was triggered by Guatemala defaulting on a war reparations payment coupled to a political and economic crisis in Corea. However, something similar could have happened at any time, if enough isolated problems had come together at once so that financiers could not try to head them off. Discussing the response to the Panic of 1917 would take more than one lecture in itself, but it dealt a fatal blow to the Electrum Standard. While still publicly professing that any suspension in the system was temporary, national banks once again suspended interconvertibility with gold and silver and began to print fiat money to increase the money supply. This stabilised creaking parts of the economy in the short term, but also led to rapid inflation. The Panic of 1917 exposed a double standard in how financiers and markets responded to this intervention. Small and friendless nations could not unilaterally print money without sparking bank runs and collapses as capital fled the country for stabler markets. By contrast, great powers such as France, Russia and the ENA were said to have their currencies 'backed by steel' rather than gold or silver; in other words, their military power was itself regarded as a security to protect investments and prevent internal mob violence from overturning banks. This allowed these countries to intervene to protect the economies of smaller allies via loans, while making their governments beholden to them. China also did this, notably to Corea, but China itself had probably suffered the least of the major powers in the Panic to begin with. The most dramatic collapse in the Panic came in Belgium, precisely because King Maximilian IV acted as though Belgium was a great power and immune to criticism, while ignoring the fact that his own heavy-handed interventions in politics had made investors and banks jittery. He arrogantly rejected French financial aid which might have saved his position. The obviously-rigged election of 1918 led to a public uprising which was put down only with Russian help, effectively reducing Belgium to a Russian puppet and setting it on the course for destruction in the Black Twenties.[16] This unstable state of fiat currency being the global norm would continue throughout the Black Twenties, as both war and plague response consumed public funds. Inflation and debt both skyrocketed. Despite China and Siam's neutrality, the economic chaos began to bleed into their economies as well. China's sometimes overly strict responses to plague outbreaks damaged its economy and made it a hostile market to European and American investors who otherwise might have seen China as a safe harbour with the war back home. Societist success in the War of 1926 (Audience reaction) made Alfaran udarkismo seem more attractive to the nations, and some, such as Corea and later Panchala, would attempt to imitate it - with disastrous consequences, for those nations did not have access to a large chunk of the world's resources in bondage as Alfarus did. The post-Black Twenties boom resulted in increased prosperity but not, initially, increased stability. The volatility of the fiat-based economy continued, though many had gotten used to stop-start inflation and regular currency and wage crises as the 'new normal' as it had been over a decade since the Panic of 1917. What initially prompted a rethink was what became known as the Shock of 1934, an economic wobble probably caused initially by rumours about French trade policy with respect to Bisnaga and Peousie, coupled to the aftereffects of the Trondek goldrush. Financial experts generally agree that this could have been a new major contraction if it had not been tackled by quick and audacious action by the central banks of France, Russia and the Empire. China had still yet to fully re-engage in the global markets following the political crisis of 1930-31, which would be significant. It was remarked at the time that, despite those three great powers having been at each others' throats not long ago, their bankers had acted for the good of all, because maintaining a stable global economy was in the interests of all people. This ultimately led to Jerzy Rytlewski's 'Carltonist Pacifism', a critique and counter to Societism in which Rytlewski argues that this impetus towards economic cooperation could subsume military goals and so prevent war. Of course, in many ways it was just a restatement of similar ideas from the Long Peace, which the Societists had already rejected - that long period of peace for economically-driven reasons had eventually ended. I digress. The sequence of events that led to the establishment of the Gold Standard is a complicated, confusing - and frequently confused - one. There are many times I have read monogrammes by otherwise intelligent writers who confidently state causes for this establishment, causes which had not actually happened yet! Sometimes it can be difficult to separate causes and consequences, as this was an eventful period and a broad shift in one direction can be hard to unpick. Nowadays the ASL likes to stir up controversy among historians for its own sake, but the so-called 'Auric Controversy' over the Gold Standard is as old as the standard itself. Many economic historians argue that the establishment of the standard possessed an almost Paleian inevitability to it, driven by the changing nature of the world market and the increased gold supply. Many others argue, with equal eloquence, that the establishment of the standard was an unlikely event which came about only because of a precise combination of chance factors, such as the identities of individual treasury ministers and the absence of China from the table at a critical time. The latter factor was certainly significant. China's use of silver for its internal market had always helped underpin the Electrum Standard, but following plague and crisis there, this factor in favour of a role for silver in the world markets had declined. The old UPSA had also been a substantial voice in favour of silver, being a major producer of the metal from the mines in its client states of Peru and (to a lesser extent) Mexico.[17] The 'Golden Sun and Silver Torch', though with other symbolic meanings to the Meridians, could also be seen as a declaration in favour of the Electrum Standard. The UPSA had been replaced with the udarkist Combine, which had its own ideas about currency standards which I'll get to later. Even if the Combine had been participating in these debates, it now had access to substantially more gold than the UPSA had, possessing the Congo and beginning to develop gold mines there. In the absence of the Chinese and Meridian voices pushing for silver, the debate was now dominated by the Empire, France and Russia. Within those nations were internal voices for silver, but these too were growing less important. Continental France had mostly used gold internally, with silver being more important for colonial trade with and within Bisnaga.[18] As it was now clear that the wind was blowing in favour of Bisnagi independence, a standard based on gold only seemed more in the interest of propping up the domestic French economy. Here in the Empire, the primary supporters of silver had been farmers and miners in the West, away from the Arc of Power. There had always been a loud minority in the industrialised east arguing for a gold standard, but this had not seemed politically feasible when the other world powers were wedded to electrum. Now, a few things had changed. Industry was spreading to more cities in the interior, the farming sector had been heavily disrupted by the Black Twenties, and the party system had been shattered by both the war and then electoral reform. There was no coherent pro-silver voter bloc anymore; even though the leading Pioneer party was drawing on what should have been pro-silver demographics, in this brave new world of coalitions, the government was also being backed by pro-gold east coasters. Opposition to the gold standard would mostly come on the Confederal level of politics, with the eventual establishment of the Agrarian Party of Michigan and the Argentine Party of Westernesse and its neighbours,[19] which would go on to merge into today's Agri-Argent Party. For the moment, pro-gold voices were in the majority. In Russia, things were not so democratic, of course, but there were similar factors involving the industrialisation of the interior and wealthy industrialists gaining an increasingly loud voice in the Imperial Soviet at the expense of traditional aristocrats. Russia also brought along Romulan Italy as an important partner, and Italy also argued in favour of gold. By far, though, the single biggest factor was simply that people were sick of economic volatility and wanted to try something new to try to stabilise the world markets. Simply trying to rebuild the glory days of the Antwerp System from the Long Peace had already been showed to be flawed. Now, important voices such as French Prime Minister (and former Controller-General) Loic Caouissin argued that the world had changed and a monometallic gold-based standard would bring stability and fend off currency crises. Caouissin pointed to the vastly increased supply of gold to the world market from Perousie, the Cape Republic, Russia, Natal, and the Empire. The Trondek goldrush had also not destabilised the price of gold to the point that many had predicted. At the Passau Conference of 1935, representatives from over a dozen governments agreed the so-called 'Passau System', which would be ratified by all major economies except the Combine over the next couple of years.[20] The Passau System locked all currencies to a fixed rate of exchange with gold, with the goal of prevent competitive currency devaluations and tying down inflation. In practice, a 3% rate of deviation was permitted in case of emergency, with nations expected to take action to remedy any shift beyond this by buying foreign currency. Where the Passau System struggled was that the nations were, understandably, reluctant to create any kind of arbitration body to take action against any who violated the rules. Despite this, compromise built on compromise until the Transoceanic Office for Financial Standards (TOFS) was created and ratified in 1936.[21] TOFS's ruling executive consisted of a council of eight, with permanent seats for representatives of the Empire, Russia and France and five rotating members drawn from other participating nations. China initially refused to take part, attempting to continue its former policies. In 1940, however, the Chinese government U-turned and joined TOFS in return for a constitutional change to create an existing permanent seat, saving face. Part of the reason for China's move was the increasing development of gold mines in China's own territory, leading the Gold Standard to become more favourable towards Chinese interests. I should explain that one part of the shift to gold was that it banned or restricted the coinage of 'free silver' as it had been known. Historically, in most nations it would be possible to take a silver ingot to a mint and have it minted into legal-tender silver coins. The Passau System, by contrast, heavily restricted this former right, which was viewed with outrage in more silver-dependent parts of the world. The gold-based Passau System would form the foundation for the world economy for more than twenty years, from 1935 until the Crash of 1956 which helped trigger the Sunrise War. This era would be one of near-unprecedented peace and prosperity, eclipsing even the Long Peace in terms of rises of standard of living. This was driven in part by new technology, produced by industrial companies which benefited from the stability that the Gold Standard had imposed. Nonetheless, there were also many losers as well as winners. I already mentioned agriculture, which suffered from the effects of the limited gold supply. While the Passau System stabilised prices and sharply cut inflation compared to the last decade, it also somewhat tied the hands of central banks to respond to minor crises, which could lead to individual bank failures. In terms of nations, winners and losers were not always easy to predict. As I said, China was a fervent opponent of the Gold Standard but ultimately ended up benefiting from it. Germany's economy also recovered under gold after much scepticism from German society. Several African nations suffered short-term disruption but then also benefited, being gold producers themselves. (This is one of those factors which I say people sometimes cite as causes of the Passau System, even though the voices of African nations were not heard until the Toulon Conference which took place after Passau!) The Indian nations generally suffered a decline from the shift to gold, which in Bisnaga was viewed as an act of spite on the part of the French. The effect of the stabilisation on both prices and wages was seen both positively and negatively by workers in different industries, depending on the context they had started with. One reason why the novelty of electrical technologies are so associated with this period is that their producers still had room to expand their markets in the new artificially gold-restricted world, and attracted workers with high wages as a consequence. In all this, I haven't talked about what the Societists were doing, of course. In the last years of Alfarus before the Silent Revolution, a new Societist economic policy had been pioneered by Josephus Kalvus. Kalvus argued that a key lesson of the Black Twenties and the War of 1926 was that coal was in decline as a source of energy, and was increasingly being replaced by oil and its derivatives.[22] Firstly, he claimed that the Combine could effectively blackmail the world if it was able to control most sources of oil. (Audience reaction) Yes, well, nobody ever said it was realistic. Kalvus had some legitimate points about oil, but he was also a legacy of the fact that anyone who could rise to the top in the late Alfaran period was someone who was more skilled at political survival and bluffing his way through the so-called meritocratic tests than he was at his actual job. The Combine did have access to the vast oil reserves of Venezuela, but they should have known that, even at the time, the Empire, New Ireland, Persia and Russia had oil fields far too vast for the Societists to have any hope of trying to establish a near-monopoly. And this was before the oil in Araby, Guinea and the German Sea, among others, was discovered. Kalvus did have more success with a similar argument about trying to control the world's rubber supply, I should said, which led to a push for alternatives and a drive towards pseulac...that's another story. But that was only half of Kalvus' argument. He also claimed that the Societist udarkist currency unit, the shikullus (later replaced with the mundo), should be based on the global value of oil, believing that the entire economy should follow the oil supply. It should have been obvious that, with new oilfields and exploitation techniques being regularly discovered and new technologies that consumed oil also changing the demand side of the equation, this was a recipe for chaos. However, as I said, in the late Alfaran period few were still willing to speak up and criticise an obviously disastrous idea. It was a significant moment for the future of Societism. Both Danubia and the Eternal State politely declined to join this attempt at a new world order. The former was, perhaps, not surprising to the Combine by this point, but the second was a shock - the Combine had thought their advisors had been establishing control in Constantinople. Regardless, Kalvus' 'Oil Standard' was predictably disastrous and the Combine had abandoned it in 1936, only one year after its adoption. To the Societist mind, being forced to publicly retract a former policy was a bigger sin than the negative effects the policy had had in the first place. By this point, it is suspected that Alfarus had suffered a stroke and his regime was really being run by Madame Alfara behind the scenes.[23] Whoever gave the order, Kalvus was publicly executed for his crimes, being called 'a traitor to humanity and a soldier of the mind', reflecting the Societist idea that all soldiers were murderers worthy of execution (though in the case of their own Celatores it was conveniently delayed eighty years). Now, one public execution, even captured on film, might not carry enough impact, as Kalvus' policy had inflicted harm on loyal Societists from Carolina to the Nusantara, and all were angry. Alfarus, or Alfara, promptly had a few dozen political prisoners executed in the centre of the various Zones' capitals and just told them it was Kalvus. There's some debate about whether the message had meant to be that these people were supposed to be Kalvus' collaborators and there was a mistake, but it appears that thousands of Societists both watched Kalvus' execution in Zon1Urb1 on a propaganda reel at the picture-house and then went down the road to their own town square and saw it again there. If true - it is hard to say as much of this is based on the debatable accounts of refugees - it certainly must have undermined public trust in Alfarus' regime. As you probably know, Alfarus died not long after this. There are many reasons why the continuity regime led by Alfara soon collapsed amid a tide of public anger and we got the Silent Revolution. Alfarus had made a lot of enemies over the years who were suddenly willing to speak out. But our usual picture of the Silent Revolution is of massed mobs of Black Guards torching public art depicting Alfarus, young men who had formerly been just as loyal to the Kapud as the famous Markus Garzius. What turned them against him? Perhaps the fact that so many of them had lost savings thanks to the instability unleashed by this man whom, publicly, had seemed to have the Kapud's backing... * (Lt Tindale's note) Uh-oh, he seems to be coming upstairs now. Toodle-pip! [1] To oversimplify, the colour of an object arises from white light (a mixture of colours) striking it and not all colours being equally reflected or transmitted through. This is due to energy gaps between electron orbitals in the atoms or molecules comprising the object; light of the right energy (which is proportional to frequency which defines colour) to match a gap can be absorbed by an electron to briefly promote it to the higher orbital. A colourless object typically looks colourless because the energy gaps between its electron orbitals are all too large for any colour of light we can see to bridge the gap and be absorbed (higher-energy ultraviolet light may be absorbed, hence those objects will stand out on UV cameras). Most metals, in their pure form, fall into this category and are described as 'grey' or 'silvery', i.e. colourless. Gold (and, more obscurely, caesium) are heavy enough that their electrons begin to 'orbit' at a speed close to that of light, which means according to Einsteinian relativity, they gain mass. This in turn changes the energy gaps, narrowing them to the point that gold absorbs blue light from the white light spectrum, the rest of the spectrum being reflected back so it looks yellow to our eyes. In a world without relativistic effects, gold would just look like silver. [2] 'Proto-Caucasians' refers to the people known in OTL to archaeologists as 'the Maykop culture'. [3] The same statistic is true of the later California Goldrush in OTL. [4] There are far too many examples of this from OTL fiction to count, but a good example is in the Tintin books "The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham's Treasure" vs their loose film adaptation from 2011. The books, realistically, depict the treasure as a couple of handfuls of gold and jewels which fit into a small container and are worth enough to set Captain Haddock up for life. The film depicts a pirate ship absurdly full of so much golden treasure that it would represent perhaps a quarter of the entire amount of mined gold that existed in the world in the 1600s! [5] This is slightly misleadingly phrased, as China did not start using paper money until the 7th century, after the Roman Empire had already fallen. [6] Unlike OTL, where the British Empire's dominance of world trade after 1815 helped drive the push towards the Gold Standard internationally, in addition to an increased gold supply from the nineteenth century goldrushes. [7] Some historians have started referring to the Feng dynasty pre-Pandoric War (i.e. before it reunified China under its rule with the destruction of the Beiqing) as the 'Nanfeng' (Southern Feng). This is a historiographic term coined after the fact, like 'Byzantine Empire', and was not used at the time. It has not caught on very widely (yet). [8] See Part #104 in Volume III. [9] This was also true of the United States in the early-to-mid nineteenth century in OTL. [10] See Part #270 in Volume VII. [11] Argentina is the region known in OTL as Nevada (a false friend, meaning Land of Silver; the term Platinea is used for OTL Argentina in TTL). [12] See Part #265 in Volume VII. [13] Trondek is another transliteration of the name Klondike. Why is the Klondike goldrush delayed 37 years compared to OTL? Primarily because that region was especially difficult to reach by any prospectors until after the Black Twenties; theoretically claimed by the Russians, in practice largely uninhabited by anyone other than its native peoples (who traded with the Superior Republic) and then subject to the issue that the Americans had built the deliberately incompatible and militarised Rexoc railway in the area to prevent the Russians being able to use captured American railways in a war. [14] There are major implications from TTL's different economic history at this point. In OTL, the shift to a global Gold Standard was driven by Germany and the United States deciding to abandon bimetallism in favour of gold, preceded by the French-led Latin Monetary Union. There were many consequences of this; those on American farmers are fairly well known, but it also led to the fall of the Indian rupee and was a major cause of the Panic of 1873, among much else. [15] See Part #270 in Volume VII. [16] See Part #275 in Volume VIII. [17] Peru is also a gold producer, but to a lesser relative extent. [18] In OTL, British India remained on the silver standard (as had traditionally been used there for centuries - the word 'rupee' literally means engraved silver) even though Britain itself was on the gold standard. This did not change until the 1890s, when India moved to the gold standard with mixed but mostly negative consequences. [19] There is a double meaning to 'Argentine Party', as this term has already been coined in TTL to describe political centrism (as opposed to right-wing doradism, gold, and left-wing cobrism, copper). Naturally, all of this makes this period extremely confusing to understand (especially in Sweden and Ireland) when parties named after gold or silver can have positions on the gold standard that have nothing to do with their name! [20] It's not mentioned here, but the choice of Passau was partly the symbolism that it was here in 1552 that Holy Roman Emperor Charles V guaranteed Lutheran religious freedoms in the Peace of Passau (which led to the Peace of Augsburg). As was joked at the time, if Passau could heal the rifts in the the realm of God, perhaps it could also do the same to the realm of Mammon. [21] We are now entering the era in which words like 'International' or 'Global' are starting to carry negative connotations due to association with Societism, hence awkward compromises like 'Transoceanic'. [22] See Part #295 in Volume VIII for a different, related perspective on the Societists and oil. [23] This is not really an accurate way to refer to Alfarus' wife, but people outside the Combine often use similar ones - see footnote to Part #285 in Volume VIII." How are economics in this world different our world?

USER: Summarize "Extract"Look to the West Volume V To Dream Again Interlogue: Silence in the Library Crosstime Update Report by Dr David Wostyn: 05/11/2019 (OTL Calendar) The material contained herein is classified as THANDE MOST SECRET. I understand that some might consider me sending a message at this point as foolhardy or inappropriate. However, given the manner in which 'Operation The Thande Institute Invasion Of Croydon, 2019'--I do wish Captain MacCauley would let someone else come up with codenames--is being carried out, there is nothing I can do at present to aid the effort. To briefly recap on the plan in case anything was left out before--we have been undertaking this at fairly short notice after all--we believe that Team Alpha are being held at an English Security Directorate (ESD) facility on Coombe Lane in the town of Croydon, which in the Britain or rather the England of this timeline remains its own town and has not been subsumed by London. Although to say that a lot of water has passed under the bridge of this timeline since the POD would be quite an understatement, the local geography knowledge from recorded lectureour own timeline of Sergeant Ellis and in particular Lieutenant Black has nonetheless proved quite useful. Despite the short notice, Lieutenant McConnell was able to secure a suitable surveillance point for us to observe the facility in question, which bears the incongruously merry name of Snowdrop House. I believe this is because the facility is not open about its identity and appears at first glance merely to be one of the fine old houses in this part of Croydon. This may help us in that it presumably limits the number of ESD staff and guards who may be present. In any case Lieutenant McConnell discovered that the house opposite Snowdrop House, named Bluebell House, has recently been vacated due to its former tenant, an MP named David Batten-Hale, lost his seat at the English general election a few months ago. His replacement seems uninterested in the house and it has been put on the market. Lieutenant McConnell and Sergeant Ellis had a look around the house earlier today, ostensibly on behalf of a buyer, and Sergeant Ellis was able to palm a spare key: we have therefore been able to re-enter tonight after the estate agent has gone home. We considered trying to enter Snowdrop House via the basement, but any sort of ambitious tunnel-digging was too time prohibitive and instead we took the opportunity to scout it out from this vantage point and, via triangulation, deduce a safe location to open a Portal there. I say safe, for there will always be an element of risk to going in blind like this--and who is to say the ESD does not use the rooms for different purposes than they seem--but given that Captain MacCauley and the others left ten minutes ago and no apparent alarm has been sounded, we can hope that our Portal did manage to open in a broom cupboard rather than a conference room...in session. However we did, of course, desire a backup plan, and as a result I am here in Bluebell House with Lieutenant Tindale observing from the window, behind what is hopefully a foolproof adaptive camouflage barrier. In the event that Captain MacCauley and the team can't get Team Beta to the Portal in Snowdrop House--or open another one there, but without GPS coverage that is tricky--then they may have to come back here where the Portal I am currently speaking to you through is still open. As a consequence they may be subject to reprisals from the ESD captors, I hesitate to use the term 'enemy fire' in this context but nonetheless...Lieutenant Tindale has his sniper rifle and the new nonlethal rounds, but 'sniper rifle' and 'nonlethal' are not words I am ready to believe belong in the same sentence. I can only hope that things do not escalate to that level, as I believe conflict with the natives of this timeline would not only be an abstract tragedy but would turn our path to the risk of future peril, for the people of this timeline are quite advanced enough to create Portals of their own if they learn how the theory works. As they may have already done so from Team Alpha if their interrogation methods are particularly ruthless, I fear. But now Lieutenant Tindale and I must wait for a report, and while we wait, I have realised that there is an opportunity here. You must think me foolish, to have no sense of priorities, to be churlish about the lives of my friends and colleagues--but there is a reason why I am choosing to use the emergency Portal to communicate directly with you, avoiding the radio transmissions of the digitiser which we surmise might have led the National Gendarmery to Team Alpha in the first place. You see, when I first came to Bluebell House I noticed that this room is in fact a library, or book depository might be a better term. How appropriate for Lieutenant Tindale and his sniper rifle, some would say. But still, not only do we have the old oak-panelled walls and shelves and leather-bound books one would expect to come with a fine old house like this, but also incongruous modern bookshelves with colourful plastic-backed books and even something not unlike an e-reader, though cruder than what we are used to. And crucially, this is the library of an MP, a Burgess to be precise, and as such it includes many works on history and geography. Many works that I would have given my right arm to have while we were trying to piece together the earlier history of this timeline, just using what vaguely relevant works we could cull from public libraries. But here it is, all here, all in one place, and in depth. In a place we will probably soon have to flee from. You will forgive me if I seize this opportunity with both hands. A room full of relevant books, and a Portal to throw them through: I trust Mr Batten-Hale will not mind if we borrow them long enough to copy them. The floor is already covered in piles of them taken from the shelves, probably to be moved to a new house elsewhere. He likely will not notice if a few more are taken away and then swiftly returned. First of all I notice a children's encyclopaedia, from which I surmise that Mr Batten-Hale has children (a deduction hardly worthy of Sherlock Holmes!) Though they are obviously not in-depth, such works are excellent from our perspective (you will recall the report by Dr Cussans on Timeline H) because they introduce things to us that books penned for adults will assume 'everyone knows'. As a result, I think I will begin with volume F to H. I have left it turned to a particularly relevant page... . From - "The Imp in Your Pocket"Children's Complete Cyclopaedia, by Michael Mantarakis, recorded November 16th, 2020-- Gold! Gold has excited the imaginations of mankindAlfred Yew, 14th Edition (2001)-- GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY: The Stories of All the Peoples of the World and the Lands in which they Live THE GLOBAL GAMES THE NATIONS OF the world must by their nature compete, or the human race would stagnate and eventually go extinct. But some of the ways that they have competed in the past have been destructive: war and colonialism are the two most blood-tinged examples. Some men thought that the losses of those wars and colonies were an acceptable price to keep the human race alive, but those men lacked vision. They were wrong. There are other ways in which nations can compete that are constructive, not destructive. Science, and in particular the Race for Space, is one (see volume Q-S pp. 132-49 and pp. 254-260). Sport is another. And of all the sports competitions between the nations, the greatest is the Global Games. THE MAN WHO SAW WHAT SPORT COULD DO FOR THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD Peter Rathbone was not a sportsman himself, except perhaps in the field of hunting. He was an English explorer who was born in Hereford in the year 1841. He travelled to countries such as Perousie and China to explore, and even to more dangerous places like Rajasthan and Portugal. But it is not his exploring that he is remembered for. In the year 1873, when he was thirty-two, he happened to be in France and saw a football match played between visiting English schoolchildren and their French friends. He realised that sport was a means by which the nations could compete in a way that would drive them to greater heights of success, without the killings of war. But not just football or diamondball or H-ball, but in many sports. Different sports were more popular in different countries. They should all experience them and respect each others' success. A man from Germany might never even have heard of the sport of pulu and think that the Burmese are inferior to him because they are less capable at football. But put him on horseback and let him see the Burmese run rings around him, and then he will respect them. As in all things, more knowledge is always to the benefit of all. THE COMPETITION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD Rathbone got together with other enthusiasts and created the World Sports Society, which became the modern Global Games Commission. But it would be years before they attracted enough wealthy patrons to fund their inaugural sports celebration. It would not be called the Global Games until years later, but we now remember that competition in 1882 as the First Games. The First Games were a success but they would not become a regular event until Rathbone secured funding once again in 1886, ever since our earliest, forgotten years. The Noble Metal, which the ancients thought always remained aloof andGames have been held every three years except in cases of particular global emergencies. Wonder Question: What countries were represented at the First Games? At the First Games athletes did not combine with others -compete under a flag or for a named nation because it seemed obvious to everyone at the time who was representing which country. But as political borders and definitions have changed since then it has become more difficult to say who was represented. For example Joseph Collins, the runner who came first in the 150-toise dash at the First Games, was born in Scotland but grew up in England, and at the time both countries were part of Great Britain. Collins tragically died before the Act of Separation and so we do not entirely true, but combinations are relatively rare compared to other metals - andknow which stood out due to its colour and lustre.country he would have chosen as his own. THE INSTITUTION THAT HAS STOOD THE TEST OF TIME The scientists now tell us that the colour arises from Webb-Popham relativistic effects; IPandoric War interrupted the Games not long after they were first instituted, and some people feared that the horrors of that war and what came after would doom such peaceful pursuits. But the Games had captured the imagination of people across the world and could not explain that,be stopped. Though the Games were interrupted again for the Sunrise War and the Last War of Supremacy, they continue to this day, and today more countries contribute than ever before. Wonder Question: What are 'the Olympics'? The Olympics, Olympic Games or Olympiad are a popular nickname for the Global Games, but this is not their official name and the name was not used until many years after the First Games. The original Olympic Games were a sports competition held in Ancient Greece which have some parallels to the modern Global Games and there has been debate over whether these should be emphasised today (see entry NEO-HELLENISM in volume N-P pp. 109) but the connection has never been officially acknowledged by the Global Games Commission. THE GREAT ENEMY OF SANCHEZISM The Global Games show how the people of the world's nations can acknowledge and celebrate the differences that divide them and allow different people of different nations to excel at different pursuits. They are anathema to Societism, but the popularity of the Games means that athletes from Societist countries have long competed in them. The first athletes from Societist countries competed at the 1916 games and then again in 1919, but then fear and the imposition of new rules requiring athletes to compete under a flag meant that no more athletes from Societist countries competed until the 1943 games. In 1943 they competed under an empty flagstaff, but from 1946 onwards they used the Combine Threefold Eye flag that was accepted by those Societists who realised that they must at least make some small compromise with reality (see entry FLAGS in this volume pp. 89). Wonder Question: Why are Global Games winners awarded silver laurels? The practice of awarding winners silver laurels was introduced in 1934 and is one of the practices derived from the Ancient Greek Olympic Games. Prior to that time cups or medals were awarded but exactly what type was up to the country hosting the games to decide. Copper laurels for runners-up were not introduced until 1949. THE VICTORS OF THE GLOBAL GAMES It is wrong to judge a country by how many Global Games laurels its athletes has won, for all countries will excel in different pursuits, and not all nations have had independent countries that could compete for the same length of time. Nonetheless the country whose athletes have won the most laurels at present is the Russian Confederation, followed by the Empire of North America and the Chinese Empire. Formerly some sources counted all Societist countries as it'sone, in which case they would be second instead, but today this practice is frowned upon..." . (Dr. David Wostyn) And so you can see the great advantages to snatching a few minutes here and there to pass along these books to you. And not just books. Mr Batten-Hale appears to be an enthusiast for cartography and he has a number of maps as wall posters. The label on the back states that this map, made by the company Richards of Erewash, is a modernised and recoloured reproduction of a contemporary map showing the state of affairs in the Empire of North America shortly after the Great American War. As that subject has consumed much of my area of expertise,attention (largely because of the nature of the books I had available to me at the time) in recent weeks, it would be a tragedy if I did not take advantage of this. I'm sure Mr Batten-Hale won't notice if I stick it back up again after you've finished scanning it in... Part #201: Spoilers (Dr. David Wostyn) I am glad you agree that this opportunity cannot be wasted, gentlemen...of course I will not be cutting down these books to digitisable extracts as in the past but imagine that.passing the whole lot through. It is up to you on the other side to reduce them to a hopefully at least somewhat coherent narrative for those studying this timeline's history. In the past, Dr Lombardi and Dr Pylos of Team Alpha and then myself for Team Beta have tried to preface each segment with a quote: initially one of at least partial summative relevance to the topic of the segment, and then for the last fifty updates I have hunted out quotes from Pablo Sanchez to try to illuminate the ideological conflict that so underlines everything in this world. However because I am now just passing on complete books over the space of a few short minutes or hours, there is no time for this. If you wish to preserve continuity of style with the earlier segments when these reports are collated, I suggest one of the Thande Institute analysts on the Our TimeLine side search through the books to come up with suitable ones. Whatever you do, though, don't give that job to Dr Lister, if the abstracts on his papers are any guide he just picks a random paragraph from anywhere and pastes it in-- * "...considerable improvement over the Neptune-II, which was a purely French domestic project. The theory which changed our understanding of the universeNeptune-III however saw input from Italy and England, as its primary role was alwaysto launch the Pelerin (AKA Pellegrino in Italian or Peregrine in English) suborbital threshold bomber, itself a joint project between the three nations. The precise armament of the upper stage remains classified but it is believed that the three countries' threshold programmes have remained separate, with a different domestically produced warhead loadout for each nation's bombers. The rocket and upper stage bomber were both authorised in 1976 and the prototype saw its first flight in 1984, with full operational capacity reached for France in 1987 and Italy and England in 1988. When the Last War of Supremacy broke out, all three countries held to the Ratisbon Convention and did not deploy threshold weapons on open displayEuropean soil, but seven attacks were made against Combine forces in the American theatre by a total of five Pelerins. The French were responsible for four of the bombings, the Italians for two and the English for the remaining one. As a consequence of the Venice disarmament talks of 2011, each country is now limited to three operational Pelerins, with the French additionally having two more in a disassembled state that may be reassembled within a timescale of weeks..." -- Taken from Finch's Complete Militaria of the World, 19th Edition (2013) * From : "Great Men and Women of World History" by L. H. Hodgkins and P. T. Rendell (2000)-- James FitzGeorge and Alistair Wesley were two very brave men who were the first to fly an aerodrome. The boys knew each other from childhood. James' grandfather was William FitzGeorge who saved the Republic of Bengal in a war. Alistair's father was Liam Wesley, who saved the President of England's life. But the boys became more famous than even these relatives. When James and Alistair were young, the only kinds of flying machines were steerables and balloons. These were slow and clumsy machines. James and Alistair were sure that they could do better. In a place in Cygnia called Jinjin[1] in the year 1888 they tested their first aerodrome. An aerodrome is a flying machine that is heavier than air, but works by the air passing faster over the curved wings than it does below them. (See Diagram). The first test ended in disaster. Alistair broke his leg and took months to recover. The young men studied their design and learned from their mistakes. They needed a rudder to steer the drome and to better stabilise their design. In 1889 they tried again and successfully flew for just 18 seconds. But now they knew it could be done. Many more inventors followed in their footsteps. Some people even think the French inventor Gregoire Perret flew his aerodrome before us,Alistair and James did. They are wrong, but it is right that they think differently, for it would be a poor world if we had had the eyes to see, and gave rise to the colour of gold which has fascinated and obsessed us for thousands of years.[1] As soon as there was civilisation ofwere all the same. And we can now look down on all the wonders of that world from Alistair and James' invention, and all the other ones that have sprung from it. * (Dr David Wostyn) Yes, apologies, the children's books were closer to hand, I will start on the adult ones in a minute. In any kind, be it Sumer or ancient Egypt or even the lesser-known Proto-Caucasians, we find elaborate tombs with kings and princes buried with gold jewellery.[2] We all know the cautionary myth of King Midas from my people, who turned everything he touched to gold - whether he wanted to or not. It is most probably an origin myth to explain the rivers of the lands of Lydia and Phrygia, in modern Anatolia in the Eternal State, producing gold that made the later King Croesus legendarily rich. Gold is so central to our imagination of wealth that we frequently forget that the reason why it is so valuable is its rarity. Perhaps that sounds obvious, but I don't think people appreciate just how rare gold is. Ninety percent of all the gold ever mined in human history was mined since the California Goldrush in 1818-19.[3] Even today, all the gold ever mined would fit in a cube about seventy feet on each side. Or, to put it another way, about enough to fill just under four Global Games swimming pools.[4] (Shocked audience reaction) Before 1818, it'd have fitted into a cube only thirty or so feet on each side - which would easily fit into the House of Commons chamber, for example. Nobody guess how long it would stay there before the politicians decided to start taxing it. (Audience laughter) But just think about that, all the gold in the world in one place would only be that much. Now remember all the depictions in fiction that have shown pirates or unscrupulous wealthy villains with ships full, vaults full, of gold.[4] To the economically literate, such scenes are as absurd as if one watched a film in which one character was twenty feet tall and drove a mobile powered by eggs and nobody seemed to notice or comment on it! Gold's scarcity is what makes it so valuable and so relatively stable, for the most part, but also causes problems with using it as a currency. When we tie the money in circulation to a specific commodity - especially a highly limited one - that limits our economic growth. Of course, it was never the case that when currency was backed by a precious metal, the amount of money in circulation was tied to the amount of that metal alone. The key principle of banking is that a bank can always theoretically pay out commodity coinage, which is inherently valuable, such as gold or silver coins, to any account holder who walks in and asks for it. This works, providing that not every account holder walks in at once and asks for it, because the bank is moving their limited amount of money around in order to fulfil transactions elsewhere. If this does happen, in the case of a 'run on the bank', then the bankyou will be unable to refund them all and will collapse, unless it is rescued by emergency funds from elsewhere. (Audience grumbles) Nonetheless, even though a small amount of gold can physically stay in the vault of one bank and be theoretically loaned out again and again through promissory notes, fixing currency to a limited commodity still inherently limits economic growth. In order to do that with gold, or any commodity, of course, one already requires a stable banking system and a state to back it up - though historically banks have backed up states as well! For much of history, the only state strong and stable enough to be able to operate such a system was China. China could issue fiat currency, paper money, for internal use long before anyone in Europe trusted it. Even the Roman Empire found its own economy disrupted by forces from the China trade.[5] The Chinese economy was always founded on silver as the chief commodity, along with silk early on, but silver ingots were hoardedof course want to get the proper historical context rather than exchanged until the Ming dynasty. Even though Chinaleaping straight into a subject without first laying the groundwork. Hello? * From "A Young Person's Dictionary of Science" by O. R. Kavanagh (1999)-- CARYTIC PHYSICS is a special branch of physics to do with the interior core of the atom, sometimes called the caryus from the Greek word for nut. By definition carytic physics began in the year 1929 when the famous McElroy and Wang experiment at Cometa University found that most of the atom's mass was stillconcentrated in this caryus and not evenly distributed as the former geometric atom theory had held. It was found by further experiments that the caryus was made up largely inward-lookingof particles with an electric charge deficit.[2] The long-established physics of electricity held that deficit particles attracted surfeit particles and repelled those of the same balance. Therefore there must be some greater force holding the deficit particles together in the caryus. Men wondered at this time, we can see how the interaction of European and Novamundine influences with Chinese ones helped set the monetary policy of the later world. The Spanish had obtained vast silver mines from the Novamund and silver began to flood into the Far East as a means of exchange. The Ming statesman Wang Juzheng implemented what we would later recognise as China's silver standard, collecting taxes in silver taels rather than rice. It had been an indirect European influence, by making silver more available, that had helped set China's economic policy; in later centuries, this attachment to silver would feed back, as China in turn influenced the West. China is the best-known example of a silver standard economy, but silver was the basis of a lot more economies than gold throughout history, from the Sumerians onwards. Gold first rose to prominence as the primary basis of an economy due to an accidental decision by famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton, who was also Master of the Royal Mint at the time, which undervalued silver in England compared to gold. 'Bad money drove out good' and England, then a rising power, became dependent on gold, while silver coins flowed out of the country to Europe asthese great forces locked inside the atom and whether they could be melted downunleashed. But it would not be for higher thanthirty more years that this would be seen, in the triple tragedy that ended the Sunrise War. It has taken time for the peoples of the world to accepted that carytic physics can be used for good as well as ill, to produce paradox engines to heat our homes and free us from dependence on combustible fuel sources. But the development of the threshold bomb in the 1950s will always be inextricably linked with the history of carytic physics... * (Dr. David Wostyn) What do you mean, 'more twentieth century stuff'? I told you, you need to see it in context! It's no use reading about the Last War of Supremacy unless you know where the conflict comes from-- * From "A Review of Global Defence Capabilities, 2018" by the National Register Institute of Global Politics (2018)-- Since the first deployment of threshold bombs in Russia in 1959, the technology behind the weapon has proliferated worldwide but has also been subject to severe international controls, helped by the sheer levels of global public revulsion for the weapon and its original users. As of 2018, in total 49 threshold bombs have been used in anger, the vast majority (38) in the Last War of Supremacy. A further 122 bombs have been used in test firings, but these have been heavily restricted by disarmament treaties over the years and the Assembly of Sovereign Nations is now hopeful that tests may be subject to a comprehensive international ban from a tentative date of 2023. Currently a total of 14 nations worldwide have access to threshold weapons, discounting those which lack their face value.own native programme but have mutual defence treaties with threshold-armed countries. Excluding the forced disarmament programmes following the Last War of Supremacy, the only country to have voluntarily given up a threshold weapons programme is Panchala, following the democratic revolution which overthrew the despotic Ram Kumar regime there in 1982. Two particular taboos associated with threshold weapons are the use of them against civilian targets and the delivery method. The former has been explicitly banned by international treaty following their first use against cities in 1959, and this treaty has never been violated (barring some borderline cases during the Last War of Supremacy due to military forces digging in too near to urban centres). Delivery has been somewhat more controversial. Traditional deployment has been made either from ground-based forces or from the air (or indeed suborbital craft in more recent years). The controversy ultimately stems from the strength of feeling over the former factor, and that the maximum avoidance of civilian casualties necessitates a high level of precision that only a human targeter in close proximity to his target can deliver. Long-range suborbital military rockets (first tested in the 1960s) could in theory deliver threshold bombs just as they deliver conventional warheads, but the fact that their targeting is insufficiently precise to strike a moving army has led to a near-universal ban. Shorter-range rockets have been more up for debate, but the prospect of interference with their ypologic brains leading to a mistargeting incident has meant they have only been used in combat twice, both incidents during the more desperate moments of the Last War of Supremacy. Finally of course there is the delivery method used in their first deployment in 1959, which has naturally been subject to considerable stigma from official state forces but there is always the possibility of history repeating itself. This naturally also influenced matters here in whathas been another factor supporting the severe limitations of the numbers of threshold weapons in existence at any given time: certainly there is enough pitchblende ore in the world to produce xanthium and hesperium sufficient to destroy the world many times over... * (Dr. David Wostyn) Look, if you skip all the years in between you'll be stuck when you find a word you don't recognise and you don't have any context! How do you think I did all those footnotes? * From "Freedom in Focus: Global Politics 2017" by the National Register Institute of Global Politics (2017)-- If we may be disappointed with the backsliding of one or two nations on our biennial Liberty Index compared to 2015, we should not lose sight of the bigger picture that compared to 25 years ago the world is a much freer place. Even countries like the Russian Confederation has made considerable progress in press freedom and freedom of speech, doubtless due to the removal of the existential threat of so many adjacent Societist powers providing an excuse for the ruling classes there. For the same reason it may be disappointing but it is perhaps not so surprising that Corea is one of the cases where there has been a noticeable decline, with the arrests of journalists and closure of some papers in April 2016 being justified as a 'patriotic action' against the threat to the east. The ENA is particularly to be praised for the relaxation of restrictions on free speech, to the point that some of its more rambunctious Traditionalist Patriot Vote politicians have complained it is 'turning into California'. To which our response would become the ENA. This early push for gold was abortive, though, when England was invaded by the French and she lost much of her gold reserves.[6] Europe in general had been damaged and exhausted by the Jacobin Wars, while China had been unexpectedly opened to further trade by the rebellion during the Three Emperors' War that gave rise to the Nanfeng dynasty.[7] Visionary leaders in both Europe and China realised that this was an opportunity to help rebuild after their respective wars, and trade between China - those parts controlled by the Nanfeng - and the rest of the world dramatically accelerated during this period. Prior to this point, China under the old Qing dynasty had been backward, inward-looking and reluctant to trade. The Qing might be foreign invaders, Manchus, but despite that, or because of that, they seemed eager to embrace the more autarkic parts of Confucianism, more than many of the native Han dynasties in fact. The Qing steadily reduced trade to only one city, Canton, modern Hanjing, andwe would only accept one commodity, silver - though from the ENA, Appalachian ginsenghope that would be the eventual case: as such men are decidedly a minority, it might not be a vain hope. Another example which we have naturally watched with great expectancy over the past twenty years, and which has thus far defied the expectations of pessimists by undergoing quite the recovery towards a state of freedom, is of course the Republic of-- * From "Vanity Fayre, Issue 1,502" edited by Mary Mannington (2019)-- Who's little Miss Pauline Hartington stepping out with now? The cunning young fellow's kept his masque on but our intrepid reporter says she detected the distinct odour of whisky and haggis. Can it be that our own Foreign Secretary's daughter is consorting with the enemy? Is good honest roast beef no longer enough to satisfy her? And what will Mrs Hamilton think, left at home all alone in Govan north of the border? [cont. page 22] Is Your Man More Scared Of Congress Than Premier Tukhachevsky Is? Use These Ten Simple Tricks To Find Out!" * (Dr. David Wostyn) There, I thought that would make you pay attention. Now do it properly or there'll be more of that, Mrs Batten-Hale's got quite the stack here... * From: "The Nations of India, 1700-2000" by Jason Hume and Krishna Haidar (2004) Bengal undoubtedly came through the Great Jihad in as intact a state it did thanks principally to the efforts of two men. The first of these was a second trade commodity.[8] At the same time, European and Novamundine powers became more and more hungry and impatient for China's bounty of trade products; tea, porcelain, lacquerware and silk chief among them. The trade was seen as nothing more than a trickle to Europeans and treasuries were being emptied of silver. Unscrupulous traders began illegally trading the drug opium to Chinese merchants. The Qing government proved ineffectual at cracking down on this, encouraging others to try the same, and even the more legitimate major trading companies tried it. The BritishPresident William FitzGeorge,the son of the former 'Richard IV' usurper of Great Britain--who himself lived through the bulk of the Jihad and died in Bengal aged 76 in 1855. Despite his father's disgrace (albeit rather reduced in scope by him getting along quite well with Frederick II) William worked his way up through the ranks of the East India Company infamously caused a famine inand had achieved the presidency of British Bengal in 1770 by forcing farmers to grow opium poppies instead of food,1846, when the Jihad began to grind towards the nation's borders. The second of the two was of course Nurul Huq, who matched the Mahdists with his own Islamic authority, rallied Bengalis to a reluctant support for the British as the lesser of two evils (achieved due to Huq's longstanding personal opposition to the British, meaning his support carried more weight) and would eventually be martyred by Mahdist mujahideen in 1850. Nonetheless we should not ascribe the entirety of the victory to these two. Commodore Edward Cavendish's reinforcements (actually intended for California) helped turn the tide and the Commodore himself fought on land, being instrumental in the victory at Burdwan in 1851. Many Bengali officers earned great feats of victory, some of whose names are recorded because of the influence they went on to have in post-Jihad Bengal, though sadly due to the prejudices of the time many are not known. One such man, Ranajit Chatterjee, is particularly well known in the British Isles due to his close friendship and alliance with Liam Wesley, the so-called Bad Duke, who fought against the mujahideen from 1852 onwards as one of his worldwide adventures. The two saved each others' lives numerous times, were responsible for slaying the key Jihad commanderSelim Arif after he had burned the village of Silda and killed Chatterjee's uncle, and after the threat to Bengal subsided they went on adventures deep into the hostile Jihad-held lands to the west. In the British Isles (especially Ireland) their adventures are remembered with Wesley as the leader and Chatterjee as the sidekick, while of course in Bengal their positions are reversed. The reality is that the two men considered each other equal partners. Their positive reputation in their homelands is rather lacking in countries such as Berar and Panchala, where they are painted as thieves for having 'retrieved' a number of valuable pieces of art and Hindu religious manuscripts before they could be destroyed by the rampaging mujahideen with their hardline iconoclastic interpretation of Islam. Many of these works are still exhibited in museums in Europe or Bengal despite the modern countries' attempts to get them back. Some were donations but Chaterjee and Wesley made a tidy profit off of others. All of this helped finance the spectacular wedding of Wesley to Chaterjee's sister Priya (also sometimes known by the English form of her name Freya) in 1859. This was primarily a Hindu ceremony, as Wesley's own religious beliefs only extended to a sort of vague acknowledgement of the Church of Ireland. Though this marriage represented a considerable settling down of Wesley from his youth which had left a trail of broken hearts across Europe during the Democratic Experiment era, it scandalised large parts of society (such as it was after years of Populism) when he returned to Europe in 1861 and bought a large townhouse in London. The whole affair illustrated the somewhat confused and Legion-syndromic nature of the British public's attitudes towards Indians: the Orientalist art and cuisine craze of a generation before contrasting with the simple xenophobia towards treating those of a different skin colour and faith as equal, then overlaid with the vague sense that this was treading too close to Linnaeanism and thus was itself a suspiciously foreign idea. Certainly the small number of Burdenists tied themselves in knots in debates over whether Bengalis qualified as 'black' or could be numbered among Eveleigh's Asians which he considered equal to white Europeans.[3] The continuation of some boorish and outrageous habits by Wesley generally tipped the scales towards society's ostracism in general and he would not recover his position until the Russian Embassy incident of 1868. However, though Wesley and Chaterjee were heavily involved in the 1855 mission to support the embattled French in the Carnatic by sea, it is worth remembering that this operation was ultimately the brainchild of William FitzGeorge, displaying his genius for logistics. Though the financial losses of repelling the Jihad ultimately led to the Privatisation of Bengal and the breakdown of lines between European and native in that country, in the short term the solidarity between Europeans first created by the India Board decades before would continue. At least between the British and the French. With Portugal badly weakened and then falling to revolution itself, the Portuguese possessions in India mostly fell to the Jihad in the short term, as did the weakened, Portuguese-influenced Maratha confederate states and British Bombay. Neither Britain nor France was in a position to take advantage of the chaos when the Jihad began to collapse in on itself from the mid-1850s onwards. Persia did gain greater influence in the northern Maratha states such as Gujarat and Rajputana (building on its extant position in Kalat) but Goa itself, the ancient fortress of the Portuguese, would eventually end up in the same hands as much of the old Portuguese empire: those of the UPSA... * (Dr. David Wostyn) There, isn't that much better? Now, shall we continue? [1] Spelled Gingin in OTL. [2] Reflecting a thematic revival of the monist theory of electric charge in the early 20th century, TTL terminology generally refers to surfeit and deficit of charge rather than negative and positive charge respectively. [3] A somewhat similar debate happened in 1888 in OTL after Lord Salisbury referred to Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Asian to be a British MP (winning his seat in 1892 after an earlier failed attempt) as 'a black man'. Part #202: Middle-earth in the Middle Kingdom "2 x turkey dhansaks with rice, one with coriander dip and one without = 12R.4f.-m 1 x jiaozi vegetable sharing platter with side order of kimchi borsht = 4R.3f.2m 1 x garlic naan with cocoa dip = 2R.1f.-m Delivery charge = 1R.-f.-m Total 19R.8f.2m" --From the Correspondence of Bes. David Batten-Hale (New Doradist Party--Croydon Urban) * (Dr. David Wostyn) --no, I said you SHOULDN'T let Dr Lister do the starting quotes...anyway, I must apologise for the biographical entries, I no longer have access to the proper biographical dictionary we borrowed from a library before, it will have to be the children's book for now, at least unless there's a better one here I can find... * From : "Great Men and Women of World History" by L. H. Hodgkins and P. T. Rendell (2000)-- Tamahimana was a man born into what our own people at the time would have called savagery, but he rose to the very top of civilisation, a great hero and the counsellor of kings. Tamahimana was the son of Apehimana, a great man in his own right. Apehimana had been one of the rangatira chiefs at the very first Hira Hui High Assembly of Autiaraux in the year 1825, rising to power at a young age because of his role in the destruction of the slave ship El Dorado. Because Apehimana was a great warrior--and because the old men of the Hira Hui feared him--he was soon declared Warlord and sent far away from Autiaraux to protect the islands from other slavers. But Apehimana was not only a defender, but a conqueror. He led a campaign across the Pacific islands that included the conquest of Tonga in 1827, where he chose to settle down. Apehimana had killed the Tongan king and now became a king by his own hand in all to feed the ravenous trade balance.but name. Apehimana was such a great man that his sons thought they would never surpass him, and Tamahimana least of all, for he was the youngest of Apehimana's many sons by his many wives. While the elder sons vied for position by fighting and conquering, building big palaces and monuments to their own glory, Tamahimana was an imaginative dreamer. He dreamed of sailing the seas not only for war but also just to explore, to travel to other lands not to conquer them but just to prove it was possible. Most of all he dreamed that the Maure could build a great canoe, bigger than any since the time when they had first come to Autiaraux, a canoe that could sail all the way across the vast oceans to reach the lands of the keroi, the Europeans. Then the Maure would have finally proved that they were equal to the peoples that had been visiting them for a lifetime now, sometimes as friends and sometimes as foes. Though that dream would one day be realised, it would not be Tamahimana who sailed that great canoe: history had other plans for him. Back home in Autiaraux, the Hira Hui gradually became less of a talking shop and more of a real government. Powerful rangatira chieftains no longer only fought for more power for themselves and their own iwi-tribe, but to rule all the Maure as one nation. To stop domination by one ruler or civil war, the Maure created a system where one rangatira chief would be chosen to serve as kawana, first among equals, for one year before handing on to another. For a time in the 1840s this system meant that leaders of two powerful factions derived from the two old Maure alliances took it in turn, but in 1854 a man named Tetumate became kawana. He was of a younger generation, able to see past the old rivalries, and believed the Maure needed to become one centralised people. He had seen how European visitors could divide them with their schemes and feared what might happen. Tetumate was strong and a visionary but he was also ruthless in the pursuit of his goal. He would not tolerate any Maure to exist independently outside the authority of the Hira Hui and the Kawana. His opponents in this included the Maure colony at Maureville in Antipodea--and Apehimana's little personal empire on Tonga. In 1858, thirty-one years after Apehimana had conquered Tonga, when he was seventy years old, a surprise attack by a huge United Maure fleet fell upon the islands. Apehimana and his men fought bravely but were overwhelmed. Apehimana was slain along with most of his family, but Tamahimana escaped with one hundred warriors who vowed to one day seek revenge on Tetumate. Tamahimana knew that they would have to recover their strength before they could try. So he took his fleet of canoes north. For a time he thought to rebuild his father's empire on islands that did not yet know the Maure flag, but there were many more Europeans in these waters who might attack. Tamahimana decided that the only way to be sure of what the Europeans would do would be to rebuild his strength under their very noses. Over the next few years he and his men gradually crossed from one island to another, eventually reaching the Meridian Philippines. The Three Emperors'Philippines were overwhelming to the Maure, who had never seen so many people packed into a land before. Tamahimana decided that Tetumate, with his push for more agriculture and industry, wanted Autiaraux to become like that, and swore anew to oppose him. But Tamahimana also heard of even greater lands to the north, with even more people and opportunities. He was intrigued... * From: The National Register Atlas of World History, 8th Edition (2002)-- THE SECOND RIVERINE WAR (1863-1868) was the third significant clash between the Beiqing and Feng dynasties of North and South China following the Anqing Incident (1826-1831) and the First Riverine War and the rise of the Nanfeng, the later(1844-1850). The Second War was ultimately foreshadowed by the outcome of the First, which among other things saw Sichuan shift from neutrality to pro-Feng alignment under Viceroy Xie Bokang. Sichuan's ambiguous and precarious position could only last for so long, and though the Beiqing dynasty was consumed for years by internal difficulties (the death of the Chongqian Emperor and his succession by the Jianing Emperor; war scares with Corea; factionalism and resentment by the Manchu and Mongol minorities for Beiqing policies) it would not stand idly by when Sichuan went from pro-Feng autonomy to outright being a Feng province after the death of Xie Bokang in 1862. The Beiqing, who had finally (if somewhat erratically) turned to modernisation in the years immediately before the Second Riverine War, once again reiterated their view that the Feng were an illegitimate rebellion and open war began again. If the two Chinas (especially the Beiqing) had not quite modernised their armed forces to the levels that had wrought havoc across North America a decade before, they were nonetheless on the road to industrial warfare and this meant that the titular 'riverine' theatre of conflict--the land between the Yangtze and Yellow rivers--was bitterly fought over. Many mercenaries and weapons from the Great American War and European conflicts flowed into the area and turned the war into, as it is poetically known in China, the Battle of Four Thousand Bloodstains. The ultimate outcome of the war was far more decisive than the grinding pace in the riverine theatre would suggest, thanks to newly <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON> providing a western theatre. Regions of China which had owed rather theoretical loyalty to the Beiqing following the Reclamation War (1814-1819) were conquered by the Feng, changedincluding the prestigious 'New Great Wall' forts facing Dzungaria (itself ruled by the Kazakhs and influenced in turn by the Russians). In the second half of the war, it was the conquest of western cities such as Xining, Lanzhou and ultimately Xi'an which decided the fate of the war. The conflict ended in victory for the Feng dynasty, with the full annexation of Qinghai, Gansu, Huijiang and Shaanxi provinces and effective control of all that.the east south of the Yellow River, including cities such as Luoyang and Kaifeng. The Beiqing were reduced to a husk of their former self, with many commentators predicting they would soon be doomed and China would reunite. Because history is never that simple, the Beiqing would last for decades more... (Infobox in original atlas with portrait of dark-skinned, tattooed man in Chinese robes) Tamahimana was a Maure chieftain who fled his father's independent island domain after the campaigns of Tetumate (q.v.) He came to the Republic of Formosa in 1861 and then went on to fight in the Second Riverine War, where he and his fellow Maure fighters acquired a fearsome reputation among their Beiqing opponents. His greatest victory was at the Battle of Suqian (1865) where the Beiqing commander was slain far behind the fighting lines by Tamahimana's infiltrators, leading to the collapse of the Beiqing position in Jiangsu province. After the war, his fame meant he became a court curiosity to the Xiaohong Emperor and then a trusted counsellor to the Xuanming Emperor when he succeeded his father in 1867. Xuanming attributed to Tamahimana's support and advice--as someone outside the old power structures of China--his ability to survive political attacks following the embarrassing loss of northern Daiviet to the Siamese in the Second Sino-Siamese War (1869-1871). In the year 1873 Tamahimana left China with the Emperor's blessing to return to Autiaraux: in 1874 Kawana Tetumate would be found dead under mysterious circumstances that clearly indicated he had lost his mana. It would be many years before anyone else would introduce the traditional southern Chinese silkworm venom based poison known as gu to the Pacific Islands. * From: "Naval Warfare Through the Ages" by Christine Singer-- The first time that two non-European or -Novamundine[1] modern military forces met at sea would be a dramatic event. However it is hard to define exactly what 'modern' means in this context and this means it is hard to pin down when the first instance was. For example, the clashes between Corean and Yapontsi naval forces in the Imjin War of the sixteenth century were arguably as modern as anything in Europe at the time (contrary to popular belief, the Yapontsi were using gunpowder and had access to shipbuilding techniques at this time). However, if we are to use the most common 'know it when I see it' definition of modern, the most likely suspects are the Second Riverine War (1863-1868) between the two Chinese dynasties at the time, and the immediately following Second Sino-Siamese War (1869-1871) between the southern Feng dynasty and the Siamese empire. The Second Riverine War was theoretically a conflict between two modernised Chinas, but the northern Beiqing dynasty continued to lag behind, its partnership programmes with Europeans decidedly lacklustre and halfhearted compared to those of the southern Feng. What did not help was Beiqing reliance on Scandinavian military advisors in the 1840s and then, following Scandinavia's defeat in the Unification War, Jianing fired them without first securing replacements. As the Scandinavians had been particularly heavily involved in the naval modernisation programme, it was in this field that the Beiqing had the most difficulty in the conflict (whereas on land the difference between the two powers' weaponry and tactics was less noticeable). Although the Beiqing had access to quite modern wooden ships (the first Chinese armourclad would not be built until 1874, and by the Feng), they were ultimately held back by insufficient loyalty and morale on the part of their poorly paid sailors. The Beiqing did not drill their sailors on gunnery or conduct live ammunition training: indeed, when the Beiqing and Feng fleets first met in force at the Battle of Jiaozhou Bay (1864), it was noticed by European observers that many of the Beiqing ships' guns failed to work altogether. The ultimate cause was apparently corruption, with poorly loyal Beiqing sailors (many of whom had doubtless never expected to have to go to war) having sold the gunpowder from their shells, replaced it with cement and pocketed the difference.[2] Beiqing naval performance improved slightly over the course of the war but the Feng dominated the high seas, especially when Corea joined the war in 1865 and added their own fleet. Ultimately the parlous state of the Beiqing Navy may therefore give us reasonable grounds for excluding it from the 'modern' qualifier, regardless of what it looked like on paper. The Feng might have been birthed in part by secret societies with the romantic goal of overthrowing foreign rule,and the Coreans both had less ambiguously modern naval forces but they were also run by hard-headed businessmen who knew Europeans betteron the same side, albeit more as barely acknowledged cobelligerents than anyone in China, and also knew how to strike a deal. Both Nanfeng and Europeans were in weak positions. Twenty years earlier or later, a country like France could have sent a fleet to try to enforce its will on the Chinese traders. (Audience reaction) Yes, I mean no disrespect to the Chinese people by saying so, I don't seek to compare them to a country like Yapon! But things were in turmoil at the time and a strong foreign force could have forced an unequal deal on the Nanfeng. Fortunately for China, damaged Europe was in no place to do so. A new trading arrangement grew up as a partnership of equals, as both Europe and the Nanfeng rebuilt and rose again together, and we in the Novamund rose to join them. The Nanfeng were able to severely limit the opium trade and actually enforce it, unlike their Qing predecessors; though opium was valuable, the European traders mostly recognised that it was better to stick to providing the less valuable but more reliable trade goods which the Qing had previously turned their noses up at. The old Dutch were the only ones who tried to carry on the opium trade surreptitiously, and we all know what happened to them. The Nanfeng proved that they could force a country out of the China trade if it broke its treaty obligations, and the fact that the Dutch collapsed soon afterwards in the Popular Wars rammed the point home. I mention all this because Nanfeng China, Feng China's, integration into a global economy changed everything. China had never truly been as aloof from the world as its rulers might like to think, but this direct involvement was a new concept altogether. China was not merely a silver sink anymore, but a part of an economic system, with silver flowing out as well as in, paying for European weapons and training and steam technology. And from the Novamund as well, of course. Silver was the primary exchange commodity of world trade, with China also influencing Siam and, later, the Indian nations after the Great Jihad after the establishment of their colony of Jushina. Oneallies. Under other circumstances the Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company might have expected a change to a gold standard to be driven by the repeated goldrushes of the nineteenth century. This certainly dramatically increased the gold supply and made gold more viable as a means of currency exchange. In the short term, however, many goldrushes close together caused a destabilisation in the price of gold. Neither precious metal alone could entirely supply the exchange needs of the rapidly-industrialising and -developing interior of this nation and what was then the UPSA. Local banks were often set up, illegally issuing paper money backed by nothing more than wishful thinking, frequently collapsing and wiping out savings every time there was an economic ripple.[9] But they existed because people needed the ability to save and invest to keep up with the pace of economic development, driven in part by new technology such as steam engines and railways. Floods of immigrants left Europe for here in the ENA, the UPSA and Antipodea. The situation was highly volatile. The Electrum Standard, which still carries connotations of being 'the good old days' whose passing is bemoaned by greybeards - even though no-one lives now for truly remembers it - formally came about later than many imagine it did, in 1883.[10] Informally, however, it had already begun to form organically. The repeated injection of large quantities of gold into the global economy, and the fact that that economy was gradually incorporating more and more of the world, gradually led to an increased use of gold to underwrite the industrialised economies of the Arc of Power here in the ENA, the River Plate in the UPSA, the coal belt of northwestern Europe, and the Moscow-Petrograd corridor in Russia. At the same time, Nanfeng China continued to increase in power and importance and still ran her trade on a silver basis. Silver mines across the New World, most famously perhaps in the Californian province of Argentina, continued to produce and farmers remained wedded to silver as an easier means of exchange.[11] Diamonds and other gemstones were also entering the world economy in much larger quantities than before, largely from the Cape Republic as well as the gem mines of Cambodia in the Siamese Empire. Initially this led to widespread economic disruption, before cartels agreed to limit the diamond supplies; later, after the Societist takeover of several African diamond-producing regions,[12] the Combine would use control of this market as an economic weapon, like their better-known attempted use of oil. The volatility of the world economic situation in 1883 was demonstrated by the fact that a global depression, the Panic of 1883, was set off by the relatively minor incident of isolated crop failures due to a volcanic eruption in the Nusantara. The exchange rate of gold to silver had proved too unstable, and this had led to several bank collapses. Now, for the first time, world powers met in Antwerp to agree to fix the gold-to-silver standard exchange, initially at 15:1. Hopes that this could be maintained indefinitely proved fruitless, however, necessitating regular meetings of what became known as the World Numismatics Council (Audience reaction) Of course, this was before the rise of Societism made terms like that politically charged. Yes, every three years or so the WNC would meet to fix the rate of exchange. There was still a lag, leading to situations like the earlier one in England I mentioned, where silver coins might become more inherently valuable than their face value and lead to illegal currency flows and melting down to ingots. Gold became more and more important as a more stable rate of mining from Africa replaced the stop-start disruption of the goldrushes, and even China began unofficial defining its external markets in terms of gold. The global gold market would not be affected by issues of supply - other than mines pausing operations due to war - until the Trondek goldrush of 1933.[13] The Antwerp System had its flaws, but it served to moderate global financial volatility until it failed with the outbreak of the Pandoric War in 1896.[14] Perhaps the surprising part is that the Electrum Standard did not collapse immediately as more and more powerful nations suspended interconvertibility and began to print fiat money to fund their war efforts. An important factor in keeping the heart of the system stable was the neutrality of France and the Marseilles Protocol. (Audience reaction) Yes, France's position has been much-criticised on moral grounds, but in terms of the world's economy, a league of armed neutrality backed by what was then the biggest economy on Earth meant that trade could continue to function under the wartime conditions. By effectively threatening to intervenegot involved on one side or the other to tip the balance, the French - backed up by the Italians and a host of minor allies -another, but the war came at a time when much of the company's efforts were able to protect the status of neutral shippingsunk into either consolidating their grip on the high seas. ThisYapon or deepening their influence in California, and so uncharacteristically the RPLC played little part in the war. Other European and Novamundine trading companies aided the Feng as before, but--fitting the general trends in the region--compared to the last war they found themselves in a much more subordinate position, with the Feng picking and choosing what weapons and mercenaries they wished to purchase. Events elsewhere also influenced which companies were involved, with more input from the Americans and Meridians (who had a number of consequences. For example, attempts to blockade import-dependent nations suchabsorbed the former Spanish and Portuguese contribution) and less from the French, Belgians and Scandinavians. However, the war did see France gain further influence over the Liaodong Republic (as a consequence of the Republic facing down an increasingly hostile Corea and now lacking any hope of help from the Beiqing) and in 1875 France would sign a lease on the port of Lusan[3] to develop it into a naval base. In the titular Riverine theatre of the war, things were more evenly matched, with the Beiqing investing in timberclad riverboats armed with guns that usually worked: the riverine navy had been seen as Germany into starvationmore of a priority in the interwar period. The Feng learned more from riverine tactics that had been used in the Great American War, but overall the two sides failed to make much headway against each other: it was through battles on land, at great cost of human life, that the tide finally turned in favour of the Feng and left all failed. No power was willing to risk sinking a ship sailing an obviously fictitious neutral flag of convenience lest it antagonise the French. This worked both ways, of course; in order to constitute a credible threat, the French had to scatterthe land between the rivers in their forces across the world to be ready to intervene, which meant that they were unable to put down the Dufresnais Revolution, for example. Because France never suspended the Electrum Standard within its own economic bloc, the French economy becamehands. The Yellow River, effectively forming much of the border between the two Chinas after the war, would in turn see rapid militarisation even more dominant over the course of the war as the ENA, UPSA and China all began to exhaust their reserves. However, France thenforts and timberclad gunboats on the Yangtze fell into a trap. When the UPSAdisuse, no longer needed as the Yangtze was replacednow fully within Feng territory. Many of the old gunboats were redeveloped into small freighters or, as more Chinese ports were opened to (cautious and controlled) European trade in the 1880s, even tour boats. Given all the caveats associated with the Societist Combine, the Combine defaulted on most Meridian debts - which largely came at the expense of France, whose banksconsidering the Beiqing's naval military forces as 'modern', then, a less ambiguous option for the title of first naval conflict between two modern military forces not of European or Novamundine origin would be the following Second Sino-Siamese War. The Siamese Empire had continued to lend to Meridians throughout the war. (Indistinct reaction from audience) Well, some would say so, perhaps. Prime Minister Leclerc built the International Expeditionary Force out of Marseilles Protocol troops and sent it to the Combine after the war, not to try to suppress Societism as is often thought today, but to try to secure French-owned businesses and French subjects there. In the end, this effort was largely a failure. The French economy had strengthened due to not suffering the same rise in military spending to fund the Pandoric War effort that other nations had, but France just ended up spending onbeen modernising its military for the IEF intervention instead. Nations attempted to rebuild the Antwerp System after the war, more out of a vague sense of wishful thinking than with any plan in mind. Nostalgics associated the Electrum Standard with prosperity, and confused cause and effect.[15]years and was ready for a rematch following the loss of the First Sino-Siamese War (1832-1838). The loss of the UPSA and much of the Hermandad to the interconnected global economy, as Alfarus built his inward-looking 'udarkismo' system, was an elephant in the room that gradually began to undermine the standard.sometimes ruthless Feng policies in Feng-occupied northern Daiviet following that war had helped the Siamese cement their grip on what might otherwise be rebellious vassals: the Daiviet people were outraged by the stories told to them by refugees fleeing Feng rule. The reconstructed Antwerp System limped on, its obvious fragilities ignored by those who did not wish to see them, until 1917. The Panic of 1917 was triggered by Guatemala defaulting on a war reparations payment coupled to a political and economic crisis in Corea. However, something similar could have happened at any time, if enough isolated problems had come together at once so that financiers could not try to head them off. Discussing the response to the Panic of 1917 would take more than one lecture in itself, but it dealt a fatal blow to the Electrum Standard. While still publicly professing that any suspension in the system was temporary, national banks once again suspended interconvertibility with gold and silver and began to print fiat money to increase the money supply. This stabilised creaking parts of the economy in the short term, but also led to rapid inflation. The Panic of 1917 exposed a double standard in how financiers and markets responded to this intervention. Small and friendless nations could not unilaterally print money without sparking bank runs and collapses as capital fled the country for stabler markets. By contrast, great powers such as France, Russia and the ENA were said to have their currencies 'backed by steel' rather than gold or silver; in other words, their military power was itself regarded as a security to protect investments and prevent internal mob violence from overturning banks. This allowed these countries to intervene to protect the economies of smaller allies via loans, while making their governments beholden to them. China also did this, notably to Corea, but China itself had probably suffered the least of the major powers in the Panic to begin with. The most dramatic collapse in the Panic came in Belgium, precisely because King Maximilian IV acted as though Belgium was a great power and immune to criticism, while ignoring the fact that his own heavy-handed interventions in politics had made investors and banks jittery. He arrogantly rejected French financial aid which might have saved his position. The obviously-rigged election of 1918 led to a public uprising which was put down only with Russian help, effectively reducing Belgium to a Russian puppet and setting it on the course for destruction in the Black Twenties.[16] This unstable state of fiat currency being the global norm would continue throughout the Black Twenties, as both war and plague response consumed public funds. Inflation and debt both skyrocketed. Despite China and Siam's neutrality, the economic chaos began to bleed into their economies as well. China's sometimes overly strict responses to plague outbreaks damaged its economy and made it a hostile market to European and American investors who otherwise might have seen China as a safe harbour with the war back home. Societist success in the War of 1926 (Audience reaction) made Alfaran udarkismo seem more attractive to the nations, and some, such as Corea and later Panchala, would attempt to imitate it - with disastrous consequences, for those nations did not have access to a large chunk of the world's resources in bondage as Alfarus did. The post-Black Twenties boom resulted in increased prosperity but not, initially, increased stability. The volatility of the fiat-based economy continued, though many had gotten used to stop-start inflation and regular currency and wage crises as the 'new normal' as itSiamese had been preparing for a long time and fought a war in Cambodia in 1853-1856 that resulted in the expulsion of the Belgian Ostend Company and the assertion of control over a decade since the Panic of 1917. What initially prompted a rethink was what became known as the Shock of 1934, an economic wobble probably caused initially by rumours about French trade policy with respect to Bisnaga and Peousie, coupled to the aftereffects of the Trondek goldrush. Financial experts generally agree that this could have been a new major contraction if it had not been tackled by quick and audacious action by the central banks of France, Russia and the Empire. China had still yet to fully re-engage in the global markets following the political crisis of 1930-31, which would be significant. It was remarked at the time that, despite those three great powers having been at each others' throats not long ago, their bankers had acted for the good of all, because maintaining a stable global economy was in the interests of all people. This ultimately led to Jerzy Rytlewski's 'Carltonist Pacifism', a critique and counter to Societism in which Rytlewski argues that this impetus towards economic cooperation could subsume military goals and so prevent war. Of course, in many ways it was just a restatement of similar ideas from the Long Peace, which the Societists had already rejected - that long period of peace for economically-driven reasons had eventually ended. I digress. The sequence of events that led to the establishment of the Gold Standard is a complicated, confusing - and frequently confused - one. There are many times I have read monogrammes by otherwise intelligent writers who confidently state causes for this establishment, causes which had not actually happened yet! Sometimes it can be difficult to separate causes and consequences, as this was an eventful period and a broad shift in one direction can be hard to unpick. Nowadays the ASL likes to stir up controversy among historians for its own sake, but the so-called 'Auric Controversy' over the Gold Standard is as old as the standard itself. Many economic historians argue that the establishment of the standard possessed an almost Paleian inevitability to it, driven by the changing nature of the world market and the increased gold supply. Many others argue, with equal eloquence, that the establishment of the standard was an unlikely event which came about only because of a precise combination of chance factors, such as the identities of individual treasury ministers and the absence of China from the table at a critical time. The latter factor was certainly significant. China's use of silver for its internal market had always helped underpin the Electrum Standard, but following plague and crisis there, this factor in favour of a role for silver in the world markets had declined. The old UPSA had also been a substantial voice in favour of silver, being a major producer of the metal from the mines in its client states of Peru and (to a lesser extent) Mexico.[17] The 'Golden Sun and Silver Torch', though with other symbolic meanings to the Meridians, could also be seen as a declaration in favour of the Electrum Standard. The UPSA had been replaced with the udarkist Combine, which had its own ideas about currency standards which I'll get to later. Even if the Combine had been participating in these debates, it now had access to substantially more gold than the UPSA had, possessing the Congo and beginning to develop gold mines there. In the absence of the Chinese and Meridian voices pushing for silver, the debate was now dominated by the Empire, France and Russia. Within those nations were internal voices for silver, but these too were growing less important. Continental France had mostly used gold internally, with silver being more important for colonial trade with and within Bisnaga.[18] As it was now clear that the wind was blowing in favour of Bisnagi independence, a standard based on gold only seemed more in the interest of propping up the domestic French economy. Here in the Empire, the primary supporters of silver had been farmers and miners in the West, away from the Arc of Power. There had always been a loud minority in the industrialised east arguing for a gold standard, but this had not seemed politically feasible when the other world powers were wedded to electrum. Now, a few things had changed. Industry was spreading to more cities in the interior, the farming sector had been heavily disrupted by the Black Twenties, and the party system had been shattered by both the war and then electoral reform. There was no coherent pro-silver voter bloc anymore; even though the leading Pioneer party was drawing on what should have been pro-silver demographics, in this brave new world of coalitions, the government was also being backed by pro-gold east coasters. Opposition to the gold standard would mostly come on the Confederal level of politics, with the eventual establishment of the Agrarian Party of Michigan and the Argentine Party of Westernesse and its neighbours,[19] which would go on to merge into today's Agri-Argent Party. For the moment, pro-gold voices were in the majority. In Russia, things were not so democratic, of course, but there were similar factors involving the industrialisation of the interior and wealthy industrialists gaining an increasingly loud voice in the Imperial Soviet at the expense of traditional aristocrats. Russia also brought along Romulan Italy as an important partner, and Italy also argued in favour of gold. By far, though, the single biggest factor was simply that people were sick of economic volatility and wanted to try something new to try to stabilise the world markets. Simply trying to rebuild the glory days of the Antwerp System from the Long Peace had already been showed to be flawed. Now, important voices such as French Prime Minister (and former Controller-General) Loic Caouissin argued that the world had changed and a monometallic gold-based standard would bring stability and fend off currency crises. Caouissin pointed to the vastly increased supply of gold to the world market from Perousie, the Cape Republic, Russia, Natal, and the Empire. The Trondek goldrush had also not destabilised the price of gold to the point that many had predicted. At the Passau Conference of 1935, representatives from over a dozen governments agreed the so-called 'Passau System', which would be ratified by all major economies except the Combine over the next couple of years.[20] The Passau System locked all currencies to a fixed rate of exchange with gold, with the goal of prevent competitive currency devaluations and tying down inflation. In practice, a 3% rate of deviation was permitted in case of emergency, with nations expected to take action to remedy any shift beyond this by buying foreign currency. Where the Passau System struggled was that the nations were, understandably, reluctant to create any kind of arbitration body to take action against any who violated the rules. Despite this, compromise built on compromise until the Transoceanic Office for Financial Standards (TOFS) was created and ratified in 1936.[21] TOFS's ruling executive consisted of a council of eight, with permanent seats for representatives of the Empire, Russia and France and five rotating members drawn from other participating nations. China initially refused to take part, attempting to continue its former policies. In 1940, however, the Chinese government U-turned and joined TOFS in return for a constitutional change to create an existing permanent seat, saving face. Part of the reason for China's move was the increasing development of gold mines in China's own territory, leading the Gold Standard to become more favourable towards Chinese interests. I should explain that one part of the shift to gold was that it banned or restricted the coinage of 'free silver' as it had been known. Historically, in most nations it would be possible to take a silver ingot to a mint and have it minted into legal-tender silver coins. The Passau System, by contrast, heavily restricted this former right, which was viewed with outrage in more silver-dependent parts of the world. The gold-based Passau System would form the foundation for the world economy for more than twenty years, from 1935 until the Crash of 1956 which helped trigger the Sunrise War. This era would be one of near-unprecedented peace and prosperity, eclipsing even the Long Peace in terms of rises of standard of living. This was driven in part by new technology, produced by industrial companies which benefited from the stability that the Gold Standard had imposed. Nonetheless, there were also many losersCochinchina (southern Daiviet) as well as winners. I already mentioned agriculture, which sufferedAnnam (northern Daiviet). The victory not only lent general morale to the Siamese but also helped create a narrative that the Siamese were the benevolent protectors of the people of Indochina against all foreign intervention, whether it be European or Chinese. On land the two sides were fairly even, with the Siamese prevailing more due to the exhaustion of the Feng following the Second Riverine War and the need for troops to hold down some of the newly acquired western provinces. By sea, however, the Siamese Navy triumphed over its Feng counterpart, perhaps because the Feng had grown complacent in their tactics from the effects of the limited gold supply. While the Passau System stabilised prices and sharply cut inflation compared to the last decade, it also somewhat tied the hands of central banks to respond to minor crises, which could lead to individual bank failures. In terms of nations, winners and losersfacing the weaker Beiqing. The most significant naval battle of the war was the Battle of Qiongzhou Strait, where Admiral Devakul defeated Admiral Rui, despite being numerically outmatched, by the application of brilliant new line-breaking tactics that were soon the object of study even in European military acacemies. Devakul proceeded to land troops on Hainan Island and took the capital Qiongshan. Ultimately this did not always easy to predict. As I said, China was a fervent opponent of the Gold Standardgo any further as Devakul lacked the soldiers to do any more and the Chinese reacquired the island at the peace treaty, but ultimately ended up benefiting from it. Germany's economy also recovered under gold after much scepticism from German society. Several African nations suffered short-term disruption but then also benefited, being gold producers themselves. (This is one of those factors which I say people sometimes cite as causes of the Passau System, even though the voices of African nations were not heard until the Toulon Conference which took place after Passau!) The Indian nations generally suffered a decline from the shift to gold, which in Bisnaga was viewed as an act of spite on the part of the French. The effect of the stabilisation on both prices and wages was seen both positively and negatively by workers in different industries, depending on the context they had started with. One reason why the novelty of electrical technologies are so associated with this period is that their producers still had room to expand their markets in the new artificially gold-restricted world, and attracted workers with high wages as a consequence. In all this, I haven't talked about what the Societists were doing, of course. In the last years of Alfarus before the Silent Revolution, a new Societist economic policy had been pioneered by Josephus Kalvus. Kalvus argued that a key lesson of the Black Twenties and the War of 1926 was that coal was in decline as a source of energy, and was increasingly being replaced by oil and its derivatives.[22] Firstly, he claimed that the Combine could effectively blackmail the world if it was able to control most sources of oil. (Audience reaction) Yes, well, nobody ever said it was realistic. Kalvus had some legitimate points about oil, but he was also a legacy of the fact that anyone who could rise to the top in the late Alfaran period was someone who was more skilled at political survival and bluffing his way through the so-called meritocratic tests than he was at his actual job. The Combine did have access to the vast oil reserves of Venezuela, but they should have known that, even at the time, the Empire, New Ireland, Persia and Russia had oil fields far too vast for the Societists to have any hope of trying to establish a near-monopoly. And this was before the oil in Araby, Guinea and the German Sea, among others, was discovered. Kalvus did have more success with a similar argument about trying to control the world's rubber supply, I should said, which led to a pushstill a huge embarrassment for alternatives and a drive towards pseulac...that's another story. But that was only half of Kalvus' argument. He also claimed that the Societist udarkist currency unit, the shikullus (later replaced with the mundo), should be based on the global value of oil, believing that the entire economy should follow the oil supply. It should have been obvious that, with new oilfields and exploitation techniques being regularly discovered and new technologies that consumed oil also changing the demand side of the equation, this was a recipe for chaos. However, as I said, in thethe Feng, particularly in the wake of the great victory of the Second Riverine War. The late Alfaran period few were still willing to speak up and criticise an obviously disastrous idea. It was a significant moment for the future of Societism. Both Danubia and the Eternal State politely declined to join this attempt at a new world order. The former was, perhaps, not surprising to the Combine by this point, but the second was a shock - the Combine had thought their advisors had been establishing control in Constantinople. Regardless, Kalvus' 'Oil Standard' was predictably disastrous and the Combine had abandoned it in 1936, only one year after its adoption. To the Societist mind, being forced to publicly retract a former policy was a bigger sin than the negative effects the policy had had in the first place. By this point, it is suspected that Alfarus had suffered a stroke and his regime was really being run by Madame Alfara behind the scenes.[23] Whoever gave the order, Kalvus was publicly executed for his crimes, being called 'a traitor to humanity and a soldier of the mind', reflecting the Societist idea that all soldiers were murderers worthy of execution (though in the case of their own Celatores it was conveniently delayed eighty years). Now, one public execution, even captured on film, might not carry enough impact, as Kalvus' policy had inflicted harm on loyal Societists from Carolina to the Nusantara, and all were angry. Alfarus, or Alfara, promptly had a few dozen political prisoners executed in the centre of the various Zones' capitals and just told them it was Kalvus. There's some debate about whether the message had meant to be that these people were supposed to be Kalvus' collaborators and there was a mistake, but it appears that thousands of Societists both watched Kalvus' execution in Zon1Urb1 on a propaganda reel at the picture-house and then went down the road to their own town square and saw it again there. If true - it is hard to say as much of this is based on the debatable accounts of refugees - it certainly must have undermined public trust in Alfarus' regime. As you probably know, Alfarus died not long after this. There are many reasons why the continuity regime led by Alfara soon collapsed amid a tide of public anger and we got the Silent Revolution. Alfarus had made a lot of enemies over the years who were suddenly willing to speak out. But our usual picture of the Silent Revolution is of massed mobs of Black Guards torching public art depicting Alfarus, young men who had formerly been just as loyal to the Kapud as the famous Markus Garzius. What turned them against him? Perhaps the fact that so many of them had lost savings thanks to the instability unleashed by this man whom, publicly, had seemed to have the Kapud's backing... * (Lt Tindale's note) Uh-oh, he seems to be coming upstairs now. Toodle-pip! [1] To oversimplify, the colour of an object arises from white light (a mixture of colours) striking it and not all colours being equally reflected or transmitted through. This is due to energy gaps between electron orbitals in the atoms or molecules comprising the object; light of the right energy (which is proportional to frequency which defines colour) to match a gap can be absorbed by an electron to briefly promote it to the higher orbital. A colourless object typically looks colourless because the energy gaps between its electron orbitals are all too large for any colour of light we can see to bridge the gap and be absorbed (higher-energy ultraviolet light may be absorbed, hence those objects will stand out on UV cameras). Most metals, in their pure form, fall into this category and are described as 'grey' or 'silvery', i.e. colourless. Gold (and, more obscurely, caesium) are heavy enough that their electrons begin to 'orbit' at a speed close to that of light, which means according to Einsteinian relativity, they gain mass. This in turn changes the energy gaps, narrowing them to the point that gold absorbs blue light from the white light spectrum, the rest of the spectrum being reflected back so it looks yellow to our eyes. In a world without relativistic effects, gold would just look like silver. [2] 'Proto-Caucasians' refers to the people known in OTL to archaeologists as 'the Maykop culture'. [3] The same statistic is true of the later California Goldrush in OTL. [4] There are far too many examples of this from OTL fiction to count, but a good example is in the Tintin books "The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham's Treasure" vs their loose film adaptation from 2011. The books, realistically, depict the treasure as a couple of handfuls of gold and jewels which fit into a small container and are worth enough to set Captain Haddock up for life. The film depicts a pirate ship absurdly full of so much golden treasure that it would represent perhaps a quarter of the entire amount of mined gold that existed in the world in the 1600s! [5] This is slightly misleadingly phrased, as China did not start using paper money until the 7th century, after the Roman Empire had already fallen. [6] Unlike OTL, where the British Empire's dominance of world trade after 1815 helped drive the push towards the Gold Standard internationally, in addition to an increased gold supply from the nineteenth century goldrushes. [7] Some historians have started referring to the Feng dynasty pre-Pandoricin Asia was therefore a period of buildup and brinksmanship by several of the rising great powers, and certainly puts a lie to the Eurocentric term 'Long Peace' for this era... [1] A term used by some authors in TTL as a more neutral descriptor for 'the Americas' without saying 'American' as that is the specific demonym of the ENA. It is derived from the Latin name for 'New World'. [2] Similar problems hampered the Qing Dynasty's Beiyang Navy in the First Sino-Japanese War (i.e. before it reunified China under its rule with the destruction of the Beiqing) as the 'Nanfeng' (Southern Feng). This is a historiographic term coined after the fact, like 'Byzantine Empire', andin OTL. [3] AKA Port Arthur in OTL. Part #203: The Minnows Amid the Whales "Sorry, the Ministry has called me back again about those documents, blast them--can you pick up Angie from savat coreen practice this once? Remember you take the second exit on the circus at Sutton and then it's on the right just past the second set of stop-and-goes. Last week she told me she was not used at the time. It has not caught on very widely (yet). [8] See Part #104 in Volume III. [9] This was also true of the United States in the early-to-mid nineteenth century in OTL. [10] See Part #270 in Volume VII. [11] Argentina is the region known in OTL as Nevada (a false friend, meaning Land of Silver; the term Platinea is usedready to take the test for OTL Argentina in TTL). [12] See Part #265 in Volume VII. [13] Trondek is another transliteration of the name Klondike. Why is the Klondike goldrush delayed 37 years compared to OTL? Primarily because that region was especially difficult to reach by any prospectors until after the Black Twenties; theoretically claimed by the Russians, in practice largely uninhabited by anyone other than its native peoples (who traded with the Superior Republic) and then subject to the issue that the Americans had built the deliberately incompatible and militarised Rexoc railway in the area to prevent the Russians being able to use captured American railways in a war. [14] There are major implications from TTL's different economic history at this point. In OTL, the shift to a global Gold Standard was driven by Germany and the United States deciding to abandon bimetallism in favour of gold, preceded by the French-led Latin Monetary Union. There were many consequences of this; those on American farmers are fairly well known, but it also led to the fall of the Indian rupee and was a major cause of the Panic of 1873, among much else. [15] See Part #270 in Volume VII. [16] See Part #275 in Volume VIII. [17] Peru is also a gold producer, but to a lesser relative extent. [18] In OTL, British India remained on the silver standard (as had traditionally been used there for centuries - the word 'rupee' literally means engraved silver) even though Britain itself was on the gold standard. This did not change until the 1890s, when India moved to the gold standard with mixed but mostly negative consequences. [19] There is a double meaning to 'Argentine Party', as this term has already been coined in TTL to describe political centrism (as opposed to right-wing doradism, gold, and left-wing cobrism, copper). Naturally, all of this makes this period extremely confusing to understand (especially in Sweden and Ireland) when parties named after gold or silver can have positions on the gold standard that have nothing to do with their name! [20] It's not mentioned here, but the choice of Passau was partly the symbolism that it was here in 1552 that Holy Roman Emperor Charles V guaranteed Lutheran religious freedoms in the Peace of Passau (which led to the Peace of Augsburg). As was joked at the time,the Vert certificate, ask her if Passau could heal the rifts in the the realm of God, perhaps it could also do the same to the realm of Mammon. [21] We are now entering the era in which words like 'International' or 'Global' are starting to carry negative connotations due to association with Societism, hence awkward compromises like 'Transoceanic'. [22] See Part #295 in Volume VIII for a different, related perspective on the Societists and oil. [23] This is not really an accurate way to refer to Alfarus' wife, but people outside the Combine often use similar ones - see footnote to Part #285 in Volume VIII."she got it, AW? Thanks love. DBH." --From the Correspondence o

USER: Summarize "Look to the West Volume V To Dream Again Interlogue: Silence in the Library Crosstime Update Report by Dr David Wostyn: 05/11/2019 (OTL Calendar)"The latter months are ending as the sun hangs lazily between the clouds. All about are the sounds of commotion. Trains glide across crystal waters kicking up mist as robots roll between adobe houses and under splaying canopies and a broken sky. Turbine balloons float tethered above village communes as mechanics and whizz kids fiddle with prosthetics, tracing their hands across each mechanism's flowery reliefs. Refugees are shepherded beyond the great deserts that now swallow up much of the world, and in art nouveau palaces knights and reiters swear fealty to their handlers. Welcome back to the world of tomorrow stranger, though it's a bit different than how you remember. The material contained herein is classified as THANDE MOST SECRET. I understand that some might consider me sending a message at this point as foolhardy or inappropriate. However, given the manneryear is 2173 AD. Almost a century and a half has passed since the Collapse Era began, though the exact time when it ended is in dispute, not that there's any global institution that could decide when that was anymore. While the "Collapse Era" is a broad term, beginning before the climate collapse itself kicked off in earnest, most historians set its beginning to the onset of the American War, a multi-generational conflict that engulfed the former United States and Canada between a panoply of pretender governments and post-American states of various kinds. The premature death of the world hegemon led to a discordant global period in which 'Operationthe major global institutions attempted to reorient themselves under the UN now based (mainly) out of Vienna. The Thande Institute Invasion Of Croydon, 2019'--I do wish Captain MacCauley would let someone else come up with codenames--is being carried out, there is nothing I can do at present to aid the effort. To briefly recap on the plan in case anything was left out before--we have been undertaking this at fairly short notice after all--we believe that Team Alpha are being held at an English Security Directorate (ESD) facility on Coombe Lane in the town of Croydon, which in the Britain or rather the England of this timeline remainsnew order was, in its own town andwords, imperfect and reactive. The need to shore up faith in the global system, to ensure the protection of accounts, states, and economies reeling in the face of America's fall, and the pressure to balance the now more pronounced regional frameworks in Europe, Africa, and even the Caribbean meant that the post-American world was dominated more by an attempt to loot the great behemoth as it tore itself apart in order to keep itself going for as long as possible as opposed to creating anything enduring. In the midst of this other parts of the world began to pull apart at the edges. In the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia the Three Flags Army otherwise known as the Democratic Federation, tore through the region, even taking Mecca for a brief period of time. The outpouring of American refugees (which themselves presaged the larger refugee waves of the era) became a source of conflict as many nations especially in the global south fought over access to a new very skilled and cheap workforce that was up for grabs. China and peripheral nations jumped at the opportunity that had been presented and attempted to kitbash a Fifth Internationale, leading to a breakdown in relations with its former European partners, themselves attempting to recreate the once expansive American intelligence system by importing former members of the US Deep State into their new federal military framework. Meanwhile the war itself quickly broke out of containment, spreading outside the United States and requiring first the largest UN military mission in history, and later on the transformation of what remained of NATO into an occupying organ, seizing control of Canada to maintain stability only to find itself at war with its own people. Then at last the climate collapse itself hit in earnest. Alongside this, economic pressures from the declining energy returns on fossil fuels compounded the costs states were taking on, and uneven population growth and demographic shifts obliterated long standing institutions in developed nations and undercut nascent regimes across the rest of the globe. World powers became more desperate and reckless, escalating to the point of bringing Kessler Syndrome down upon everyone to deny other nations vital infrastructure and going beyond that to even the use of tactical nuclear weapons on their enemies and rebellious populations. The more humanity held on and the harder its grip became the more the future slipped out of its fingers until it was all gone. Once again the year is 2173, the world population stands at just under 6.5 billion. A century or so is enough time to heal most wounds, provided one actually wants to do the healing. A casual observer or tourist to this world might be struck by how pleasant much of it looks. A view of the late 22nd century evinces a sense of a world painted in watercolor, something ripped out of a solarpunk moodboard or a Chobani commercial. Aesthetically and technologically speaking this is most certainly the case. It is a world of colorful adobe houses and limewashed buildings, of floating turbines, airwells, solar furnaces and pedal powered machines. A time of bionic and folk-craft motifs and stained glass opening up into rooms of optical computers and bio-forges. Of bacteria-phages and gmo molds and mushrooms breaking down the remnants of the old plasticene. Of consciously designed permaculture landscapes around communes on one end and flowing linear arcologies on the other. Socially though? Politically? That's a different story. The 22nd century is not a time of hand-holding, of positive psychology, utopian cosmopolitanism or down to earth anarchistic sentimentality. It is in many ways a return to form, a world emerging orthogonal from the past and its expectant future and containing bits of both on its own terms. It is a time of small states yet great empires, conservative communities, knightly orders and guild wars, at once an abandonment and refutation of the liberal and secular notions of the old globalized world in some cases and an attempt to race past them altogether in others. A time of close knit families and communes and bloody conflicts wiping out entire lands. Above all though it is a world that has abandoned the once popular maxim that "men are simply born for no reason". For in the 22nd century all men have an end that they know, be it prescribed by their state, their community, their liege, their party, or their God. When the collapse came it was primarily those great global institutions and the social sentiments that had emerged alongside them which fared the worst. The United Nations, the internet, the global economy and so on, yes even air traffic control, all were dashed against the rocks. While states would return, communities would persist and dig deep roots, the idea of the liberal citizen, of the neutral state, of institutions that exist solely for the purpose of their own survival that would not. Those that survived the collapse and came to seize the 22nd century were those that were able to orient their societies towards specific ends, either that of a destined future or of building a kind of humanity and social order within their borders. The closest equivalent we might have is that of a "theocracy" though this is not been subsumedentirely accurate. While many 22nd century states are oriented towards a kind of religious end or according to a specific cosmology, just as many are not, and many "secular" orders of the 22nd century (such a term being outmoded) in fact evolved out of the practical administrative structures of 21st century religious movements. Things are never quite so straightforward. The 22nd century itself is not even dominated by London. Although to say that a lot of watergreat powers in the way we would understand the word. For while one might look at a map and see a collection of states which contest land and people, the real powers of the era are different. As stated previously, the major multinational institutions and broader global framework of the 21st century did not survive, but there were some hangers on of the complex globalized society of the past that were able to maintain control and entrench themselves as modern superpowers by the 22nd century. These would turn out to be the descendants of the major charities and development banks, who having their own land, property, and people scattered across the world weathered the collapse and only became more powerful as the new order established itself. THE SUPERPOWERS AND KNIGHTS There are currently 12 (technically 13) superpowers or "orders" which dominate the world. They are the Society of Saint Joseph, Red Cross and Crescent, UNICEF, United Way, the Sravasti Viharas, Hare Khrishna, World Food Bank, Salvation Army, Nahdlatul Ulama, Tzu Chi Foundation, and both the African and Islamic Development Banks. The 13th will not be mentioned until later. With the exception of Saint Joseph which is based out of the Vatican (and formally a subordinate organ of the Catholic Church), none of the superpowers have any "home turf" as it were, instead contesting large swaths of non-contiguous land across the planet. There is not a single part of the world that does not see the presence of at least one of these powers. The origin of many of these powers is rather clear, though others are more particular. The Sravasti Viharas for instance are the descendants of a Western Tibetan Buddhist abbey turned Humanistic foundation which attained global prominence due to its interlinking with the similarly minded Fo Guang Shan of the Taiwanese diaspora in the middle 21st century. Others are the amalgamation of many groups over time, such as the Society of Saint Joseph which was formed as a result of a papal decree merging the church's major foundations together under a new organization. The development banks are the "odd man out" in this regard, though their rise and persistence is for similar reasons, due to the massive amount of sway and resources that fell under such institutions' control as the global south themselves attempted and failed to beat back the collapse. These development banks would find themselves being transformed from multilateral institutions to the caretakers of their former patrons, and so emerged from the collapse in a position of prominence. What one most often thinks of when the global superpowers come to mind however is not the land they contest nor their immense amount of wealth and vassals, but their knightly orders. Professional standing armies were one of the institutions that did not survive the 21st century in most parts of the world and are now the exception rather than the rule. While many states now have the potential to field standing armies again most do not due to institutional pressures against doing so that have become entrenched. Frankly speaking, most states view anything beyond a militia or at most a gendarmerie, to be a waste of time and resources. The superpowers are the notable exception to this, having the resources, funding, manpower, and reason to field large numbers of men at their command. The nature of warfare has passed under the bridge ofchanged however, and so have the kinds of men who fight. A big reason for this timeline since the PODis technological developments in the past century and a half. In this world of bionics and organic technology one of the great shifts that would occur would be quitethe (with caveats) victory of personal defense and armor over firearms. A great innovation of the modern era, organically grown heat regulating kinetic hardening foam has allowed for the creation of coats and breeches and other wearables that can deflect rounds with ease. Prohibitively expensive to be sure, but not impossible for the superpowers who have of course also locked down the process for creating them. Production costs limit the number of people that can be outfitted even by the wealthiest and most powerful bodies on Earth however. As such the superpowers rely on and use them to outfit small-ish professional corps of loyal soldiers, sworn to them for more or less life, to fight on their behalf. These form the basis of the modern knightly orders. Your average knight for the global superpowers then is exactly that, a man wearing effectively bulletproof quilted armor, often in layers starting with long undershirts and ending generally in either a large greatcoat or medium length jacket with roomy elbow length sleeves. Attached to the front (or sometimes the back) of their person is a bio-mechanical "third arm" folded against their body with an understatement, theintegrated weapon meant flip out and blow off exposed body parts should they be revealed during close combat. Close combat is in fact the name of the game, for although it is true that organic armor is effective against firearms, that simply inspired men to find new ways around them. The monomolecular sword would be this workaround, solving the issue of organic foam armor by simply slicing through it. A quirk of such weapons however is that due to the van der walls force a clean swipe will immediately seal right up, so sword combat between knights is based around hacking and slashing their enemy apart, and if possible blowing them apart with one's prosthetic third arm should an opening arise. Large numbers of ordinary troops provide support and often operate drones and anti-drone weapons on the battlefield. As one can guess this means that knights require a lot of training, which makes them all the more of an investment that superpowers are desperate to hang onto. In many ways the knightly orders are an attempt to accommodate this, to give their fighting men not merely money but prestige and a kind of life and status that separates them from the hoi polloi. Knights are given great freedom in how they live their lives, access to land, and special exceptions to sumptuary laws. Knights are in many ways encouraged to take pride not merely in their work but in the symbols of it. This often takes the form of employing designers to create elaborate and specialized patterns and motifs on the outer layers of their armor and sometimes the insides of the coats and jackets too. There is no need to hide oneself after all, one might as well show off. Even calling them knights is intentional in this respect. Knights operate in fireteams or "lances" (equivalent to a squad of 8 or 10 men) headed by an operator. An "operator" is both a lance-leader and an intermediary, denoted by their special implants. Operators have two implants, one in their skull and one in their jaw, the former which turns thoughts into transmittable information, and the latter which picks up transmissions and uses bone conduction to allow it to be heard as if it were a human voice. Operators are paired to "handlers" who have matching implants. Handlers are stationed outside of the battlefield, often with other handers at one of their superpower's local geography knowledgecommand stations, where through the use of drones, aerostats, and access to local infrastructure they have full view of the battlefield. Handlers and operators coordinate in battle and often develop a peculiar rapport with each other due to having access to each other's thoughts on and off the battlefield. Despite the attempts by the superpowers to keep a lock on their knights it is not unheard of for some to go rogue, or in the case where a superpower loses a region to another for knights of the losing side to use the opportunity to move into freelancing for local states. There are some benefits to going from our own timeline of Sergeant Ellis and in particular Lieutenant Black has nonetheless proved quite useful.being one knight among many to being the only one or two of your kind that a county or even small nation leans on. THE AMERICAN ECUMENES Despite the short notice, Lieutenant McConnell was able to secure a suitable surveillance point for us to observe the facility in question, which bears the incongruously merry name of Snowdrop House. I believe this is because the facility is not open about its identity and appears at first glance merely to be one of the fine old houses in this part of Croydon. This may help us in that it presumably limits the number of ESD staff and guards who may be present. In any case Lieutenant McConnell discovered that the house opposite Snowdrop House, named Bluebell House, has recently been vacated due to its former tenant, an MP named David Batten-Hale, lost his seat at the English general election a few months ago. His replacement seems uninterested in the house and it has been put on the market. Lieutenant McConnell and Sergeant Ellis had a look around the house earlier today, ostensibly on behalf of a buyer, and Sergeant Ellis was able to palm a spare key: we have therefore been able to re-enter tonight after the estate agent has gone home. We considered trying to enter Snowdrop House via the basement, but any sort of ambitious tunnel-digging was too time prohibitive and instead we took the opportunity to scout it out from this vantage point and, via triangulation, deduce a safe location to open a Portal there. I say safe, for there will always be an element of risk to going in blind like this--and who is to say the ESDprevious statement that "theocracy" does not use the rooms for different purposes than they seem--but given that Captain MacCauley and the others left ten minutes ago and no apparent alarm has been sounded, we can hope that our Portal did manage to open in a broom cupboard rather than a conference room...in session. However we did, of course, desire a backup plan, and as a result I am here in Bluebell Housemean theocracy, the first states to be covered will be the American theodemocracies. Ultimately none of the contenders of the American War survived into the modern era, with Lieutenant Tindale observing from the window, behind what is hopefully a foolproof adaptive camouflage barrier. In the event that Captain MacCauley and the team can't get Team Beta to the Portal in Snowdrop House--or open another one there, but without GPS coverage that is tricky--then they may have to come back here where the Portal I am currently speaking to you through is still open. As a consequence they may be subject to reprisals from the ESD captors, I hesitate to use the term 'enemy fire' in this context but nonetheless...Lieutenant Tindale has his sniper rifle and the new nonlethal rounds, but 'sniper rifle' and 'nonlethal' are not words I am ready to believe belong in the same sentence. I can only hope that things do not escalate to that level, as I believe conflict with the natives of this timeline would not only be an abstract tragedy but would turn our path to the risk of future peril, for the people of this timeline are quite advanced enough to create Portals of their own if they learn how the theory works. As they may have already done so from Team Alpha if their interrogation methods are particularly ruthless, I fear. But now Lieutenant Tindale and I must wait for a report, and while we wait, I have realised that there is an opportunity here. You must think me foolish, to have no sense of priorities, to be churlish about the lives of my friends and colleagues--but there is a reason why I am choosing to use the emergency Portal to communicate directly with you, avoiding the radio transmissions of the digitiser which we surmise might have led the National Gendarmery to Team Alpha in the first place. You see, when I first came to Bluebell House I noticed that this room is in fact a library, or book depository might be a better term. How appropriate for Lieutenant Tindale and his sniper rifle, some would say. But still, not only do we havethe notable exception of a redoubt of the old oak-panelled walls and shelves and leather-bound books one would expect to come with a fine old house like this, but also incongruous modern bookshelves with colourful plastic-backed books and even something not unlike an e-reader, though cruder than what we are used to. And crucially, this is the library of an MP, a Burgess to be precise, and as such it includes many worksSacramento Government clinging on history and geography. Many works that I would have given my right arm to have while we were trying to piece together the earlier history of this timeline, just using what vaguely relevant works we could cull from public libraries. But here it is, all here, all in one place, and in depth. In a place we will probably soon have to flee from. You will forgive me if I seize this opportunity with both hands. A room full of relevant books, and a Portal to throw them through: I trust Mr Batten-Hale will not mind if we borrow them long enough to copy them. The floor is already covered in piles of them taken from the shelves, probably to be moved to a new house elsewhere. He likely will not notice if a few more are taken away and then swiftly returned. First of all I notice a children's encyclopaedia, from which I surmise that Mr Batten-Hale has children (a deduction hardly worthy of Sherlock Holmes!) Though they are obviously not in-depth, such works are excellent from our perspective (you will recall the report by Dr Cussans on Timeline H) because they introduce things to us that books penned for adults will assume 'everyone knows'. As a result, I think I will begin with volume F to H. I have left it turned to a particularly relevant page... . From - "The Children's Complete Cyclopaedia, by Alfred Yew, 14th Edition (2001)-- GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY: The Stories of All the Peoples of the World and the Lands in which they Live THE GLOBAL GAMES THE NATIONS OF the world must by their nature compete, or the human race would stagnate and eventually go extinct. But some of the ways that they have competed in the past have been destructive: war and colonialism are the two most blood-tinged examples. Some men thought that the losses of those wars and colonies were an acceptable price to keep the human race alive, but those men lacked vision. They were wrong. There are other ways in which nations can compete that are constructive, not destructive. Science, and in particular the Race for Space, is one (see volume Q-S pp. 132-49 and pp. 254-260). Sport is another. And of all the sports competitions between the nations, the greatest is the Global Games. THE MAN WHO SAW WHAT SPORT COULD DO FOR THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD Peter Rathbone was not a sportsman himself, except perhaps in the field of hunting. He was an English explorer who was born in Hereford in the year 1841. He travelled to countries such as Perousie and China to explore, and even to more dangerous places like Rajasthan and Portugal. But it is not his exploring that he is remembered for. In the year 1873, when he was thirty-two, he happened to be in France and saw a football match played between visiting English schoolchildren and their French friends. He realised that sport was a means by which the nations could compete in a way that would drive them to greater heights of success, without the killings of war. But not just football or diamondball or H-ball, but in many sports. Different sports were more popular in different countries. They should all experience them and respect each others' success. A man from Germany might never even have heard of the sport of pulu and think that the Burmese are inferior to him because they are less capable at football. But put him on horseback and let him see the Burmese run rings around him, and then he will respect them. As in all things, more knowledge is always to the benefit of all. THE COMPETITION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD Rathbone got together with other enthusiasts and created the World Sports Society, which became the modern Global Games Commission. Butin Cascadia. Instead, it would be years beforesocial clubs and faith communities that would persist as the national and later regional governments crumbled, forming the basis of a new post-American society. The "Ecumenical Societies" are a result of this, nations which privilege the church, mosque, temple and so on as the fundamental unit of civil society and government. Likewise, the national mythos of these states draw both from the collapse era experience and the religious traditions of their peoples, with most states being named after places in scripture, which can be a somewhat confusing prospect when someone says "the Land of Galilee" and they attracted enough wealthy patrons to fundmean the region around Lake Winnipeg. Together the Ecumenical Conference of North America stretches across much of former North America, excluding the great desert of course. Among the conference though there are eight Ecumenes which are the most prominent, and which are most likely to be referenced when one talks about North America. First there is the Land of Gilead, based out of the former Northeast Atlantic. Gilead is perhaps the closest to an old fashioned party-state and indeed its constitution even references the communists and Lenin in particular (alongside the old fascist jurist Schmitt) as their inaugural sports celebration. It would not be called the Global Games until years later, but we now remember that competition in 1882 as the First Games. The First Games were a success but they would not become a regular event until Rathbone secured funding once again in 1886, ever sinceideological forebears. To Gilead all governments instituted by men are dictatorships in the name of a particular interest, with old world democracies themselves being bourgeois dictatorships. Similarly, civil society is a sorting system by which the Games have been held every three years except in cases of particular global emergencies. Wonder Question: What countries were represented at the First Games? At the First Games athletes did not compete under a flag or for a named nationdictatorship is established, friends and enemies are designated, and the basis upon which the dictatorship distributes rewards and punishments is rationalized. Gilead is unique in that while being dominated by Catholics (with a significant folk element by way of its absorption of former Baptists and Methodists from the Appalachia area), it accedes to the old Communist maxim that a Communist party, in representing the interests of the proletariat and peasantry, is by its nature democratic because it seemed obvious to everyonemakes as its main interest the majority of the population. This is one of the reasons why the ruling party, the Party for Solidarity and Virtue, modeled itself off of them. Where it diverges however is that to the people of Gilead the main question of governance is not who is ruled but who is sovereign. To the Gilead Party by instead attributing their primary interest to the ultimate sovereign: God, as opposed to the ultimate subject: Humanity, their regime has fixed the errs of previous capitalist and communist empires. The mentality of the people of Gilead can be summed up with the line "the previous exercise of government concerned itself with the question of what man says man is and of what interest is man to himself. We concern ourselves however with what God says man is and of what interest man is to God." In terms of governance Gilead has been very successful, maintaining one of the more prosperous realms on the continent. This is helped by their monopoly on hydropower, not just the Niagara Falls Dam, but their recently successful megaproject of damming the James Bay as well. South of Gilead is the Land of Bethel. A unique specimen among Post-American states, the people of Bethel trace their roots in large part to the work of the Collapse Era "Community Welfare Alliance" or "CWAA" and smaller episcopal and progressive church cliques in the region. Heavily leaned on for the restoration of order and civil society during the Boston Government's short time holding the Atlantic Coast, the "chapter houses" that they established would seize control of the state apparatus during the pretender state's eventual retreat from the area. Modern day Bethel is a great example of what is meant when 22nd century states are called "conservative", that is to say they focus heavily on the maintenance of social order and continuity of norms across generations. Communities in the 22nd century from the local to national level engage in high levels of social policing, which says nothing to what the norms of said society are. Bethel on this front is known particularly for its only national level organ the "Bureau for the Prevention of Vice", under which their national gendarmerie, descended from the old CWAA, is organized. Bethel is also an example of what are sometimes referred to as "post-queer" societies, which is to say societies which had normalized certain social relations for sexual and gender minorities prior to the Collapse Era or which otherwise had influential cliques representing their interests which were maintained into the 22nd century. Post-Queer societies are quite common, more a reflection of the collapse of a social movement globally (due to the collapse of the world in general) not necessitating a reversal of social changes in specific regions, but instead attempts to reorient them within the new baseline of a much "smaller" and more parochial world, mostly through the mimicry of or full integration into the new regimes of social policing performed by the rest of society. Bethel for instance is well known for its program of free at the timepoint of use hormonal therapy for gender minorities and streamlined system to accommodate Self Identification, alongside having the death penalty for distribution of pornography of any kind. These two positions are considered to naturally exist hand-in-hand in Bethel society, and locals would be confused were one to attempt to argue with them that these are not positions one needs to hold to maintain social harmony and personal flourishing. Further south is the Land of Goshen. A descendant of the once great Internationalist Commune of Dixie, the people of Goshen still use a modified version of their ancestors' flag. The system of municipal communes and horse-trading which dominated Dixie politics and their erstwhile congress would eventually form the basis of the current system of elector councils. Goshen in large part is dominated by the "Southron Church", formally an ecumenical board jointly held by the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African National Baptist Convention, which rose in prominence with the spinning apart of the once dominant Southern Baptist Convention. Goshen is made up of elector districts, which are headed by either secular or religious councils depending on if the local voting authority is centered around the town hall or church board. The elector districts select members for the congress which is the supreme authority of the land. Elector councils often band together into larger administrative federations where they coordinate and draft fiscal policy and direct the operation of infrastructure manned by cooperatives or other socially owned enterprises that contain members from their respective districts. In some cases this manifests as unofficial "party" blocs, often along the lines of the old school commune era divisions of agrarians, romantics, and communists though as a formally non-partisan state they are not called such. Secular and religious electors are generally equal in number, but due to the near unanimous allegiance of religious electors to the Southron Church (and the semi-formalized process of the church sending notices of whom they want their electors to send to congress) the nation is in dominated by the church. Goshen, however, is also noteworthy for its parallel systems of law enforcement, with both a national militia (descended from the Southern People's Liberation Army) and a "knightly board". Goshen prefers to leverage the services of independent knights and reiters, formerly sworn to the superpowers, for mediating disputes between councils and counties. This is a very attractive offer, especially for older knights who was representingwish to enter a kind of "retirement". Goshen's independent knights often hail from UNICEF or the United Way due to the region being further away from their zones of control and firmly held under the Red Cross. Speaking of crosses, Goshen is famous for its yearly Victory Day celebrations which country. Butcommemorate the triumph of the old Dixie armies over the Black Cross in the American War. Celebrations typically consist of work battalions, dressed up in Collapse Era uniforms, dragging replica Black Cross flags through the mud, culminating in their public burning. Victory Day is also noteworthy for the flying of flags of those nations and foreign militias that aided Dixie in the conflict. As those states no longer exist today, a Goshen town or city on Victory Day is one of the last places on Earth one might see many 21st century flags still flown. Back north one of the descendants of Old Exurbia, now known as political borders and definitions have changed since then it has become more difficult to say who was represented. For example Joseph Collins, the runner who came first in the 150-toise dash at the First Games, was born in Scotland but grew up in England, and at the time both countries were part of Great Britain. Collins tragically died before the Act of Separation and so we do not know which country he would have chosenthe Land of Canaan, can be found. Still based around its old quasi-capital of Tecumseh (former Columbus). The history of Canaan is just as his own. THE INSTITUTION THAT HAS STOOD THE TEST OF TIMEoff kilter and curious as its predecessor. The Pandoric War interrupted the Games not long afterExurbians had always been a peculiar deviation away from the communalists they were first instituted, and someinspired by, attempting a far more "pure" framework trending towards generalized anarchy alongside a kind of American cultural revolution. A people feared that the horrors of thatcarried aloft as much by an affinity for witchcraft and new age syncretism as they were by their grungecore "i'm playing a riotgrrrl track in a blasted out shopping mall" war and whatof extermination against fascism. As such it is only fitting that it met an equally punk end. Which is to say that one day the men came after would doom such peaceful pursuits. But the Games had captured the imagination of people across the world and could not be stopped. Though the Games were interrupted again for the Sunrise War and the Last War of Supremacy, they continue to this day, and today more countries contribute than ever before. Wonder Question: What are 'the Olympics'? The Olympics, Olympic Games or Olympiad are a popular nickname for the Global Games, but this is nothome from the frontier, turned their official name and the name was not used until many years after the First Games. The original Olympic Games were a sports competition held in Ancient Greece which have some parallels to the modern Global Games and there has been debate over whether these should be emphasised today (see entry NEO-HELLENISM in volume N-P pp. 109) but the connection has never been officially acknowledged by the Global Games Commission. THE GREAT ENEMY OF SANCHEZISM The Global Games show how the people of the world's nations can acknowledge and celebrate the differences that divide them and allow different people of different nations to excel at different pursuits. They are anathema to Societism, but the popularity of the Games means that athletes from Societist countries have long competed in them. The first athletes from Societist countries competed at the 1916 games and then again in 1919, but then fear and the imposition of new rules requiring athletes to compete under a flag meant that no more athletes from Societist countries competed until the 1943 games. In 1943 they competed under an empty flagstaff, but from 1946 onwards they used the Combine Threefold Eye flag that was accepted by those Societists who realised that they must at least make some small compromise with reality (see entry FLAGS in this volume pp. 89). Wonder Question: Why are Global Games winners awarded silver laurels? The practice of awarding winners silver laurels was introduced in 1934 and is one of the practices derived from the Ancient Greek Olympic Games. Prior to that time cups or medals were awarded but exactly what type was up to the country hosting the games to decide. Copper laurels for runners-up were not introduced until 1949. THE VICTORS OF THE GLOBAL GAMES It is wrong to judge a country by how many Global Games laurels its athletes has won, for all countries will excel in different pursuits, and not all nations have had independent countries that could compete for the same length of time. Nonetheless the country whose athletes have won the most laurels at present is the Russian Confederation, followed by the Empire of North America and the Chinese Empire. Formerly some sources counted all Societist countries as one, in which caseguns on everyone and declared they would be second instead, but todaydoing full anarchism now. All in all it's been pretty successful actually. Canaan has maintained, for roughly 80 years now, more or less a vacuity of any form of government outside of the People's Guard. Beyond that, among the other Ecumenes it is also noted for its relative lack of any hard religious structures. The "Hexurbian" witches of the olden days gave way to a kind of neo-neo-pentecostal campbellism, where much like everything else the existence of discrete denominations was dismantled by force. A form of highly charismatic primitive Christianity dominates in this practice is frowned upon..." . (Dr. David Wostyn) And so you can see the great advantages to snatching a few minutes here and there to pass along these books to you. Andarea, influencing the social norms and sensibilities of the people, even those unaffiliated among them. In terms of foreign relations everything is carried out by the People's Guard which maintains a rotating roster of diplomatic posts for its officers. Despite not just books. Mr Batten-Hale appears to be an enthusiast for cartography and he has a number of maps as wall posters. The label on thebeing able to predict who you're talking to when conducting relations with the Canaanites the neighboring states have maintained long lasing positive relations with the anti-state, in part a continuation of the unofficial detente that existed between Exurbia and the pretender governments from back states that this map, made by the company Richards of Erewash, is a modernised and recoloured reproduction of a contemporary map showing the state of affairs in the Empire of North America shortly after the Great American War. As that subject has consumed much of my attention (largely because of the nature of the books I had available to me at the time) in recent weeks, it would be a tragedy if I did not take advantage of this. I'm sure Mr Batten-Hale won't notice if I stick it back up again after you've finished scanning it in... Part #201: Spoilers (Dr. David Wostyn) I am glad you agree that this opportunity cannot be wasted, gentlemen...of course I will not be cutting down these books to digitisable extracts as in the past but passing the whole lot through. It is up to you on the other side to reduce them to a hopefully at least somewhat coherent narrative for those studying this timeline's history. In the past, Dr Lombardi and Dr Pylos of Team Alpha and then myself for Team Beta have tried to preface each segment with a quote: initially one of at least partial summative relevance to the topic of the segment, and then for the last fifty updates I have hunted out quotes from Pablo Sanchez to try to illuminate the ideological conflict that so underlines everything in this world. However because I am now just passing on complete books over the space of a few short minutes or hours, there is no time for this. If you wish to preserve continuity of style with the earlier segments when these reports are collated, I suggest one of the Thande Institute analysts on the Our TimeLine side search through the books to come up with suitable ones. Whatever you do, though, don't give that job to Dr Lister, if the abstracts on his papers are any guide he just picks a random paragraph from anywhere and pastes it in-- * "...considerable improvement over the Neptune-II, which was a purely French domestic project. The Neptune-III however saw input from Italy and England, as its primary role was to launch the Pelerin (AKA Pellegrino in Italian or Peregrine in English) suborbital threshold bomber, itself a joint project between the three nations. The precise armament of the upper stage remains classified but it is believed that the three countries' threshold programmes have remained separate, with a different domestically produced warhead loadout for each nation's bombers. The rocket and upper stage bomber were both authorised in 1976 and the prototype saw its first flight in 1984, with full operational capacity reached for France in 1987 and Italy and England in 1988. When the Last War of Supremacy broke out, all three countries held to the Ratisbon Convention and did not deploy threshold weapons on European soil, but seven attacks were made against Combine forces in the American theatre by a total of five Pelerins. The French were responsible for four of the bombings, the Italians for two and the English for the remaining one. As a consequence of the Venice disarmament talks of 2011, each country is now limited to three operational Pelerins, with the French additionally having two more in a disassembled state that may be reassembled within a timescale of weeks..." -- Taken from Finch's Complete Militaria of the World, 19th Edition (2013) * From : "Great Men and Women of World History" by L. H. Hodgkins and P. T. Rendell (2000)-- James FitzGeorge and Alistair Wesley were two very brave men who were the first to fly an aerodrome. The boys knew each other from childhood. James' grandfather was William FitzGeorge who saved the Republic of Bengal in a war. Alistair's father was Liam Wesley, who saved the President of England's life. But the boys became more famous than even these relatives. When James and Alistair were young, the only kinds of flying machines were steerables and balloons. These were slow and clumsy machines. James and Alistair were sure that they could do better. In a place in Cygnia called Jinjin[1] in the year 1888 they tested their first aerodrome. An aerodrome is a flying machine that is heavier than air, but works by the air passing faster over the curved wings than it does below them. (See Diagram). The first test ended in disaster. Alistair broke his leg and took months to recover. The young men studied their design and learned from their mistakes. They needed a rudder to steer the drome and to better stabilise their design. In 1889 they tried again and successfully flew for just 18 seconds. But now they knew it could be done. Many more inventors followed in their footsteps. Some people even think the French inventor Gregoire Perret flew his aerodrome before Alistair and James did. They are wrong, but it is right that they think differently, for it would be a poor world if we were all the same. And we can now look down on all the wonders of that world from Alistair and James' invention, and all the other ones that have sprung from it. * (Dr David Wostyn) Yes, apologies, the children's books were closer to hand, I will start on the adult ones in a minute. In any case you will of course want to get the proper historical context rather than leaping straight into a subject without first laying the groundwork. Hello? * From "A Young Person's Dictionary of Science" by O. R. Kavanagh (1999)-- CARYTIC PHYSICS is a special branch of physics to do with the interior core of the atom, sometimes called the caryus from the Greek word for nut. By definition carytic physics began in the year 1929 when the famous McElroy and Wang experiment at Cometa University found that most of the atom's mass was concentrated in this caryus and not evenly distributed as the former geometric atom theory had held. It was found by further experiments that the caryus was made up largely of particles with an electric charge deficit.[2] The long-established physics of electricity held that deficit particles attracted surfeit particles and repelled those of the same balance. Therefore there must be some greater force holding the deficit particles together in the caryus. Men wondered at these great forces locked inside the atom and whether they could be unleashed. But it would not be for thirty more years that this would be seen, in the triple tragedy that ended the Sunrise War. It has taken time for the peoples of the world to accepted that carytic physics can be used for good as well as ill, to produce paradox engines to heat our homes and free us from dependence on combustible fuel sources. But the development of the threshold bomb in the 1950s will always be inextricably linked with the history of carytic physics... * (Dr. David Wostyn) What do you mean, 'more twentieth century stuff'? I told you, you need to see it in context! It's no use reading about the Last War of Supremacy unless you know where the conflict comes from-- * From "A Review of Global Defence Capabilities, 2018" by the National Register Institute of Global Politics (2018)-- Since the first deployment of threshold bombs in Russia in 1959, the technology behind the weapon has proliferated worldwide but has also been subject to severe international controls, helped by the sheer levels of global public revulsion for the weapon and its original users. As of 2018, in total 49 threshold bombs have been used in anger, the vast majority (38) in the Last War of Supremacy. A further 122 bombs have been used in test firings, but these have been heavily restricted by disarmament treaties over the years and the Assembly of Sovereign Nations is now hopeful that tests may be subject to a comprehensive international ban from a tentative date of 2023. Currently a total of 14 nations worldwide have access to threshold weapons, discounting those which lack their own native programme but have mutual defence treaties with threshold-armed countries. Excluding the forced disarmament programmes following the Last War of Supremacy, the only country to have voluntarily given up a threshold weapons programme is Panchala, following the democratic revolution which overthrew the despotic Ram Kumar regime there in 1982. Twoin the Hayes era. Speaking of Hayes and the Chicago Government, while that particular taboos associated with threshold weapons are the use of them against civilian targets and the delivery method. The former has been explicitly banned by international treaty following their first use against cities in 1959, and this treaty has never been violated (barring some borderline cases during the Last War of Supremacy due to military forces digging in too near to urban centres). Delivery has been somewhat more controversial. Traditional deployment has been made either from ground-based forces or from the air (or indeed suborbital craft in more recent years). The controversy ultimately stems from the strength of feeling over the former factor, and that the maximum avoidance of civilian casualties necessitates a high level of precision that only a human targeter in close proximity to his target can deliver. Long-range suborbital military rockets (first tested in the 1960s) could in theory deliver threshold bombs just as they deliver conventional warheads, but the fact that their targeting is insufficiently precise to strike a moving army has led to a near-universal ban. Shorter-range rockets have been more up for debate, but the prospect of interference with their ypologic brains leading to a mistargeting incident has meant they have only been used in combat twice, both incidents during the more desperate moments of the Last War of Supremacy. Finally of course there is the delivery method used in their first deployment in 1959, which has naturally been subject to considerable stigma from official state forces but there is always the possibility of history repeating itself. This has been another factor supporting the severe limitations of the numbers of threshold weapons in existence at any given time: certainly there is enough pitchblende ore in the world to produce xanthium and hesperium sufficient to destroy the world many times over... * (Dr. David Wostyn) Look, if you skip all the years in between you'll be stuck when you find a word you don't recognise and you don't have any context! How do you think I did all those footnotes? * From "Freedom in Focus: Global Politics 2017" by the National Register Institute of Global Politics (2017)-- If we may be disappointed with the backsliding of one or two nations on our biennial Liberty Index compared to 2015, we should not lose sight of the bigger picture that compared to 25 years ago the world is a much freer place. Even countries like the Russian Confederation has made considerable progress in press freedom and freedom of speech, doubtless due to the removal of the existential threat of so many adjacent Societist powers providing an excuse for the ruling classes there. For the same reason it may be disappointing but it is perhaps not so surprising that Corea is one of the cases where there has been a noticeable decline, with the arrests of journalists and closure of some papers in April 2016 being justified as a 'patriotic action' against the threat to the east. The ENA is particularly to be praised for the relaxation of restrictions on free speech, to the point that some of its more rambunctious Traditionalist Patriot Vote politicians have complained it is 'turning into California'. To which our response would be we would only hope that would be the eventual case: as such men are decidedly a minority, it might not be a vain hope. Another example which we have naturally watched with great expectancy over the past twenty years, and which has thus far defied the expectations of pessimists by undergoing quite the recovery towards a state of freedom, is of course the Republic of-- * From "Vanity Fayre, Issue 1,502" edited by Mary Mannington (2019)-- Who's little Miss Pauline Hartington stepping out with now? The cunning young fellow's kept his masque on but our intrepid reporter says she detected the distinct odour of whisky and haggis. Can it be that our own Foreign Secretary's daughter is consorting with the enemy? Is good honest roast beefpretender no longer enough to satisfy her? Andexists, Chicago itself is a major power in the new North America. Influenced by the region's overlapping periods of control under the Chicago Government, the Quasi-Islamic National Rejuvenation Government, and the Sabaothic Host of the Prophetess Daniela and her followers, what will Mrs Hamilton think, left at homeemerged from the wake of the collapse era was the Land of Shiloh. An experiment in confessionalism, Shiloh's government reflects the diversity of its population. A form of power-sharing is the name of the game, with the Shiloh constitution having built in administrative carveouts for Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Muslims, Unitarians, Sabaothists, and the Baha'is. Although Shiloh is a state dominated by the public interchange of and horse-trading between different religious communities, above all alone in Govan north of the border? [cont. page 22] Is Your Man More Scared Of Congress Than Premier Tukhachevsky Is? Use These Ten Simple Tricks To Find Out!" * (Dr. David Wostyn) There, I thoughtof them exists a sort of public quasi-cult dedicated to the image and mission of the former United States. This is in large part due to the significant influence that various pretender governments, from Chicago, to the PNRG, to the South Dakota state government of the old 130th Division, played in laying the groundwork for its founding. President Hayes in particular is considered a folk hero of immense renown, for both preventing the fall of the region to fascism and stopping a potential nuclear exchange in the 2040s that would make you pay attention. Now dohave devastated the continent. A somewhat amusing cultural divergence in this region, though often unremarked upon, was the effect that the ration-passport system of the Chicago Government played in shaping demographics. The Hayes era system (and its carry-ons during the later collapse) unintentionally encouraged diverse cohabitation of houses and compounds and what were known as "breadline marriages" in order to maximize access to goods and dispenser regions through the ration system. In effect everyone sharing a house or living on a street became a "family". Across the Midwest it properly or there'llbecomes difficult to trace ancestry back beyond the 2030s. A person's last name thus might be Mattox because their "ancestors" all lived in the same building on Mattox street a century and a half ago. A similar expression of this phenomena can also be found in the region once known as Colorado, though to a more of that, Mrs Batten-Hale's got quite the stack here... * From: "The Nations of India, 1700-2000" by Jason Hume and Krishna Haidar (2004) Bengal undoubtedly came through the Great Jihad in as intact a state it did thanks principally to the efforts of two men. The first of these was President William FitzGeorge,the son ofmuted degree. Among the former 'Richard IV' usurper of Great Britain--who himself lived through the bulk of the Jihad and died in Bengal aged 76 in 1855. Despite his father's disgrace (albeit rather reduced in scope by him getting along quite well with Frederick II) William worked his way up through the ranks of the East India Company and had achieved the presidency of British Bengal by 1846, when the Jihad began to grind towards the nation's borders. The second of the two was of course Nurul Huq, who matched the Mahdists with his own Islamic authority, rallied Bengalis to a reluctant support for the British as the lesser of two evils (achieved due to Huq's longstanding personal opposition to the British, meaning his support carried more weight) and would eventually be martyred by Mahdist mujahideen in 1850. Nonetheless we should not ascribe the entirety of the victory to these two. Commodore Edward Cavendish's reinforcements (actually intended for California) helped turn the tide and the Commodore himself fought on land, being instrumental in the victory at Burdwan in 1851. Many Bengali officers earned great feats of victory, some of whose names are recorded because of the influence they went on to have in post-Jihad Bengal, though sadly due to the prejudices of the time many are not known. One such man, Ranajit Chatterjee, is particularly well known in the British Isles due to his close friendship and alliance with Liam Wesley, the so-called Bad Duke, who fought against the mujahideenstates of the Texan led provisional government now stands the Land of Samaria. Samaria is descended from 1852 onwards as one of his worldwide adventures. The two saved each others' lives numerous times, were responsible for slaying the key Jihad commanderSelim Arif after he had burned the village of Silda and killed Chatterjee's uncle, and after the threat to Bengal subsided they went on adventures deep into the hostile Jihad-held lands to the west. In the British Isles (especially Ireland) their adventures are remembered with Wesley as the leader and Chatterjee as the sidekick, while of course in Bengal their positions are reversed. The reality is that the two men considered each other equal partners. Their positive reputation in their homelands is rather lacking in countries such as Berar and Panchala, where they are painted as thieves for having 'retrieved' a number of valuable pieces of art and Hindu religious manuscripts before they could be destroyed by the rampaging mujahideen with their hardline iconoclastic interpretation of Islam. Many of these works are still exhibited in museums in Europe or Bengal despite the modern countries' attempts to get them back. Some were donations but Chaterjee and Wesley made a tidy profit off of others. All of this helped finance the spectacular wedding of Wesley to Chaterjee's sister Priya (also sometimes known by the English form of her name Freya) in 1859. This was primarily a Hindu ceremony, as Wesley's own religious beliefs only extended to a sort of vague acknowledgement of the Church of Ireland. Though this marriage represented a considerable settling down of Wesley from his youth which had left a trail of broken hearts across Europe during the Democratic Experiment era, it scandalised large parts of society (suchthe "ProvGov" as it was called, more specifically from a special agreement between the Texan and Mexican security and intelligence services that during the later collapse period formed the basis of a multinational program to respond to the regional collapse, desertification and devastation of the gulf coast, and ensuing refugee waves, a program that would survive both nations. The formal dissolution of the remaining American pretender government in Austin would come shortly after years of Populism) whenits last motion, to begin the movement of millions of people from Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mexico to the region now known as Samaria. After everything America might die but her people would survive if the Texans had anything to say about it. The Promised Land of the Texan and Louisianan pinewoods and oak cut prairies would prove to be the perfect place to begin again, and in time even the abandoned cities of Dallas and Fort Worth would be repopulated and reforged to serve as the current capitol of Samaria. Surprisingly retaining many of the institutions of the collapse era, Samaria is a federal republic with a presidency and a unicameral congress, though operating under a church-county system similar to neighboring Goshen. The success of the resettlement program gave the people of Samaria a sense of good government and the belief that a state properly staffed by the competent (and most importantly the virtuous) will always prevail. This means that the Samaritan government tends to be staffed by competent and well oriented people promoted not due to personal ambition or typical mechanistic meritocratic means, but by being forced into ever higher positions of responsibility by the ever watchful community, often beginning with the chittering of elderly women at the front rows of one's church or the murmuring of men at the local social club. As they like to say, no good Samaritan goes unpunished. This has also led to the phenomenon in Samaria known as "Republican Nobility", a kind of informal class position among the administrative upper crust of the state (and their immediate family) who due to the popular belief that their position was a result of their moral character are simply treated far better by all of society and are often encouraged to flaunt their status. A man who is rich because he returned to Europe in 1861 and bought a large townhouse in London.owns property is considered an accident of history in Samarian culture and has no right to boast, whereas one who has served the people faithfully is believed to deserve to be rich and often made so. Far up north around Lake Winnipeg is the Land of Galilee. Along with its sisterland of Sidon to the west, Galilee is of importance less for any particular difference in its government, but due to its ruling myth and recent history. Like most of the ecumenical states in former Canada its origins can be traced back to the fall of the NATO regime in the country, and in the case of Galilee the beginning of it as well. Galilee stands at the crossroads of many mystical events in the recent history of the continent, having been the site of the Prophetess Daniela's invasion of Canada which sparked the occupation in the first place. Galilee, like most Canadian states is known for a sizeable though not majority Sabaothic population, the religion having experienced a boost in the region after the fall of the faith's own personal Babylon. What Galilee is more often known for however is the story of Terrance and the Miraculous Blade. In the latter half of the 21st century as the NATO regime and its local RCMP proxies increased in the intensity of their barbarism against the Canadian people, crackdowns would begin on all public gatherings in an attempt to break up hostile cells. Terrance Gauthier (otherwise known as St. Terrance) was a lay preacher, one of the many kinds of "wildflower" spokesmen that emerged at the time as an act of defiance following NATO's retreat from Alberta. The whole affair illustrated the somewhat confused and Legion-syndromic nature of the British public's attitudes towards Indians: the Orientalist art and cuisine craze of a generation before contrastingwildflowers were a broad classification of dissident, including everything from religious preachers, to communists, to people who supported the return of democracy, to simply anyone the military government didn't like. It is unknown if Terrance was originally a religious wildflower, but he eventually became one, leading to the local RCMP detachment to believe he was involved in or otherwise knew about the location of several dissident cells. He was not and did not. Repeated failures to make any headway by surveilling Terrance caused his observers to become frustrated and spiteful, changing plans first to assaulting Terrance to get information out of him to eventually simply looking for an excuse to kill him outright. Everything from having his house seized to his church closed down and fellow parishioners arrested did not bring Terrance to violence. Finally, an attempt to encourage him to assault an officer by pulling him into the middle of the road and beating him backfired and resulted in him running away, leading to the Mounties chasing after him and shooting him in the leg. As Terrance began to bleed out in the middle of a clearing the Mounties surrounded him with the simple xenophobia towards treating those of a different skin colour and faiththeir weapons raised. Terrance raised his hand into the air, which one interpreted as equal, then overlaid with the vague sense that this was treading too close to Linnaeanism and thus was itself a suspiciously foreign idea. Certainly the small number of Burdenists tied themselves in knots in debates over whether Bengalis qualified as 'black' or could be numbered among Eveleigh's Asians whichhim having finally broken and offering to give him whatever information they believed he considered equal to white Europeans.[3] The continuation of some boorish and outrageous habits by Wesley generally tipped the scales towards society's ostracism in general andmight have. Instead, Terrance told them that he would show them a miracle. Looking up to the sky he said: "Lord, not recoverthat I might gain, or bargain for my life with your power, but that they who persecute me might be saved. That if you will that they might know you by my faith. For you are the author of life, and if it be your will then this air though it remain in sight and touch air will be in truth a blade that should I grab it would cut my hand." Terrance would grasp the air above his position until the Russian Embassy incident of 1868.head. His palm would be sliced open and start to bleed. The Mounties would panic and shoot him seven times. The final collapse of Canada would mean Terrance would have the last laugh, and indeed the story goes that at least a couple of those who witnessed the event would later switch sides, with their testimonies being why the story was popularized in the first place. So, he arguably obtained all his goals. He's considered the national hero of modern-day Galilee and the saint-of-the-nation by the region's Catholic and Lutheran believers. Finally there is the Land of Sidon. A recent arrival in the history of Post-American states, it is of great renown due to its ongoing rivalry with neighboring Cascadia. Formally "The United States of America", Cascadia is what remains of the once great Sacramento Government and its ruling body COMPOR. Based around the former military regime in PNW and the Seattle Green Zone, the remnant state has succeeded in solidifying its rule, due to celebrate the 400th year anniversary of the USA soon! A unitary government despite the name, Cascadia can be best described as a "cop-ocracy" in service to the cartels and corporations which dominated the old government, now reforged into what are effectively a kind of ancien nobility, an anachronism wrapped in another anachronism. Sidon is dedicated to the destruction of what remains of the USA, or what it perceives to be a mockery of the world that was lost during the collapse. The cold war between Sidon and Cascadia is playing out primarily in the city of Vancouver, which remains for now outside the reach of either power. A cat and mouse game is afoot between both sides, constantly attempting to outmaneuver and undo the other's inroads into the free city, which all sides know will fall to one side eventually. Among the ecumenes of North America a phenomenon has emerged in recent years, that of the "New Believers", those individuals who come from secular or explicitly atheist families going back 3 or more generations that have at least outwardly converted to a local religion following the rise of the new system. To be clear there were seismic shifts and trends in religiosity in America during the collapse era, though a sizeable chunk of the population remained otherwise stable in previously held secularity as is to be expected, operating as normal under the new system as it gelled. However, trends have been noticed in recent years, especially by those who collect the stats, of segments of the population that did not shift over the past century, but which have now experienced seemingly spontaneous changes in outward religiosity after the new order became entrenched, often corresponding to areas or among those institutions where doing so would be more beneficial. The rise of New Believers is more pronounced in Shiloh for instance with its confessional appointment system, than in Goshen where there is a whole parallel secular state. In recent years these New Believers have experienced a degree of mistrust and wariness accorded to them by some segments of the population, though Wesley and Chaterjeethis has yet to escalate beyond the level of a kind of cultural background radiation. As a result it is not unheard of for New Believers to find themselves needing to express an even more intense religiosity and loyalty to compensate or otherwise "prove" themselves to their detractors. Outside of the ecumenes and Cascadia there is not much to note about the rest of the continent with two exceptions. The first is the Heartland Commonwealth, a state stretching from former Utah to Kansas which considers itself the legal and spiritual successor to the Chicago Government, though having dropped the pretenses of being the sole American state. Known for their massive solar powered fixed wing transport planes that lazily circuit the whole perimeter of their nation and the pilotless caravans that move across the plains, the Heartlanders are in an almost romantic recreation of an American ideal interested in little more than friendly neighbors and profitable trade. There is also the San Fran Commune, an quasi-outpost of the Seventh International on American shores. They, however, will have to be touched on later. THE SINITIC META-CIVILIZATION As it turns out the fall of the People's Republic during the collapse was not enough to get communism out of the blood of the Chinese people. As any visitor to the far east will tell you, that particular quirk is here to stay. Today every Chinese state is officially some form of communist or socialist, and all claim to be the (or at least a) successor to the People's Republic. There is, amusingly, a legal continuity of government regime of the old PRC still operating in Taiwan, and the ruling party of the island is on paper at least well within its rights to claim that it is the CPC, but to be frank nobody really cares. The 30 states of the Chinese people represent their own kind of world, all viewing each other as reflections of the same shared legacy of "Chinese Civilizational Socialism", though descended from different institutions, organs, and movements of the old empire that once dominated the land. The Third People's Republic, based out of its capital of Xiong'an, is a unitary state that emerged out of a collapse era stewardship program established by China's major state enterprises. Headed by the Continuing Committee, a descendant of the CPC Central Committee now staffed primarily by technical specialists and a consultative simulated intelligence that runs the economy, the TPR is often described as a kind of "People's Technocracy". Despite its heavily centralized state apparatus and potential to leverage immense amounts of power domestically, the TPR prefers to leave its people alone, operating under the belief that the continuing committee should only exist as a caretaker administration for a society that no longer needs to be ruled. To this end it has sought to make its regime at once flexible and ever present while also unobtrusive and has just recently abolished all taxation within its borders. The TPR is also known for its romanticism of early collapse era China, which it sees as the height of Chinese civilization both in terms of reach and cultural attainment. The TPR maintains a great deal of influence to its north, in the lands of former Mongolia and Siberian Russia, where Chinese settler states dominate. South of the TPR is the realm known as the Prefectural Confederation. Best described as an anarcho-syndicalist state, the Confederation is composed of a number of arcology communes and organizing committees composed of trade union representatives. This arrangement was the result of two main factors, first was the resettlement of large chunks of the coastal population to new inland linear arcologies as the sea level rose, and the second was what were heavily involved in the 1855 mission to support the embattled French in the Carnaticknown as the "two card reforms". An attempt in the 21st century to transition away from reliance on enterprise unions, the ACFTU embarked on a program of expanding trade union participation by sea,forming local sector unions to exist alongside enterprise-wide unions. These were known as the "two card reforms" due to the long period when many Chinese workers would be a part of two separate unions in the same work place and thus had two union cards. The success of the reforms was mixed, but it istook hold deep in Jiangsu and Shandong where climate change would actually accelerate the transition in workplace structures as people had to physically move and restart their lives in the new linear arcologies. With the fall of the PRC the local workplace committees would strike, coopting the administrative structure given to them and organizing the network of arcologies along the lines of a dual communal congress and trade union senate structure. Today the Prefectural Confederation is seen as a kind of intermediate zone, largely uninvolved in the affairs of its neighbors and thought of as a region separating the north from the Malkutic states to the south. Before we go further south we will return to the north (and then the west briefly) to speak about the Liaoyang Ecological Secretariat. Descended from the United Front Work Group Coordinating Committee for An Ecological Socialist Civilization (try saying that five times fast), the LES was originally a regional sub-board representing Liaoning, Jilin, and North Korea. While both the PRC and DPRK would fall (though the latter not before unifying the peninsula) the board would not, maintaining a stranglehold on the region. The modern-day secretariat, which still calls itself a mere secretariat due to officially waiting for the legitimate PRC government to reassert itself, is most known for its ambitious program of ecological rehabilitation and radical self-reliance. While sometimes amusingly called an "Eco-Juche" state few can argue against its effectiveness, with its stunning resuscitation of the continent's bee population earning it the other nickname "The Apiary". The Secretariat is also known for its ongoing program of settling Outer Manchuria and the Amur Basin and subverting local governments to bring them more in line with its long-term program of creating a "Northeast People's Bioregion". It may be worth remembering that this operation was ultimately the brainchild of William FitzGeorge, displaying his geniuschecking back in at the turn of the 23rd century to see how that plays out. In the meantime, the Secretariat currently inspires a lot of thrillers based around its clandestine operations. To the west is the aptly named Agency for logistics. Though the financial losses of repelling the Jihad ultimately led to the Privatisation of Bengal and the breakdown of lines between European and native in that country, in the short term the solidarity between Europeans first created by the India Board decades before would continue. At least between the British and the French. With Portugal badly weakened and then falling to revolution itself, the Portuguese possessions in India mostly fell to the Jihad in the short term,the Western Domain. An intersection of two developments in late pre-collapse Chinese history, the expanding control over and resettlement of minority populations from the peripheral zones of the southwest (Zomia) and the security regimes established in the western territories of the old empire. During the collapse era local minorities began to take on greater roles in the administration of the local military apparatus due to the explosion in military enlistment as did the weakened, Portuguese-influenced Maratha confederate states and British Bombay. Neither Britain nor France was in a position to take advantage of the chaos when the Jihad began to collapse in on itself from the mid-1850s onwards. Persia did gain greater influence in the northern Maratha statesan avenue of social mobility. The resettled peoples of Yunnan such as Gujarat and Rajputana (buildingthe Lisu increasingly found themselves under the control of co-ethnic garrisons supported by the capital and party committees, as were the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Tu and so on. As the PRC waned the mission of these local ad-hoc regimes continued, ultimately coalescing under the army and police structures that they all shared. The Agency for the Western Domain then is a latter-day Protectorate General to Pacify the West as it were, though its size and complexity dwarfs that of even some old dynasties. History might not repeat but it does often rhyme. Of course the agency is self-governing, and over the generations has ironically become rather thoroughly Islamized. An exceptionally proud nation, it maintains the air that it is the bulwark of Chinese civilization, the shield that protects the heartland (that it in theory is still beholden to) from the vicissitudes of the outside world. It also makes money hand over first in trade, having seized control of almost all of the major overland transport infrastructure of old Eurasia, but that's neither here nor there. South China is most known for its system called the Malkutate. Its full name is the All-China Apostolic Malkutate. An evolution of the successful program to Sinicize Christianity, the Malkutate is at once an imperial church and a sort of memetic or cultural space. Derived from Malkuth or "Kingdom", the counter-oriented sefirot to Keter or "Crown", Malkuth comes from creation itself, governs it and gives it sensibility, and exists in, through, and among the material world and human person when it reflects and is oriented towards God. It is also the mediative sefirot that in its reflection connects all of God's emanations back to the top. In Christian Kabbalistic traditions it is manifested in the unity of mankind with God and Heaven as the Bride through the Church, and the Church as the community of all believers living, dead, and eternally alive (the saints). The implications of such a concept were seized on by the post-PRC communist church, to rhetorically justify and create a framework for a kind of "bottom-up" society, one beginning at the communal level, at the workshop, and the work battalion, directing itself towards the end of the salvation of the Chinese people. The Malkutitic system is also known for its extant position in Kalat)re-nestling of Chinese cosmology in this new era. For instance, the age-old idea in Chinese spirituality that Heaven or God is that which, grounding being itself, possesses a will that attempts to unify a humanity that is not naturally or intentionally separate from it but Goa itself, the ancient fortress of the Portuguese, would eventually end up in the same handsonly contingently so towards itself as much ofhaving been wholly expressed in history with the reconciliation of God with man in the person of Jesus. Likewise that immortality, the ultimate aim and telos of fusus, the subject, or the universal logic and that which it ultimately trends towards, is fully realized by and in Christ as the Resurrection. Malkutism essentially creates for itself a space to realize the re-establishment of a neo classical Chinese cosmology sublimated into an Abrahamic typological framework and thus a re-enchantment of Chinese civilization, with a Communistic society and a Christian cosmology as their final form. A common motif found in Malkutic states reflects this in a snapshot image of the big dipper in the four phases or seasons around an image of the three heavens (three circles expanding outwards) while four stars (no longer representing distinct classes as they did on the old Portuguese empire: those of the UPSA... * (Dr. David Wostyn) There, isn't that much better? Now, shall we continue? [1] Spelled Gingin in OTL. [2] Reflecting a thematic revival of the monist theory of electric charge in the early 20th century, TTL terminology generally refers to surfeit and deficit of chargePRC flag but the totality of the Chinese people) trailing behind the tail. Similarities have been remarked upon between many Malkutate patterns and the patterns of the old Ming era magic square banners, though this is believed to be a kind of convergent re-development of a related aesthetic style rather than negative and positive charge respectively. [3] Aan intentional move. Malkutic states are, reflecting the broader culture, more or less universally Workers' republics: self-governing communal federations often with a ceremonial party on top. The federations give way beyond the state level to the Ecclesiastical Conference which itself acts as a consultative organ back to the communes and parish-cadres: a circular system. Among the Malkutates themselves though two are often mentioned the most. The Sichuan and Huanan Workers' Republics. Generally considered the "elder brothers" or sometimes "elder brother and sister" (which is which depends on who you ask) of South China, these two states are the ones that their cousins generally entrust the maintenance of foreign relations and the region's standing army (an exception among world powers as noted earlier) to. THE CARIBO-MEXICAN TECHNOCRACIES Those who have visited the great states of the Caribbean describe it as a place somewhat similar debate happened in 1888 in OTL after Lord Salisbury referred to Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Asian to be a British MP (winning his seat in 1892 after an earlier failed attempt) as 'a black man'. Part #202: Middle-earth in the Middle Kingdom "2 x turkey dhansaks with rice, one with coriander dip and one without = 12R.4f.-m 1 x jiaozi vegetable sharing platter with side order of kimchi borsht = 4R.3f.2m 1 x garlic naan with cocoa dip = 2R.1f.-m Delivery charge = 1R.-f.-m Total 19R.8f.2m" --From the Correspondence of Bes. David Batten-Hale (New Doradist Party--Croydon Urban) * (Dr. David Wostyn) --no, I said you SHOULDN'T let Dr Lister do the starting quotes...anyway, I must apologise for the biographical entries, I no longer have access to the proper biographical dictionary we borrowed from a library before, it will have to be the children's book for now, at least unless there's a better one here I can find... * From : "Great Men and Women of World History"out of time, a vision of a future that never arrived. Dominated by L. H. Hodgkins and P. T. Rendell (2000)-- Tamahimana was a man born into what our own people at the time would have called savagery, but he rose to the very top of civilisation, a great hero and the counsellor of kings. Tamahimana was the son of Apehimana, a great man in his own right. Apehimana had been one of the rangatira chiefs at the very first Hira Hui High Assembly of Autiaraux in the year 1825,the twin republics of Santo Domingo and Centroamerica, the Caribbean technocracies emerged out of the alliance formed between the rising to power at a young age because of his role in the destruction of the slave ship El Dorado. Because Apehimana was a great warrior--and because the old men of the Hira Hui feared him--he was soon declared Warlord and sent far away from Autiaraux to protect the islands from other slavers. But Apehimana was not only a defender, but a conqueror. He led a campaign across the Pacific islands that included the conquest of Tonga in 1827, where he chose to settle down. Apehimana had killed the Tongan king and now became a king by his own hand in all but name. Apehimana was such a great man that his sons thought they would never surpass him, and Tamahimana least of all, for he was the youngest of Apehimana's many sons by his many wives. While the elder sons vied for position by fighting and conquering, building big palaces and monuments to their own glory, Tamahimana was an imaginative dreamer. He dreamed of sailing the seas not only for war but also just to explore, to travel to other lands not to conquer them but just to prove it was possible. Most of all he dreamed that the Maure could build a great canoe, bigger than any since the time when they had first come to Autiaraux, a canoe that could sail all the way across the vast oceans to reach the lands of the keroi, the Europeans. Then the Maure would have finally proved that they were equal to the peoples that had been visiting them for a lifetime now, sometimes as friends and sometimes as foes. Though that dream would one day be realised, it would not be Tamahimana who sailed that great canoe: history had other plans for him. Back home in Autiaraux, the Hira Hui gradually became less of a talking shop and more of a real government. Powerful rangatira chieftains no longer only fought for more power for themselves and their own iwi-tribe, but to rule all the Maure as one nation. To stop domination by one ruler or civil war, the Maure created a system where one rangatira chief would be chosen to serve as kawana, first among equals, for one year before handing on to another. For a time in the 1840s this system meant that leaders of two powerful factions derived from the two old Maure alliances took it in turn, but in 1854 a man named Tetumate became kawana. He was of a younger generation, able to see past the old rivalries, and believed the Maure needed to become one centralised people. He had seen how European visitors could divide them with their schemes and feared what might happen. Tetumate was strong and a visionary but he was also ruthless in the pursuit of his goal. He would not tolerate any Maure to exist independently outside the authority of the Hira Hui and the Kawana. His opponents in this included the Maure colony at Maureville in Antipodea--and Apehimana's little personal empire on Tonga. In 1858, thirty-one years after Apehimana had conquered Tonga, when he was seventy years old, a surprise attack by a hugeLatin American security states and the ICS regime established to loot the former United Maure fleet fell upon the islands. Apehimana and his men fought bravely but were overwhelmed. Apehimana was slain along with most of his family, but Tamahimana escaped with one hundred warriors who vowed to one day seek revenge on Tetumate. Tamahimana knew that they would have to recover their strength before they could try. So he took his fleet of canoes north. For a time he thought to rebuild his father's empire on islands that did not yet know the Maure flag, but there were many more Europeans in these waters who might attack. Tamahimana decided that the only way to be sure of what the Europeans would do would be to rebuild his strength under their very noses. Over the next few years he and his men gradually crossed from one island to another, eventually reaching the Meridian Philippines. The Philippines were overwhelming to the Maure, who had never seen so many people packed into a land before. Tamahimana decided that Tetumate, with his push for more agriculture and industry, wanted Autiaraux to become like that, and swore anew to oppose him. But Tamahimana also heard of even greater lands to the north, with even more people and opportunities. He was intrigued... * From: The National Register Atlas of World History, 8th Edition (2002)-- THE SECOND RIVERINE WAR (1863-1868) was the third significant clash between the Beiqing and Feng dynasties of North and South China following the Anqing Incident (1826-1831) and the First Riverine War (1844-1850). The Second War was ultimately foreshadowed by the outcome of the First, which among other things saw Sichuan shift from neutrality to pro-Feng alignment under Viceroy Xie Bokang. Sichuan's ambiguous and precarious position could only last for so long, and though the Beiqing dynasty was consumed for years by internal difficulties (the death of the Chongqian Emperor and his succession by the Jianing Emperor; war scares with Corea; factionalism and resentment by the Manchu and Mongol minorities for Beiqing policies) it would not stand idly by when Sichuan went from pro-Feng autonomy to outright being a Feng province after the death of Xie Bokang in 1862. The Beiqing, who had finally (if somewhat erratically) turned to modernisation in the years immediately before the Second Riverine War, once again reiterated their view that the Feng were an illegitimate rebellion and open war began again. If the two Chinas (especially the Beiqing) had not quite modernised their armed forces to the levels that had wrought havoc across North America a decade before, they were nonetheless on the road to industrial warfare and this meant that the titular 'riverine' theatre of conflict--the land between the Yangtze and Yellow rivers--was bitterly fought over. Many mercenaries and weapons from the Great American War and European conflictsStates. Truly incalculable amounts of wealth flowed into the area and turned the war into,region, which was kept aloft out of the interest of the UN led order during the early years of the collapse. Wealth when properly managed begets more wealth, such is the clarion call of the capitalist, and indeed it did. Today the two republics are some of the richest parts of the globe, their technocratic and highly professional elite in service to a unified banking regime. A microcosm of the perfected global market as it is poetically known in China, the Battle of Four Thousand Bloodstains.envisioned by the Rockefellers and Carnegies long ago. The ultimate outcome of the war was far more decisive than the grinding pace in the riverine theatreLatins would suggest, thanks to newly <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON> providing a western theatre. Regions of China which had owed rather theoretical loyalty to the Beiqing following the Reclamation War (1814-1819) were conquered by the Feng, including the prestigious 'New Great Wall' forts facing Dzungaria (itself ruled by the Kazakhs and influenced in turn by the Russians). In the second half of the war, it was the conquest of western citiesclaim to have at last perfected the free market, though such as Xining, Lanzhou and ultimately Xi'an which decided the fate of the war. The conflict ended in victory for the Feng dynasty, with the full annexation of Qinghai, Gansu, Huijiang and Shaanxi provinces and effective control of all the easta statement would most definitely cause their neighbors to the south of the Yellow River, including cities such as Luoyang and Kaifeng. The Beiqing were reduced to a husk of their former self, with many commentators predicting they would soon be doomed and China would reunite. Because history is never that simple, the Beiqing would last for decades more... (Infobox in original atlas with portrait of dark-skinned, tattooed man in Chinese robes) Tamahimana was a Maure chieftain who fled his father's independent island domain after the campaigns of Tetumate (q.v.) He came to the Republic of Formosa in 1861 and then went on to fight in the Second Riverine War, where he and his fellow Maure fighters acquired a fearsome reputation among their Beiqing opponents. His greatest victory was at the Battle of Suqian (1865) where the Beiqing commander was slain far behind the fighting lines by Tamahimana's infiltrators, leading to the collapse of the Beiqing position in Jiangsu province. After the war, his fame meant he became a court curiosity to the Xiaohong Emperor and then a trusted counsellor to the Xuanming Emperor when he succeeded his father in 1867. Xuanming attributed to Tamahimana's support and advice--as someone outside the old power structures of China--his ability to survive political attacks following the embarrassing loss of northern Daiviet to the Siamese in the Second Sino-Siamese War (1869-1871). In the year 1873 Tamahimana left China with the Emperor's blessing to return to Autiaraux: in 1874 Kawana Tetumate would be found dead under mysterious circumstances that clearly indicated he had lost his mana. It would be many years before anyone else would introduce the traditional southern Chinese silkworm venom based poison known as gu to the Pacific Islands. * From: "Naval Warfare Through the Ages" by Christine Singer-- The first time that two non-European or -Novamundine[1] modern military forces met at sea would be a dramatic event. However it is hard to define exactly what 'modern' means in this context and this means it is hard to pin down when the first instance was. For example, the clashes between Corean and Yapontsi naval forces in the Imjin War of the sixteenth century were arguably as modern as anything in Europe at the time (contrary to popular belief, the Yapontsi were using gunpowder and had access to shipbuilding techniques at this time). However, if weto bristle. To the west are to use the most common 'know it when I see it' definition of modern, the most likely suspects are the Second Riverine War (1863-1868) between the two Chinese dynasties at the time, and the immediately following Second Sino-Siamese War (1869-1871) between the southern Feng dynasty and the Siamese empire. The Second Riverine War was theoretically a conflict between two modernised Chinas, but the northern Beiqing dynasty continued to lag behind, its partnership programmes with Europeans decidedly lacklustre and halfhearted compared to those of the southern Feng. What did not help was Beiqing reliance on Scandinavian military advisors in the 1840s and then, following Scandinavia's defeat in the Unification War, Jianing fired them without first securing replacements. As the Scandinavians had been particularly heavily involved in the naval modernisation programme, it was in this field that the Beiqing had the most difficulty in the conflict (whereas on land the difference between the two powers' weaponry and tactics was less noticeable). Although the Beiqing had access to quite modern wooden ships (the first Chinese armourclad would not be built until 1874, and by the Feng), they were ultimately held back by insufficient loyalty and morale on the part of their poorly paid sailors. The Beiqing did not drill their sailors on gunnery or conduct live ammunition training: indeed, when the Beiqing and Feng fleets first met in force at the Battle of Jiaozhou Bay (1864), it was noticed by European observers that many of the Beiqing ships' guns failed to work altogether. The ultimate cause was apparently corruption, with poorly loyal Beiqing sailors (many of whom had doubtless never expected to have to go to war) having sold the gunpowder from their shells, replaced it with cement and pocketed the difference.[2] Beiqing naval performance improved slightly over the course of the war but the Feng dominated the high seas, especially when Corea joined the war in 1865 and added their own fleet. Ultimately the parlous state of the Beiqing Navy may therefore give us reasonable grounds for excluding it from the 'modern' qualifier, regardless of what it looked like on paper. The Feng and the Coreans both had less ambiguously modern naval forces but they were on the same side, albeit more as barely acknowledged cobelligerents than allies. Under other circumstances the Russo-Lithuanian Pacific Company might have got involved on one side or another, but the war came at a time when much of the company's efforts were sunk into either consolidating their grip on Yapon or deepening their influence in California, and so uncharacteristically the RPLC played little part in the war. Other European and Novamundine trading companies aided the Feng as before, but--fitting the general trends in the region--compared to the last war they found themselves in a much more subordinate position, with the Feng picking and choosing what weapons and mercenaries they wished to purchase. Events elsewhere also influenced which companies were involved, with more input from the Americans and Meridians (who had absorbed the former Spanish and Portuguese contribution) and less from the French, Belgians and Scandinavians. However, the war did see France gain further influence over the Liaodong Republic (as a consequence of the Republic facing down an increasingly hostile Corea and now lacking any hope of help from the Beiqing) and in 1875 France would sign a lease on the port of Lusan[3] to develop it into a naval base. In the titular Riverine theatre of the war, things were more evenly matched, with the Beiqing investing in timberclad riverboats armed with guns that usually worked: the riverine navy had been seen as more of a priority in the interwar period. The Feng learned more from riverine tactics that had been used in the Great American War, but overall the two sides failed to make much headway against each other: it was through battles on land, at great cost of human life, that the tide finally turned in favour of the Feng and left all the land between the rivers in their hands. The Yellow River, effectively forming much of the border between the two Chinas after the war, would in turn see rapid militarisation even as the forts and timberclad gunboats on the Yangtze fell into disuse, no longer needed as the Yangtze was now fully within Feng territory. Many of the old gunboats were redeveloped into small freighters or, as more Chinese ports were opened to (cautious and controlled) European trade in the 1880s, even tour boats. Given all the caveats associated with considering the Beiqing's naval military forces as 'modern', then, a less ambiguous option for the title of first naval conflict between two modern military forces not of European or Novamundine origin would be the following Second Sino-Siamese War. The Siamese Empire had been modernising its military for years and was ready for a rematch following the loss of the First Sino-Siamese War (1832-1838). The sometimes ruthless Feng policies in Feng-occupied northern Daiviet following that war had helped the Siamese cement their grip on what might otherwise be rebellious vassals: the Daiviet people were outraged by the stories told to them by refugees fleeing Feng rule. The Siamese had been preparing for a long time and fought a war in Cambodia in 1853-1856 that resulted in the expulsion of the Belgian Ostend Company and the assertion of control over Cochinchina (southern Daiviet) as well as Annam (northern Daiviet). The victory not only lent general morale to the Siamese but also helped create a narrative that the Siamese were the benevolent protectors of the people of Indochina against all foreign intervention, whether it be European or Chinese. On land the two sides were fairly even, with the Siamese prevailing more due to the exhaustion of the Feng following the Second Riverine War and the need for troops to hold down some of the newly acquired western provinces. By sea, however, the Siamese Navy triumphed over its Feng counterpart, perhaps because the Feng had grown complacent in their tactics from facing the weaker Beiqing. The most significant naval battle of the war was the Battle of Qiongzhou Strait, where Admiral Devakul defeated Admiral Rui, despite being numerically outmatched, by the application of brilliant new line-breaking tactics that were soon the object of study even in European military acacemies. Devakul proceeded to land troops on Hainan Island and took the capital Qiongshan. Ultimately this did not go any further as Devakul lacked the soldiers to do any more and the Chinese reacquired the island at the peace treaty, but this was still a huge embarrassment for the Feng, particularly in the wake of the great victory of the Second Riverine War. The late nineteenth century in Asia was therefore a period of buildup and brinksmanship by several of the rising great powers, and certainly puts a lie to the Eurocentric term 'Long Peace' for this era... [1] A term used by some authors in TTL as a more neutral descriptor for 'the Americas' without saying 'American' as that is the specific demonym of the ENA. It is derived from the Latin name for 'New World'. [2] Similar problems hampered the Qing Dynasty's Beiyang Navy in the First Sino-Japanese War in OTL. [3] AKA Port Arthur in OTL. Part #203: The Minnows Amid the Whales "Sorry, the Ministry has called me back again about those documents, blast them--can you pick up Angie from savat coreen practice this once? Remember you take the second exit on the circus at Sutton and then it's on the right just past the second set of stop-and-goes. Last week she told me she was ready to take the test for the Vert certificate, ask her if she got it, AW? Thanks love. DBH." --From the Correspondence othe Mexicans, th

USER: "The"Until the Last Moment The latter months are ending as the sun hangs lazily between the clouds. All about are the sounds of commotion. Trains glide across crystal waters kicking up mist as robots roll between adobe houses and under splaying canopies and a broken sky. Turbine balloons float tethered above village communes as mechanics and whizz kids fiddle with prosthetics, tracing their hands across each mechanism's flowery reliefs. Refugees are shepherded beyond the great deserts that now swallow up much of the world, and in art nouveau palaces knights and reiters swear fealty to their handlers. Welcome back to the world of tomorrow stranger, though it's a bit different than how you remember. The year is 2173 AD. Almost a century and a half has passed since the Collapse Era began, though the exact time when it ended is in dispute, not that there's any global institution that could decide when that was anymore. While the "Collapse Era" is a broad term, beginning before the climate collapse itself kicked off in earnest, most historians set its beginning to the onset of the American War, a multi-generational conflict that engulfed the former United States and Canada between a panoply of pretender governments and post-American states of various kinds. The premature death of the world hegemon led to a discordant global period in which the major global institutions attempted to reorient themselves under the UN now based (mainly) out of Vienna. The new order was, in its own words, imperfect and reactive. The need to shore up faith in the global system, to ensure the protection of accounts, states, and economies reeling in the face of America's fall, and the pressure to balance the now more pronounced regional frameworks in Europe, Africa, and even the Caribbean meant that the post-American world was dominated more by an attempt to loot the great behemoth as it tore itself apart in order to keep itself going for as long as possible as opposed to creating anything enduring. In the midst of this other parts of the world began to pull apart at the edges. In the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia the Three Flags Army otherwise known as the Democratic Federation, tore through the region, even taking Mecca for a brief period of time. The outpouring of American refugees (which themselves presaged the larger refugee waves of the era) became a source of conflict as many nations especially in the global south fought over access to a new very skilled and cheap workforce that was up for grabs. China and peripheral nations jumped at the opportunity that had been presented and attempted to kitbash a Fifth Internationale, leading to a breakdown in relations with its former European partners, themselves attempting to recreate the once expansive American intelligence system by importing former members of the US Deep State into their new federal military framework. Meanwhile the war itself quickly broke out of containment, spreading outside the United States and requiring first the largest UN military mission in history, and later on the transformation of what remained of NATO into an occupying organ, seizing control of Canada to maintain stability only to find itself at war with its own people. Then at last the climate collapse itself hit in earnest. Alongside this, economic pressures from the declining energy returns on fossil fuels compounded the costs states were taking on, and uneven population growth and demographic shifts obliterated long standing institutions in developed nations and undercut nascent regimes across the rest of the globe. World powers became more desperate and reckless, escalating to the point of bringing Kessler Syndrome down upon everyone to deny other nations vital infrastructure and going beyond that to even the use of tactical nuclear weapons on their enemies and rebellious populations. The more humanity held on and the harder its grip became the more the future slipped out of its fingers until it was all gone. Once again the year is 2173, the world population stands at just under 6.5 billion. A century or so is enough time to heal most wounds, provided one actually wants to do the healing. A casual observer or tourist to this world might be struck by how pleasant much of it looks. A view of the late 22nd century evinces a sense of a world painted in watercolor, something ripped out of a solarpunk moodboard or a Chobani commercial. Aesthetically and technologically speaking this is most certainly the case. It is a world of colorful adobe houses and limewashed buildings, of floating turbines, airwells, solar furnaces and pedal powered machines. A time of bionic and folk-craft motifs and stained glass opening up into rooms of optical computers and bio-forges. Of bacteria-phages and gmo molds and mushrooms breaking down the remnants of the old plasticene. Of consciously designed permaculture landscapes around communes on one end and flowing linear arcologies on the other. Socially though? Politically? That's a different story. The 22nd century is not a time of hand-holding, of positive psychology, utopian cosmopolitanism or down to earth anarchistic sentimentality. It is in many ways a return to form, a world emerging orthogonal from the past and its expectant future and containing bits of both on its own terms. It is a time of small states yet great empires, conservative communities, knightly orders and guild wars, at once an abandonment and refutation of the liberal and secular notions of the old globalized world in some cases and an attempt to race past them altogether in others. A time of close knit families and communes and bloody conflicts wiping out entire lands. Above all though it is a world that has abandoned the once popular maxim that "men are simply born for no reason". For in the 22nd century all men have an end that they know, be it prescribed by their state, their community, their liege, their party, or their God. When the collapse came it was primarily those great global institutions and the social sentiments that had emerged alongside them which fared the worst. The United Nations, the internet, the global economy and so on, yes even air traffic control, all were dashed against the rocks. While states would return, communities would persist and dig deep roots, the idea of the liberal citizen, of the neutral state, of institutions that exist solely for the purpose of their own survival that would not. Those that survived the collapse and came to seize the 22nd century were those that were able to orient their societies towards specific ends, either that of a destined future or of building a kind of humanity and social order within their borders. The closest equivalent we might have is that of a "theocracy" though this is not entirely accurate. While many 22nd century states are oriented towards a kind of religious end or according to a specific cosmology, just as many are not, and many "secular" orders of the 22nd century (such a term being outmoded) in fact evolved out of the practical administrative structures of 21st century religious movements. Things are never quite so straightforward. The 22nd century itself is not even dominated by great powers in the way we would understand the word. For while one might look at a map and see a collection of states which contest land and people, the real powers of the era are different. As stated previously, the major multinational institutions and broader global framework of the 21st century did not survive, but there were some hangers on of the complex globalized society of the past that were able to maintain control and entrench themselves as modern superpowers by the 22nd century. These would turn out to be the descendants of the major charities and development banks, who having their own land, property, and people scattered across the world weathered the collapse and only became more powerful as the new order established itself. THE SUPERPOWERS AND KNIGHTS There are currently 12 (technically 13) superpowers or "orders" which dominate the world. They are the Society of Saint Joseph, Red Cross and Crescent, UNICEF, United Way, the Sravasti Viharas, Hare Khrishna, World Food Bank, Salvation Army, Nahdlatul Ulama, Tzu Chi Foundation, and both the African and Islamic Development Banks. The 13th will not be mentioned until later. With the exception of Saint Joseph which is based out of the Vatican (and formally a subordinate organ of the Catholic Church), none of the superpowers have any "home turf" as it were, instead contesting large swaths of non-contiguous land across the planet. There is not a single part of the world that does not see the presence of at least one of these powers. The origin of many of these powers is rather clear, though others are more particular. The Sravasti Viharas for instance are the descendants of a Western Tibetan Buddhist abbey turned Humanistic foundation which attained global prominence due to its interlinking with the similarly minded Fo Guang Shan of the Taiwanese diaspora in the middle 21st century. Others are the amalgamation of many groups over time, such as the Society of Saint Joseph which was formed as a result of a papal decree merging the church's major foundations together under a new organization. The development banks are the "odd man out" in this regard, though their rise and persistence is for similar reasons, due to the massive amount of sway and resources that fell under such institutions' control as the global south themselves attempted and failed to beat back the collapse. These development banks would find themselves being transformed from multilateral institutions to the caretakers of their former patrons, and so emerged from the collapse in a position of prominence. What one most often thinks of when the global superpowers come to mind however is not the land they contest nor their immense amount of wealth and vassals, but their knightly orders. Professional standing armies were one of the institutions that did not survive the 21st century in most parts of the world and are now the exception rather than the rule. While many states now have the potential to field standing armies again most do not due to institutional pressures against doing so that have become entrenched. Frankly speaking, most states view anything beyond a militia or at most a gendarmerie, to be a waste of time and resources. The superpowers are the notable exception to this, having the resources, funding, manpower, and reason to field large numbers of men at their command. The nature of warfare has changed however, and so have the kinds of men who fight. A big reason for this is technological developments in the past century and a half. In this world of bionics and organic technology one of the great shifts that would occur would be the (with caveats) victory of personal defense and armor over firearms. A great innovation of the modern era, organically grown heat regulating kinetic hardening foam has allowed for the creation of coats and breeches and other wearables that can deflect rounds with ease. Prohibitively expensive to be sure, but not impossible for the superpowers who have of course also locked down the process for creating them. Production costs limit the number of people that can be outfitted even by the wealthiest and most powerful bodies on Earth however. As such the superpowers rely on and use them to outfit small-ish professional corps of loyal soldiers, sworn to them for more or less life, to fight on their behalf. These form the basis of the modern knightly orders. Your average knight for the global superpowers then is exactly that, a man wearing effectively bulletproof quilted armor, often in layers starting with long undershirts and ending generally in either a large greatcoat or medium length jacket with roomy elbow length sleeves. Attached to the front (or sometimes the back) of their person is a bio-mechanical "third arm" folded against their body with an integrated weapon meant flip out and blow off exposed body parts should they be revealed during close combat. Close combat is in fact the name of the game, for although it is true that organic armor is effective against firearms, that simply inspired men to find new ways around them. The monomolecular sword would be this workaround, solving the issue of organic foam armor by simply slicing through it. A quirk of such weapons however is that due to the van der walls force a clean swipe will immediately seal right up, so sword combat between knights is based around hacking and slashing their enemy apart, and if possible blowing them apart with one's prosthetic third arm should an opening arise. Large numbers of ordinary troops provide support and often operate drones and anti-drone weapons on the battlefield. As one can guess this means that knights require a lot of training, which makes them all the more of an investment that superpowers are desperate to hang onto. In many ways the knightly orders are an attempt to accommodate this, to give their fighting men not merely money but prestige and a kind of life and status that separates them from the hoi polloi. Knights are given great freedom in how they live their lives, access to land, and special exceptions to sumptuary laws. Knights are in many ways encouraged to take pride not merely in their work but in the symbols of it. This often takes the form of employing designers to create elaborate and specialized patterns and motifs on the outer layers of their armor and sometimes the insides of the coats and jackets too. There is no need to hide oneself after all, one might as well show off. Even calling them knights is intentional in this respect. Knights operate in fireteams or "lances" (equivalent to a squad of 8 or 10 men) headed by an operator. An "operator" is both a lance-leader and an intermediary, denoted by their special implants. Operators have two implants, one in their skull and one in their jaw, the former which turns thoughts into transmittable information, and the latter which picks up transmissions and uses bone conduction to allow it to be heard as if it were a human voice. Operators are paired to "handlers" who have matching implants. Handlers are stationed outside of the battlefield, often with other handers at one of their superpower's local command stations, where through the use of drones, aerostats, and access to local infrastructure they have full view of the battlefield. Handlers and operators coordinate in battle and often develop a peculiar rapport with each other due to having access to each other's thoughts on and off the battlefield. Despite the attempts by the superpowers to keep a lock on their knights it is not unheard of for some to go rogue, or in the case where a superpower loses a region to another for knights of the losing side to use the opportunity to move into freelancing for local states. There are some benefits to going from being one knight among many to being the only one or two of your kind that a county or even small nation leans on. THE AMERICAN ECUMENES Despite the previous statement that "theocracy" does not mean theocracy, the first states to be covered will be the American theodemocracies. Ultimately none of the contenders of the American War survived into the modern era, with the notable exception of a redoubt of the old Sacramento Government clinging on in Cascadia. Instead, it would be social clubs and faith communities that would persist as the national and later regional governments crumbled, forming the basis of a new post-American society. The "Ecumenical Societies" are a result of this, nations which privilege the church, mosque, temple and so on as the fundamental unit of civil society and government. Likewise, the national mythos of these states draw both from the collapse era experience and the religious traditions of their peoples, with most states being named after places in scripture, which can be a somewhat confusing prospect when someone says "the Land of Galilee" and they mean the region around Lake Winnipeg. Together the Ecumenical Conference of North America stretches across much of former North America, excluding the great desert of course. Among the conference though there are eight Ecumenes which are the most prominent, and which are most likely to be referenced when one talks about North America. First there is the Land of Gilead, based out of the former Northeast Atlantic. Gilead is perhaps the closest to an old fashioned party-state and indeed its constitution even references the communists and Lenin in particular (alongside the old fascist jurist Schmitt) as their ideological forebears. To Gilead all governments instituted by men are dictatorships in the name of a particular interest, with old world democracies themselves being bourgeois dictatorships. Similarly, civil society is a sorting system by which dictatorship is established, friends and enemies are designated, and the basis upon which the dictatorship distributes rewards and punishments is rationalized. Gilead is unique in that while being dominated by Catholics (with a significant folk element by way of its absorption of former Baptists and Methodists from the Appalachia area), it accedes to the old Communist maxim that a Communist party, in representing the interests of the proletariat and peasantry, is by its nature democratic because it makes as its main interest the majority of the population. This is one of the reasons why the ruling party, the Party for Solidarity and Virtue, modeled itself off of them. Where it diverges however is that to the people of Gilead the main question of governance is not who is ruled but who is sovereign. To the Gilead Party by instead attributing their primary interest to the ultimate sovereign: God, as opposed to the ultimate subject: Humanity, their regime has fixed the errs of previous capitalist and communist empires. The mentality of the people of Gilead can be summed up with the line "the previous exercise of government concerned itself with the question of what man says man is and of what interest is man to himself. We concern ourselves however with what God says man is and of what interest man is to God." In terms of governance Gilead has been very successful, maintaining one of the more prosperous realms on the continent. This is helped by their monopoly on hydropower, not just the Niagara Falls Dam, but their recently successful megaproject of damming the James Bay as well. South of Gilead is the Land of Bethel. A unique specimen among Post-American states, the people of Bethel trace their roots in large part to the work of the Collapse Era "Community Welfare Alliance" or "CWAA" and smaller episcopal and progressive church cliques in the region. Heavily leaned on for the restoration of order and civil society during the Boston Government's short time holding the Atlantic Coast, the "chapter houses" that they established would seize control of the state apparatus during the pretender state's eventual retreat from the area. Modern day Bethel is a great example of what is meant when 22nd century states are called "conservative", that is to say they focus heavily on the maintenance of social order and continuity of norms across generations. Communities in the 22nd century from the local to national level engage in high levels of social policing, which says nothing to what the norms of said society are. Bethel on this front is known particularly for its only national level organ the "Bureau for the Prevention of Vice", under which their national gendarmerie, descended from the old CWAA, is organized. Bethel is also an example of what are sometimes referred to as "post-queer" societies, which is to say societies which had normalized certain social relations for sexual and gender minorities prior to the Collapse Era or which otherwise had influential cliques representing their interests which were maintained into the 22nd century. Post-Queer societies are quite common, more a reflection of the collapse of a social movement globally (due to the collapse of the world in general) not necessitating a reversal of social changes in specific regions, but instead attempts to reorient them within the new baseline of a much "smaller" and more parochial world, mostly through the mimicry of or full integration into the new regimes of social policing performed by the rest of society. Bethel for instance is well known for its program of free at point of use hormonal therapy for gender minorities and streamlined system to accommodate Self Identification, alongside having the death penalty for distribution of pornography of any kind. These two positions are considered to naturally exist hand-in-hand in Bethel society, and locals would be confused were one to attempt to argue with them that these are not positions one needs to hold to maintain social harmony and personal flourishing. Further south is the Land of Goshen. A descendant of the once great Internationalist Commune of Dixie, the people of Goshen still use a modified version of their ancestors' flag. The system of municipal communes and horse-trading which dominated Dixie politics and their erstwhile congress would eventually form the basis of the current system of elector councils. Goshen in large part is dominated by the "Southron Church", formally an ecumenical board jointly held by the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African National Baptist Convention, which rose in prominence with the spinning apart of the once dominant Southern Baptist Convention. Goshen is made up of elector districts, which are headed by either secular or religious councils depending on if the local voting authority is centered around the town hall or church board. The elector districts select members for the congress which is the supreme authority of the land. Elector councils often band together into larger administrative federations where they coordinate and draft fiscal policy and direct the operation of infrastructure manned by cooperatives or other socially owned enterprises that contain members from their respective districts. In some cases this manifests as unofficial "party" blocs, often along the lines of the old school commune era divisions of agrarians, romantics, and communists though as a formally non-partisan state they are not called such. Secular and religious electors are generally equal in number, but due to the near unanimous allegiance of religious electors to the Southron Church (and the semi-formalized process of the church sending notices of whom they want their electors to send to congress) the nation is in dominated by the church. Goshen, however, is also noteworthy for its parallel systems of law enforcement, with both a national militia (descended from the Southern People's Liberation Army) and a "knightly board". Goshen prefers to leverage the services of independent knights and reiters, formerly sworn to the superpowers, for mediating disputes between councils and counties. This is a very attractive offer, especially for older knights who wish to enter a kind of "retirement". Goshen's independent knights often hail from UNICEF or the United Way due to the region being further away from their zones of control and firmly held under the Red Cross. Speaking of crosses, Goshen is famous for its yearly Victory Day celebrations which commemorate the triumph of the old Dixie armies over the Black Cross in the American War. Celebrations typically consist of work battalions, dressed up in Collapse Era uniforms, dragging replica Black Cross flags through the mud, culminating in their public burning. Victory Day is also noteworthy for the flying of flags of those nations and foreign militias that aided Dixie in the conflict. As those states no longer exist today, a Goshen town or city on Victory Day is one of the last places on Earth one might see many 21st century flags still flown. Back north one of the descendants of Old Exurbia, now known as the Land of Canaan, can be found. Still based around its old quasi-capital of Tecumseh (former Columbus). The history of Canaan is just as off kilter and curious as its predecessor. The Exurbians had always been a peculiar deviation away from the communalists they were inspired by, attempting a far more "pure" framework trending towards generalized anarchy alongside a kind of American cultural revolution. A people carried aloft as much by an affinity for witchcraft and new age syncretism as they were by their grungecore "i'm playing a riotgrrrl track in a blasted out shopping mall" war of extermination against fascism. As such it is only fitting that it met an equally punk end. Which is to say that one day the men came home from the frontier, turned their guns on everyone and declared they would be doing full anarchism now. All in all it's been pretty successful actually. Canaan has maintained, for roughly 80 years now, more or less a vacuity of any form of government outside of the People's Guard. Beyond that, among the other Ecumenes it is also noted for its relative lack of any hard religious structures. The "Hexurbian" witches of the olden days gave way to a kind of neo-neo-pentecostal campbellism, where much like everything else the existence of discrete denominations was dismantled by force. A form of highly charismatic primitive Christianity dominates in this area, influencing the social norms and sensibilities of the people, even those unaffiliated among them. In terms of foreign relations everything is carried out by the People's Guard which maintains a rotating roster of diplomatic posts for its officers. Despite not being able to predict who you're talking to when conducting relations with the Canaanites the neighboring states have maintained long lasing positive relations with the anti-state, in part a continuation of the unofficial detente that existed between Exurbia and the pretender governments from back in the Hayes era. Speaking of Hayes and the Chicago Government, while that particular pretender no longer exists, Chicago itself is a major power in the new North America. Influenced by the region's overlapping periods of control under the Chicago Government, the Quasi-Islamic National Rejuvenation Government, and the Sabaothic Host of the Prophetess Daniela and her followers, what emerged from the wake of the collapse era was the Land of Shiloh. An experiment in confessionalism, Shiloh's government reflects the diversity of its population. A form of power-sharing is the name of the game, with the Shiloh constitution having built in administrative carveouts for Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Muslims, Unitarians, Sabaothists, and the Baha'is. Although Shiloh is a state dominated by the public interchange of and horse-trading between different religious communities, above all of them exists a sort of public quasi-cult dedicated to the image and mission of the former United States. This is in large part due to the significant influence that various pretender governments, from Chicago, to the PNRG, to the South Dakota state government of the old 130th Division, played in laying the groundwork for its founding. President Hayes in particular is considered a folk hero of immense renown, for both preventing the fall of the region to fascism and stopping a potential nuclear exchange in the 2040s that would have devastated the continent. A somewhat amusing cultural divergence in this region, though often unremarked upon, was the effect that the ration-passport system of the Chicago Government played in shaping demographics. The Hayes era system (and its carry-ons during the later collapse) unintentionally encouraged diverse cohabitation of houses and compounds and what were known as "breadline marriages" in order to maximize access to goods and dispenser regions through the ration system. In effect everyone sharing a house or living on a street became a "family". Across the Midwest it becomes difficult to trace ancestry back beyond the 2030s. A person's last name thus might be Mattox because their "ancestors" all lived in the same building on Mattox street a century and a half ago. A similar expression of this phenomena can also be found in the region once known as Colorado, though to a more muted degree. Among the former states of the Texan led provisional government now stands the Land of Samaria. Samaria is descended from the "ProvGov" as it was called, more specifically from a special agreement between the Texan and Mexican security and intelligence services that during the later collapse period formed the basis of a multinational program to respond to the regional collapse, desertification and devastation of the gulf coast, and ensuing refugee waves, a program that would survive both nations. The formal dissolution of the remaining American pretender government in Austin would come shortly after its last motion, to begin the movement of millions of people from Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mexico to the region now known as Samaria. After everything America might die but her people would survive if the Texans had anything to say about it. The Promised Land of the Texan and Louisianan pinewoods and oak cut prairies would prove to be the perfect place to begin again, and in time even the abandoned cities of Dallas and Fort Worth would be repopulated and reforged to serve as the current capitol of Samaria. Surprisingly retaining many of the institutions of the collapse era, Samaria is a federal republic with a presidency and a unicameral congress, though operating under a church-county system similar to neighboring Goshen. The success of the resettlement program gave the people of Samaria a sense of good government and the belief that a state properly staffed by the competent (and most importantly the virtuous) will always prevail. This means that the Samaritan government tends to be staffed by competent and well oriented people promoted not due to personal ambition or typical mechanistic meritocratic means, but by being forced into ever higher positions of responsibility by the ever watchful community, often beginning with the chittering of elderly women at the front rows of one's church or the murmuring of men at the local social club. As they like to say, no good Samaritan goes unpunished. This has also led to the phenomenon in Samaria known as "Republican Nobility", a kind of informal class position among the administrative upper crust of the state (and their immediate family) who due to the popular belief that their position was a result of their moral character are simply treated far better by all of society and are often encouraged to flaunt their status. A man who is rich because he owns property is considered an accident of history in Samarian culture and has no right to boast, whereas one who has served the people faithfully is believed to deserve to be rich and often made so. Far up north around Lake Winnipeg is the Land of Galilee. Along with its sisterland of Sidon to the west, Galilee is of importance less for any particular difference in its government, but due to its ruling myth and recent history. Like most of the ecumenical states in former Canada its origins can be traced back to the fall of the NATO regime in the country, and in the case of Galilee the beginning of it as well. Galilee stands at the crossroads of many mystical events in the recent history of the continent, having been the site of the Prophetess Daniela's invasion of Canada which sparked the occupation in the first place. Galilee, like most Canadian states is known for a sizeable though not majority Sabaothic population, the religion having experienced a boost in the region after the fall of the faith's own personal Babylon. What Galilee is more often known for however is the story of Terrance and the Miraculous Blade. In the latter half of the 21st century as the NATO regime and its local RCMP proxies increased in the intensity of their barbarism against the Canadian people, crackdowns would begin on all public gatherings in an attempt to break up hostile cells. Terrance Gauthier (otherwise known as St. Terrance) was a lay preacher, one of the many kinds of "wildflower" spokesmen that emerged at the time as an act of defiance following NATO's retreat from Alberta. The wildflowers were a broad classification of dissident, including everything from religious preachers, to communists, to people who supported the return of democracy, to simply anyone the military government didn't like. It is unknown if Terrance was originally a religious wildflower, but he eventually became one, leading to the local RCMP detachment to believe he was involved in or otherwise knew about the location of several dissident cells. He was not and did not. Repeated failures to make any headway by surveilling Terrance caused his observers to become frustrated and spiteful, changing plans first to assaulting Terrance to get information out of him to eventually simply looking for an excuse to kill him outright. Everything from having his house seized to his church closed down and fellow parishioners arrested did not bring Terrance to violence. Finally, an attempt to encourage him to assault an officer by pulling him into the middle of the road and beating him backfired and resulted in him running away, leading to the Mounties chasing after him and shooting him in the leg. As Terrance began to bleed out in the middle of a clearing the Mounties surrounded him with their weapons raised. Terrance raised his hand into the air, which one interpreted as him having finally broken and offering to give him whatever information they believed he might have. Instead, Terrance told them that he would show them a miracle. Looking up to the sky he said: "Lord, not that I might gain, or bargain for my life with your power, but that they who persecute me might be saved. That if you will that they might know you by my faith. For you are the author of life, and if it be your will then this air though it remain in sight and touch air will be in truth a blade that should I grab it would cut my hand." Terrance would grasp the air above his head. His palm would be sliced open and start to bleed. The Mounties would panic and shoot him seven times. The final collapse of Canada would mean Terrance would have the last laugh, and indeed the story goes that at least a couple of those who witnessed the event would later switch sides, with their testimonies being why the story was popularized in the first place. So, he arguably obtained all his goals. He's considered the national hero of modern-day Galilee and the saint-of-the-nation by the region's Catholic and Lutheran believers. Finally there is the Land of Sidon. A recent arrival in the history of Post-American states, it is of great renown due to its ongoing rivalry with neighboring Cascadia. Formally "The United States of America", Cascadia is what remains of the once great Sacramento Government and its ruling body COMPOR. Based around the former military regime in PNW and the Seattle Green Zone, the remnant state has succeeded in solidifying its rule, due to celebrate the 400th year anniversary of the USA soon! A unitary government despite the name, Cascadia can be best described as a "cop-ocracy" in service to the cartels and corporations which dominated the old government, now reforged into what are effectively a kind of ancien nobility, an anachronism wrapped in another anachronism. Sidon is dedicated to the destruction of what remains of the USA, or what it perceives to be a mockery of the world that was lost during the collapse. The cold war between Sidon and Cascadia is playing out primarily in the city of Vancouver, which remains for now outside the reach of either power. A cat and mouse game is afoot between both sides, constantly attempting to outmaneuver and undo the other's inroads into the free city, which all sides know will fall to one side eventually. Among the ecumenes of North America a phenomenon has emerged in recent years, that of the "New Believers", those individuals who come from secular or explicitly atheist families going back 3 or more generations that have at least outwardly converted to a local religion following the rise of the new system. To be clear there were seismic shifts and trends in religiosity in America during the collapse era, though a sizeable chunk of the population remained otherwise stable in previously held secularity as is to be expected, operating as normal under the new system as it gelled. However, trends have been noticed in recent years, especially by those who collect the stats, of segments of the population that did not shift over the past century, but which have now experienced seemingly spontaneous changes in outward religiosity after the new order became entrenched, often corresponding to areas or among those institutions where doing so would be more beneficial. The rise of New Believers is more pronounced in Shiloh for instance with its confessional appointment system, than in Goshen where there is a whole parallel secular state. In recent years these New Believers have experienced a degree of mistrust and wariness accorded to them by some segments of the population, though this has yet to escalate beyond the level of a kind of cultural background radiation. As a result it is not unheard of for New Believers to find themselves needing to express an even more intense religiosity and loyalty to compensate or otherwise "prove" themselves to their detractors. Outside of the ecumenes and Cascadia there is not much to note about the rest of the continent with two exceptions. The first is the Heartland Commonwealth, a state stretching from former Utah to Kansas which considers itself the legal and spiritual successor to the Chicago Government, though having dropped the pretenses of being the sole American state. Known for their massive solar powered fixed wing transport planes that lazily circuit the whole perimeter of their nation and the pilotless caravans that move across the plains, the Heartlanders are in an almost romantic recreation of an American ideal interested in little more than friendly neighbors and profitable trade. There is also the San Fran Commune, an quasi-outpost of the Seventh International on American shores. They, however, will have to be touched on later. THE SINITIC META-CIVILIZATION As it turns out the fall of the People's Republic during the collapse was not enough to get communism out of the blood of the Chinese people. As any visitor to the far east will tell you, that particular quirk is here to stay. Today every Chinese state is officially some form of communist or socialist, and all claim to be the (or at least a) successor to the People's Republic. There is, amusingly, a legal continuity of government regime of the old PRC still operating in Taiwan, and the ruling party of the island is on paper at least well within its rights to claim that it is the CPC, but to be frank nobody really cares. The 30 states of the Chinese people represent their own kind of world, all viewing each other as reflections of the same shared legacy of "Chinese Civilizational Socialism", though descended from different institutions, organs, and movements of the old empire that once dominated the land. The Third People's Republic, based out of its capital of Xiong'an, is a unitary state that emerged out of a collapse era stewardship program established by China's major state enterprises. Headed by the Continuing Committee, a descendant of the CPC Central Committee now staffed primarily by technical specialists and a consultative simulated intelligence that runs the economy, the TPR is often described as a kind of "People's Technocracy". Despite its heavily centralized state apparatus and potential to leverage immense amounts of power domestically, the TPR prefers to leave its people alone, operating under the belief that the continuing committee should only exist as a caretaker administration for a society that no longer needs to be ruled. To this end it has sought to make its regime at once flexible and ever present while also unobtrusive and has just recently abolished all taxation within its borders. The TPR is also known for its romanticism of early collapse era China, which it sees as the height of Chinese civilization both in terms of reach and cultural attainment. The TPR maintains a great deal of influence to its north, in the lands of former Mongolia and Siberian Russia, where Chinese settler states dominate. South of the TPR is the realm known as the Prefectural Confederation. Best described as an anarcho-syndicalist state, the Confederation is composed of a number of arcology communes and organizing committees composed of trade union representatives. This arrangement was the result of two main factors, first was the resettlement of large chunks of the coastal population to new inland linear arcologies as the sea level rose, and the second was what were known as the "two card reforms". An attempt in the 21st century to transition away from reliance on enterprise unions, the ACFTU embarked on a program of expanding trade union participation by forming local sector unions to exist alongside enterprise-wide unions. These were known as the "two card reforms" due to the long period when many Chinese workers would be a part of two separate unions in the same work place and thus had two union cards. The success of the reforms was mixed, but it took hold deep in Jiangsu and Shandong where climate change would actually accelerate the transition in workplace structures as people had to physically move and restart their lives in the new linear arcologies. With the fall of the PRC the local workplace committees would strike, coopting the administrative structure given to them and organizing the network of arcologies along the lines of a dual communal congress and trade union senate structure. Today the Prefectural Confederation is seen as a kind of intermediate zone, largely uninvolved in the affairs of its neighbors and thought of as a region separating the north from the Malkutic states to the south. Before we go further south we will return to the north (and then the west briefly) to speak about the Liaoyang Ecological Secretariat. Descended from the United Front Work Group Coordinating Committee for An Ecological Socialist Civilization (try saying that five times fast), the LES was originally a regional sub-board representing Liaoning, Jilin, and North Korea. While both the PRC and DPRK would fall (though the latter not before unifying the peninsula) the board would not, maintaining a stranglehold on the region. The modern-day secretariat, which still calls itself a mere secretariat due to officially waiting for the legitimate PRC government to reassert itself, is most known for its ambitious program of ecological rehabilitation and radical self-reliance. While sometimes amusingly called an "Eco-Juche" state few can argue against its effectiveness, with its stunning resuscitation of the continent's bee population earning it the other nickname "The Apiary". The Secretariat is also known for its ongoing program of settling Outer Manchuria and the Amur Basin and subverting local governments to bring them more in line with its long-term program of creating a "Northeast People's Bioregion". It may be worth checking back in at the turn of the 23rd century to see how that plays out. In the meantime, the Secretariat currently inspires a lot of thrillers based around its clandestine operations. To the west is the aptly named Agency for the Western Domain. An intersection of two developments in late pre-collapse Chinese history, the expanding control over and resettlement of minority populations from the peripheral zones of the southwest (Zomia) and the security regimes established in the western territories of the old empire. During the collapse era local minorities began to take on greater roles in the administration of the local military apparatus due to the explosion in military enlistment as an avenue of social mobility. The resettled peoples of Yunnan such as the Lisu increasingly found themselves under the control of co-ethnic garrisons supported by the capital and party committees, as were the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Tu and so on. As the PRC waned the mission of these local ad-hoc regimes continued, ultimately coalescing under the army and police structures that they all shared. The Agency for the Western Domain then is a latter-day Protectorate General to Pacify the West as it were, though its size and complexity dwarfs that of even some old dynasties. History might not repeat but it does often rhyme. Of course the agency is self-governing, and over the generations has ironically become rather thoroughly Islamized. An exceptionally proud nation, it maintains the air that it is the bulwark of Chinese civilization, the shield that protects the heartland (that it in theory is still beholden to) from the vicissitudes of the outside world. It also makes money hand over first in trade, having seized control of almost all of the major overland transport infrastructure of old Eurasia, but that's neither here nor there. South China is most known for its system called the Malkutate. Its full name is the All-China Apostolic Malkutate. An evolution of the successful program to Sinicize Christianity, the Malkutate is at once an imperial church and a sort of memetic or cultural space. Derived from Malkuth or "Kingdom", the counter-oriented sefirot to Keter or "Crown", Malkuth comes from creation itself, governs it and gives it sensibility, and exists in, through, and among the material world and human person when it reflects and is oriented towards God. It is also the mediative sefirot that in its reflection connects all of God's emanations back to the top. In Christian Kabbalistic traditions it is manifested in the unity of mankind with God and Heaven as the Bride through the Church, and the Church as the community of all believers living, dead, and eternally alive (the saints). The implications of such a concept were seized on by the post-PRC communist church, to rhetorically justify and create a framework for a kind of "bottom-up" society, one beginning at the communal level, at the workshop, and the work battalion, directing itself towards the end of the salvation of the Chinese people. The Malkutitic system is also known for its re-nestling of Chinese cosmology in this new era. For instance, the age-old idea in Chinese spirituality that Heaven or God is that which, grounding being itself, possesses a will that attempts to unify a humanity that is not naturally or intentionally separate from it but only contingently so towards itself as having been wholly expressed in history with the reconciliation of God with man in the person of Jesus. Likewise that immortality, the ultimate aim and telos of fusus, the subject, or the universal logic and that which it ultimately trends towards, is fully realized by and in Christ as the Resurrection. Malkutism essentially creates for itself a space to realize the re-establishment of a neo classical Chinese cosmology sublimated into an Abrahamic typological framework and thus a re-enchantment of Chinese civilization, with a Communistic society and a Christian cosmology as their final form. A common motif found in Malkutic states reflects this in a snapshot image of the big dipper in the four phases or seasons around an image of the three heavens (three circles expanding outwards) while four stars (no longer representing distinct classes as they did on the old PRC flag but the totality of the Chinese people) trailing behind the tail. Similarities have been remarked upon between many Malkutate patterns and the patterns of the old Ming era magic square banners, though this is believed to be a kind of convergent re-development of a related aesthetic style rather than an intentional move. Malkutic states are, reflecting the broader culture, more or less universally Workers' republics: self-governing communal federations often with a ceremonial party on top. The federations give way beyond the state level to the Ecclesiastical Conference which itself acts as a consultative organ back to the communes and parish-cadres: a circular system. Among the Malkutates themselves though two are often mentioned the most. The Sichuan and Huanan Workers' Republics. Generally considered the "elder brothers" or sometimes "elder brother and sister" (which is which depends on who you ask) of South China, these two states are the ones that their cousins generally entrust the maintenance of foreign relations and the region's standing army (an exception among world powers as noted earlier) to. THE CARIBO-MEXICAN TECHNOCRACIES Those who have visited the great states of the Caribbean describe it as a place somewhat out of time, a vision of a future that never arrived. Dominated by the twin republics of Santo Domingo and Centroamerica, the Caribbean technocracies emerged out of the alliance formed between the rising Latin American security states and the ICS regime established to loot the former United States. Truly incalculable amounts of wealth flowed into the region, which was kept aloft out of the interest of the UN led order during the early years of the collapse. Wealth when properly managed begets more wealth, such is the clarion call of the capitalist, and indeed it did. Today the two republics are some of the richest parts of the globe, their technocratic and highly professional elite in service to a unified banking regime. A microcosm of the perfected global market as envisioned by the Rockefellers and Carnegies long ago. The Latins would claim to have at last perfected the free market, though such a statement would most definitely cause their neighbors to the south to bristle. To the west are the Mexicans, thwes