XII - How many people died because of Werner Schondorf
Rupert von Hentzau waits. The universes around him blinks and sparks out of the air.
WERNER
There are Ynglings in the World.
I do not see them, but have expected them now for years.
My warnings to the World were not listened to and now it is too late.
Far too late for Pity anyway.
RUPERT
I was a monster for forty years.
When I was young I watched the soldiers and I said to God "I want to rule the world."
God said "No! You will be kill by a pointless fever."
There was a time I believed in him.
Then as I got older I stopped.
I MUST KILL THE EMPEROR !
WERNER
No, Rupert, you are the Emperor
Then Rupert is a communist.
--Hentzau Reborn ! the laser neopera (Act I)
29 december 1936, a bunker near Plock
They prepared everything for the operation.
Scalpels, IV kits, bag valve mask, shockers, blood bags, wide-spectrum antibiotics, defibrillators,
Pistols, submachine guns, grenades, flamethrowers, rifles, knives,
Tesla coils, vacuum energy condensers, polonium control rods and Alcubierre fractal engines.
At ten minutes to midnight, Werner Schondorf asked the operator for the engineer-in-chief on duty at Northeast Collective Electricity. A nervous man picked up immediately.
“Mr Schondorf?”
“Is there any last-minute problem?”
“No, Mr Schondorf.”
“This is my last call. Toggle it on midnight.”
He could hear the man’s terror and the question halted on his lips.
“Do you want to ask me anything, Comrade… uh… Comrade Berg?”
Only one year before he would have never failed to recall a name he knew immediately. Now was decidedly time.
“Are you sure?”
Well, at least he was not quite that daft yet.
“I spent a century planning for this moment, Herr… Comrade Berg. The better part of it knowingly. I am quite sure.”
He hanged off the phone and turned to the console, three steps away. At his age, with his leg, that was a perilous trip on foot. Yes, it was more than time; he did not have another year to spare. And it would work; it had to.
There were three guards in the room with Werner Schondorf and Wilhelm Koch, handpicked by Blomberg and vetted by Blomberg’s rivals on the Inner Circle, like anyone in the base. The sergeant was a colossal buzz-cut woman with an outdoor tan. Even she was frightened of him, but in a useful way, like a fierce dog who fears the master’s hand. She hesitantly offered a revolver.
“I think it would not hurt for you to have one, too.”
Werner closed bony fingers around the weapon, checked the bullets in the cylinder.
“Have you used one before?”
“Yes.” Seventy-nine years ago. “I shot my target just right. Not the same model, of course.”
“Don’… It’s better not to try for a precise aim with that thing. Spray and pray. Protecting you is the first priority.”
“No. The second one. What of the other teams? Everything ready?”
“Yes sir.”
“The technical and medical teams are entirely ready too”, Koch added.
“What of the world?”
“… Maybe?”
“I hope not.”
Werner smiled. Wilhelm Koch was the closest thing to a friend, but not to close. With a whimper he finally limped toward the console, put the gun on it and his finger over the button. The clock said eight till midnight.
He waited eight minutes in silent anguish.
***
Berg was waiting over the switch, fidgeting. When midnight came he was afraid of turning it on, but much too afraid not to.
And then half the country went dark.
***
Power shifted across the network. Enough watts to power half an industrial nation raced through rerouted cables, to one bunker near Plock and the absurd machines within it.
In the command room Werner had pushed the button; now he could see arcs cracking atop the machines, smell the ozone even from that far. What mattered, of course, no one could see. But from what the instrument showed it worked.
That’s chainsaw surgery, Werner thought. Punching a hole through the weakened boundaries of worlds and gulp everything nearby in our reality… Reckless. Particular physics around Plock would be weirded for millennia, and maybe the whole universe would keep a scar from the lost energy. But he did not have more time. He had to save the world now, before he was too dead to.
Werner really wished he had something to do beyond watching, some button to turn, but things had been calculated and re-calculated independently, hundreds of times. The settings were as fine as they could be, changing them now would only make things worse.
As expected the crackling of electricity decreased, although the smell of ozone lingered. Energy leaked through rips in spacetime. With luck not all of reality would follow. It could not take too long, now. Hentzau or bust.
IT WILL NOT WORK IT WILL NOT WORK MY CALCULATIONS WERE ALL WRONG IT WILL NOT WORK, he thought.
***
Inbetween spactimes, aboard the scouting timeship Merciless
“What’s that”, Thorvald Yngling barked. The big screen displayed the target universe, a crown of narrow probabilistic stumps above, and the chaff outside, and…
“What the hell is that?”
“A burst of nornitons, one worried tech answered. From within the target universe. And it looks man-made, from Earth-equivalent.”
“McRaghnalls?”
“Not that I can see. But I can barely see the universe for the burst.”
“Then what? They’re not supposed to have nuclear bombs yet?” Unless you fucked up, he silently added. The tech waved his head.
“It would be much, much smaller anyway. This… Is unprecedented. I don’t know what they’re doing, and I don’t think they do either. It looks like they are expelling energy from the universe and pumping the crap outside in. At .1% efficiency. They’re almost wrecking their own physics. Destroying their own world.”
That, at least would make a tiny sliver of sense. Had they spotted the Yngling Armada, somehow, and decided to scuttle their very universe to deny it to them? Some courage it required (of course, Ynglings themselves had done something very similar thousands of pseudo-years before). Maybe under MacRaghnall influence? The Scoondinavians were crafty and subtle; word through the fleet grapevine (of course the brass denied it, but of course they would) was they had secret new tech that allowed them to totally mask their signature. Whatever the case…
“Oh no,” the tech added. Then he just pointed at the screen. The target universe was growing, futureward, well above their estimated invasion point. Whatever they were doing, what they were doing was bad news.
“Well, that settles it.” In case of emergency the Intervention Kommando was supposed to get geared and ready for insertion, just in case. They had better be. Without further comment he stormed out of the Observation Deck and into the Jumping Deck. He barked orders as he started gearing.
“You got the source of the chroniton burst?”
“Yes sir” another tech answered.
“No jump shielding? We jump there. Ten Kommandos first under Olaf. Then ten under me two minutes later. Then a tech team as soon as the perimeter’s cleared. Kill everyone. We expect pre-nuclear tech, we have the drop on them, none of you better get killed.”
***
26 June 1128, Innsbruck Castle
Rupert von Hentzau, the first Duke of Tyrol, is dying. His flesh burns, his eyes hurts, his bowels cramp. Though his exact age is anyone’s guess, he’s old enough that he can feel this fever is the last one. Hunting, women, the feasts and the glory, he will never know them again. And what hurts more than the murk in his lungs, he dies without the crown he was about to grasp. It was to be this year, he is convinced, or maybe the next; at least the empire would have been within his grasp! Now Ludwig cannot be trusted to carry on his plans. And even if he could, what would it matter Rupert? The world ends with him.
For days he has felt death was coming, but he was still strong as a beast and death was cruel – or maybe only just. So he burnt, and sweat, and bled, and wept, but he has not died yet. But today, he will. Everything will stop, or anything that matters. No more pleasure! No more light! It seems that as soon as he ceases to think actively he will end and dissipate. So he forces himself to watch and compare the creaks in the ceiling beams, but it becomes so hard that he finally closes his eyes and shakes with a last, agonizing cough.
Then he dies.
“Is that hell?” He wonders.
Then he is alive again.
***
A naked, old man dead on the concrete floor. Werner turns the engines off, parts of which collapse and fume. No use for them anymore. Everyone rushes to his place while Koch helps Werner in his wheelchair and rolls him near the body on his gurney. Two doctors are resuscitating him already, a third one has set up an IV and injects him with antibiotics and adrenalin. Around them a hundred soldiers had formed a protective circle, arms at the ready. Captain Shelberg hectors them:
“They WILL probably outgun us. Maybe they will have protective devices of some sort. But remember they are human. They can bleed and they can die.”
That is pretty much all Werner had been able to conjecture. He saw one of them teleport somehow, so they had technology beyond even the foreseeable. He saw him bleed to death right before his eyes, so they could die. And they had hated the prospect of him saving the world enough to kill, so they were likely to intervene when he actually did it. Even if it was not, all it would mean would be two hundred soldiers standing awkwardly as things went without a hitch. Petty tame as awry plans went.
“And they will die. But killing them is subordinate to the two real objectives.”
“I have a pulse,” the third doctor said. "He’s alive."
“Well. Roll him out.”
They put a cover on the old man, started running the gurney toward the evacuation tunnel, ten soldiers out of nowhere started shooting killer beams.
Through the confused gunfight they rushed Schondorf and Hentzau away. Blomberg soldiers fell, but the weird men fell to. Werner glimpsed a sort of shield bursting in blue flames under burst after burst of automatic gunfire at short range. It would be fine.
“Mr Schondorf!”
Behind him Koch had frozen in panic, and just in front of his wheelchair stood an athletic, seven foot tall, calm, furious man. Now he had a good, if short, look at the otherworldly uniform, the pallid halo, the greyed blond hair and fearsome war face of an Yngling officer. The man raised his incomprehensible weapon…
“Protect the Hentzau!” Werner shouted desperately, as he raised his own gun and shot. Spraying and praying.
It was not even the first officer he shot at. Not even the first stronger, faster, better man.
One of his bullets missed the stranger by a whole foot. The other dissolved harmlessly in mid-air, inches from him.
***
30 december 1936, Augsburg Revolution Headquarters
Worker-Councilman Gustav Schraderbrau stifled a yawn and sat at the steel table, accepting the steaming cup of ersatz-coffee from an aide.
All others in the Worker’s Council looked tired and anxious, all except the one who had brought them all here, in the middle of the night. Salim and Krebs had been drinking, he could smell. Old Comrade Bierski looked like he might fall back asleep at any moment.
“Thank you all for coming,” General Blomberg said. His gaze was calm, intense, and confident. “There is a problem that cannot wait for tomorrow morning. A threat to the Bavarian Worker’s Republic.”
“Is it about the power outage in the East?” Comrade Lorentz asked warily. Gustav did not know of any outage, yet.
“It is related.” The general nodded. “There is a… conspiracy again the Council. A reactionary cabal, the extent of which has been gravely underestimated over the last few years. There is, in fact, a traitor on this very Council, at this very table.”
Everyone looked at everyone. Gustav leaned forward.
“Who is this, Comrade Blomberg? Who is this traitor?”
The General flashed a beastly smile.
“Me.”
Then the soldiers burst in, and he only had time to feel the gun barrel behind his head. Nothing more.
***
Thorvald Yngling had his finger on the trigger when a hissing sound made him turn. The closest of the subhumans’ rickety machines was rapidly bursting in flames and acrid smoke. The sixth bullet, he analyzed. The one that missed him and his shield. Thorvald was no tech, of course, but it did look familiar. Was that a primitive, poorly-designed, completely unsecure…
Vacuum energy condenser?!!?!!!
His shield took the brunt of the initial blast, although it shook him badly. But when reality started melting he was too horribly close, and suddenly his flesh was boiling and shredding away, and he pushed the jumpback switch barely in time to survive.
About half of him materialized aboard the Merciless.
“Send kommandos pastward, at every available window!” He tried to shout and instead rasped in a tortured voice. One aghast lieutenant stared at him, slack-jawed. “The target is an equivalent-German named Schondorf. And he has something to do with the Hentzaus.”
***
30 december 1936, somewhere on the Spanish front
“What is it?” General Kellerman asked her fidgeting aid. Spanish artillery was pummeling their positions in the dark. Three kilometers, she estimated.
“I am sorry to wake you, Comrade General. It… Came from Augsburg. From General Blomberg. Maximal security encryption.”
She read the message with mounting anxiety, then re-read it.
THIS NIGHT 00:30 FOILED PUTSCH BY BOURGEOIS DEVIATIONISTS INFILTRATED IN THE CENTRAL WORKERS COUNCIL. ALL WORKERS COUNCILS DISSOLVED. FIRST COMRADE RUPERT VON HENTZAU ASSUMES EMERGENCY ABSOLUTE POWERS.
GAL BLOMBERG
“There was no more Hentzaus,” she said.
“That’s what I thought too.” Harz said. “What is to be done?”
The pummeling got closer. 2.5 kilometers.
“Surprise offensive this morning. According to plan Mega. We need to secure our position.”
And then, she thought, I need to get to Augsburg.
***
He was alive.
“Who… What?” Is this hell. The very room was moving.
“You are aboard an ambulance. It is a sort of chariot.” One very old man at his bedside answered, with an accent he had never heard. “You are going to have a lot of questions and a lot of surprises over the next few hours. What I ask is that you listen to me carefully. I will explain everything.”
Gameplay stuff and stuff like that :
Became more and more communist, kept building factories, beat up Spain a little. And Victoria ended.
Moar rares please
Rupert von Hentzau waits. The universes around him blinks and sparks out of the air.
WERNER
There are Ynglings in the World.
I do not see them, but have expected them now for years.
My warnings to the World were not listened to and now it is too late.
Far too late for Pity anyway.
RUPERT
I was a monster for forty years.
When I was young I watched the soldiers and I said to God "I want to rule the world."
God said "No! You will be kill by a pointless fever."
There was a time I believed in him.
Then as I got older I stopped.
I MUST KILL THE EMPEROR !
WERNER
No, Rupert, you are the Emperor
Then Rupert is a communist.
--Hentzau Reborn ! the laser neopera (Act I)
29 december 1936, a bunker near Plock
They prepared everything for the operation.
Scalpels, IV kits, bag valve mask, shockers, blood bags, wide-spectrum antibiotics, defibrillators,
Pistols, submachine guns, grenades, flamethrowers, rifles, knives,
Tesla coils, vacuum energy condensers, polonium control rods and Alcubierre fractal engines.
At ten minutes to midnight, Werner Schondorf asked the operator for the engineer-in-chief on duty at Northeast Collective Electricity. A nervous man picked up immediately.
“Mr Schondorf?”
“Is there any last-minute problem?”
“No, Mr Schondorf.”
“This is my last call. Toggle it on midnight.”
He could hear the man’s terror and the question halted on his lips.
“Do you want to ask me anything, Comrade… uh… Comrade Berg?”
Only one year before he would have never failed to recall a name he knew immediately. Now was decidedly time.
“Are you sure?”
Well, at least he was not quite that daft yet.
“I spent a century planning for this moment, Herr… Comrade Berg. The better part of it knowingly. I am quite sure.”
He hanged off the phone and turned to the console, three steps away. At his age, with his leg, that was a perilous trip on foot. Yes, it was more than time; he did not have another year to spare. And it would work; it had to.
There were three guards in the room with Werner Schondorf and Wilhelm Koch, handpicked by Blomberg and vetted by Blomberg’s rivals on the Inner Circle, like anyone in the base. The sergeant was a colossal buzz-cut woman with an outdoor tan. Even she was frightened of him, but in a useful way, like a fierce dog who fears the master’s hand. She hesitantly offered a revolver.
“I think it would not hurt for you to have one, too.”
Werner closed bony fingers around the weapon, checked the bullets in the cylinder.
“Have you used one before?”
“Yes.” Seventy-nine years ago. “I shot my target just right. Not the same model, of course.”
“Don’… It’s better not to try for a precise aim with that thing. Spray and pray. Protecting you is the first priority.”
“No. The second one. What of the other teams? Everything ready?”
“Yes sir.”
“The technical and medical teams are entirely ready too”, Koch added.
“What of the world?”
“… Maybe?”
“I hope not.”
Werner smiled. Wilhelm Koch was the closest thing to a friend, but not to close. With a whimper he finally limped toward the console, put the gun on it and his finger over the button. The clock said eight till midnight.
He waited eight minutes in silent anguish.
***
Berg was waiting over the switch, fidgeting. When midnight came he was afraid of turning it on, but much too afraid not to.
And then half the country went dark.
***
Power shifted across the network. Enough watts to power half an industrial nation raced through rerouted cables, to one bunker near Plock and the absurd machines within it.
In the command room Werner had pushed the button; now he could see arcs cracking atop the machines, smell the ozone even from that far. What mattered, of course, no one could see. But from what the instrument showed it worked.
That’s chainsaw surgery, Werner thought. Punching a hole through the weakened boundaries of worlds and gulp everything nearby in our reality… Reckless. Particular physics around Plock would be weirded for millennia, and maybe the whole universe would keep a scar from the lost energy. But he did not have more time. He had to save the world now, before he was too dead to.
Werner really wished he had something to do beyond watching, some button to turn, but things had been calculated and re-calculated independently, hundreds of times. The settings were as fine as they could be, changing them now would only make things worse.
As expected the crackling of electricity decreased, although the smell of ozone lingered. Energy leaked through rips in spacetime. With luck not all of reality would follow. It could not take too long, now. Hentzau or bust.
IT WILL NOT WORK IT WILL NOT WORK MY CALCULATIONS WERE ALL WRONG IT WILL NOT WORK, he thought.
***
Inbetween spactimes, aboard the scouting timeship Merciless
“What’s that”, Thorvald Yngling barked. The big screen displayed the target universe, a crown of narrow probabilistic stumps above, and the chaff outside, and…
“What the hell is that?”
“A burst of nornitons, one worried tech answered. From within the target universe. And it looks man-made, from Earth-equivalent.”
“McRaghnalls?”
“Not that I can see. But I can barely see the universe for the burst.”
“Then what? They’re not supposed to have nuclear bombs yet?” Unless you fucked up, he silently added. The tech waved his head.
“It would be much, much smaller anyway. This… Is unprecedented. I don’t know what they’re doing, and I don’t think they do either. It looks like they are expelling energy from the universe and pumping the crap outside in. At .1% efficiency. They’re almost wrecking their own physics. Destroying their own world.”
That, at least would make a tiny sliver of sense. Had they spotted the Yngling Armada, somehow, and decided to scuttle their very universe to deny it to them? Some courage it required (of course, Ynglings themselves had done something very similar thousands of pseudo-years before). Maybe under MacRaghnall influence? The Scoondinavians were crafty and subtle; word through the fleet grapevine (of course the brass denied it, but of course they would) was they had secret new tech that allowed them to totally mask their signature. Whatever the case…
“Oh no,” the tech added. Then he just pointed at the screen. The target universe was growing, futureward, well above their estimated invasion point. Whatever they were doing, what they were doing was bad news.
“Well, that settles it.” In case of emergency the Intervention Kommando was supposed to get geared and ready for insertion, just in case. They had better be. Without further comment he stormed out of the Observation Deck and into the Jumping Deck. He barked orders as he started gearing.
“You got the source of the chroniton burst?”
“Yes sir” another tech answered.
“No jump shielding? We jump there. Ten Kommandos first under Olaf. Then ten under me two minutes later. Then a tech team as soon as the perimeter’s cleared. Kill everyone. We expect pre-nuclear tech, we have the drop on them, none of you better get killed.”
***
26 June 1128, Innsbruck Castle
Rupert von Hentzau, the first Duke of Tyrol, is dying. His flesh burns, his eyes hurts, his bowels cramp. Though his exact age is anyone’s guess, he’s old enough that he can feel this fever is the last one. Hunting, women, the feasts and the glory, he will never know them again. And what hurts more than the murk in his lungs, he dies without the crown he was about to grasp. It was to be this year, he is convinced, or maybe the next; at least the empire would have been within his grasp! Now Ludwig cannot be trusted to carry on his plans. And even if he could, what would it matter Rupert? The world ends with him.
For days he has felt death was coming, but he was still strong as a beast and death was cruel – or maybe only just. So he burnt, and sweat, and bled, and wept, but he has not died yet. But today, he will. Everything will stop, or anything that matters. No more pleasure! No more light! It seems that as soon as he ceases to think actively he will end and dissipate. So he forces himself to watch and compare the creaks in the ceiling beams, but it becomes so hard that he finally closes his eyes and shakes with a last, agonizing cough.
Then he dies.
“Is that hell?” He wonders.
Then he is alive again.
***
A naked, old man dead on the concrete floor. Werner turns the engines off, parts of which collapse and fume. No use for them anymore. Everyone rushes to his place while Koch helps Werner in his wheelchair and rolls him near the body on his gurney. Two doctors are resuscitating him already, a third one has set up an IV and injects him with antibiotics and adrenalin. Around them a hundred soldiers had formed a protective circle, arms at the ready. Captain Shelberg hectors them:
“They WILL probably outgun us. Maybe they will have protective devices of some sort. But remember they are human. They can bleed and they can die.”
That is pretty much all Werner had been able to conjecture. He saw one of them teleport somehow, so they had technology beyond even the foreseeable. He saw him bleed to death right before his eyes, so they could die. And they had hated the prospect of him saving the world enough to kill, so they were likely to intervene when he actually did it. Even if it was not, all it would mean would be two hundred soldiers standing awkwardly as things went without a hitch. Petty tame as awry plans went.
“And they will die. But killing them is subordinate to the two real objectives.”
“I have a pulse,” the third doctor said. "He’s alive."
“Well. Roll him out.”
They put a cover on the old man, started running the gurney toward the evacuation tunnel, ten soldiers out of nowhere started shooting killer beams.
Through the confused gunfight they rushed Schondorf and Hentzau away. Blomberg soldiers fell, but the weird men fell to. Werner glimpsed a sort of shield bursting in blue flames under burst after burst of automatic gunfire at short range. It would be fine.
“Mr Schondorf!”
Behind him Koch had frozen in panic, and just in front of his wheelchair stood an athletic, seven foot tall, calm, furious man. Now he had a good, if short, look at the otherworldly uniform, the pallid halo, the greyed blond hair and fearsome war face of an Yngling officer. The man raised his incomprehensible weapon…
“Protect the Hentzau!” Werner shouted desperately, as he raised his own gun and shot. Spraying and praying.
It was not even the first officer he shot at. Not even the first stronger, faster, better man.
One of his bullets missed the stranger by a whole foot. The other dissolved harmlessly in mid-air, inches from him.
***
30 december 1936, Augsburg Revolution Headquarters
Worker-Councilman Gustav Schraderbrau stifled a yawn and sat at the steel table, accepting the steaming cup of ersatz-coffee from an aide.
All others in the Worker’s Council looked tired and anxious, all except the one who had brought them all here, in the middle of the night. Salim and Krebs had been drinking, he could smell. Old Comrade Bierski looked like he might fall back asleep at any moment.
“Thank you all for coming,” General Blomberg said. His gaze was calm, intense, and confident. “There is a problem that cannot wait for tomorrow morning. A threat to the Bavarian Worker’s Republic.”
“Is it about the power outage in the East?” Comrade Lorentz asked warily. Gustav did not know of any outage, yet.
“It is related.” The general nodded. “There is a… conspiracy again the Council. A reactionary cabal, the extent of which has been gravely underestimated over the last few years. There is, in fact, a traitor on this very Council, at this very table.”
Everyone looked at everyone. Gustav leaned forward.
“Who is this, Comrade Blomberg? Who is this traitor?”
The General flashed a beastly smile.
“Me.”
Then the soldiers burst in, and he only had time to feel the gun barrel behind his head. Nothing more.
***
Thorvald Yngling had his finger on the trigger when a hissing sound made him turn. The closest of the subhumans’ rickety machines was rapidly bursting in flames and acrid smoke. The sixth bullet, he analyzed. The one that missed him and his shield. Thorvald was no tech, of course, but it did look familiar. Was that a primitive, poorly-designed, completely unsecure…
Vacuum energy condenser?!!?!!!
His shield took the brunt of the initial blast, although it shook him badly. But when reality started melting he was too horribly close, and suddenly his flesh was boiling and shredding away, and he pushed the jumpback switch barely in time to survive.
About half of him materialized aboard the Merciless.
“Send kommandos pastward, at every available window!” He tried to shout and instead rasped in a tortured voice. One aghast lieutenant stared at him, slack-jawed. “The target is an equivalent-German named Schondorf. And he has something to do with the Hentzaus.”
***
30 december 1936, somewhere on the Spanish front
“What is it?” General Kellerman asked her fidgeting aid. Spanish artillery was pummeling their positions in the dark. Three kilometers, she estimated.
“I am sorry to wake you, Comrade General. It… Came from Augsburg. From General Blomberg. Maximal security encryption.”
She read the message with mounting anxiety, then re-read it.
THIS NIGHT 00:30 FOILED PUTSCH BY BOURGEOIS DEVIATIONISTS INFILTRATED IN THE CENTRAL WORKERS COUNCIL. ALL WORKERS COUNCILS DISSOLVED. FIRST COMRADE RUPERT VON HENTZAU ASSUMES EMERGENCY ABSOLUTE POWERS.
GAL BLOMBERG
“There was no more Hentzaus,” she said.
“That’s what I thought too.” Harz said. “What is to be done?”
The pummeling got closer. 2.5 kilometers.
“Surprise offensive this morning. According to plan Mega. We need to secure our position.”
And then, she thought, I need to get to Augsburg.
***
He was alive.
“Who… What?” Is this hell. The very room was moving.
“You are aboard an ambulance. It is a sort of chariot.” One very old man at his bedside answered, with an accent he had never heard. “You are going to have a lot of questions and a lot of surprises over the next few hours. What I ask is that you listen to me carefully. I will explain everything.”
Gameplay stuff and stuff like that :
Became more and more communist, kept building factories, beat up Spain a little. And Victoria ended.
Moar rares please
