The Hohenzollern Empire 5: Holy Phoenix - An Empire of Jerusalem Megacampaign in New World Order

[NarcomancerPL]

It's crazy this AAR is 7 thousand posts long. Starting new part will not only be end of an era in the timeline, but in Paradox aar writing all together :O

 

[zenphoenix]

It's crazy this AAR is 7 thousand posts long. Starting new part will not only be end of an era in the timeline, but in Paradox aar writing all together :O

Thanks for the kind words. Things have changed for all of us since this part began, and who knows what the future might bring?

 

[zenphoenix]

Chapter 465: History of the End, Part 2 - Fimbulwinter

“The Lord give thee dust for rain upon thy land, and let ashes come down from heaven upon thee, till thou be consumed.”
- Deuteronomy 28:24

“Great tidings are to be told of it, and much. The first is this, that there shall come that winter which is called the Fimbulvetr [Great Winter]: in that time snow shall drive from all quarters; frosts shall be great then, and winds sharp; there shall be no virtue in the sun. Those winters shall proceed three in succession, and no summer between; but first shall come three other winters, such that over all the world there shall be mighty battles. In that time brothers shall slay each other for greed's sake, and none shall spare father or son.”
- The Fylkirsbók, a compilation of Norse myths, prayers, and moral lessons codified by Harald Hardrada

Isfahan in December 2038 on a rare partially cloudy day. Red skies would be a common sight for weeks after the November 2 attacks, even in places not hit by nuclear warheads. Clear and partially clear skies would remain a rarity for many months, though.​

In the weeks following November 2, the sky blazed a brilliant but sickly orange color, bathing those on the ground in an unnatural light. As the days grew shorter, the orange gave way to dull gray and brown clouds which choked the sun out. Blue skies became exceedingly rare. Temperatures plummeted, and snow was reported as far south as Tenochititlan. There, on December 2, Lake Texcoco itself froze over, and people could drive across the unfamiliar ice to flee the Crusaders fighting in downtown. However, many lost their lives when their vehicles either skidded out of control and crashed or fell through thin ice into the frigid and swampy waters below. Devout Mexicans saw the ice more as a curse than a blessing, as December 2, 2038 marked exactly 102 years since Ocuil Acatl landed in the Hebrides, according to local records. Perhaps it was a punishment from the gods. Whether it was because they had sinned by launching the Sunset Invasion, by abandoning human sacrifice, or by not finishing the invasion varied depending on who was asked.

A nuclear winter had set in. For decades, scientists had been debating how bad a nuclear winter would be, but measurements were speculative and dependent on how the inciting nuclear war was fought. In the 1990s, several scientists, including Karl Sagan, projected the thick smoke created from Zolton Huicton burning the Aztlan oilfields during the Gulf War would cause a global cooling effect, but the actual effects were localized to Mexico and barely noticeable. Decades later, the scientific community at large began reevaluating the doomsday scenarios of the Cold War. While mutually assured destruction helped keep the peace for 40 years between 1944 and 1984 and largely kept World War III a conventional war, the belief that any nuclear war between the Reich and Russia would have ended human civilization slowly died out. The Cold War going hot would still have killed hundreds of millions and caused at least a decade of nuclear winter, but modern society would go on. Nuclear war in the 21st century would be even less destructive than any of those revised scenarios due to reductions in warhead and arsenal sizes since World War III. But the devastation would still be significant and the consequences massive and long-lasting. For example, take the hypothetical scenario of the detonation of 50 modern nukes in a limited war between India and China in the 2010s. Such an exchange would directly kill millions in both countries, and subsequent firestorms would send millions of tons of soot into the stratosphere. There, the soot would spread globally and absorb sunlight, lowering global temperatures at least 2 degrees Celsius for at least five years. This would in turn wreak havoc on global production of humanity’s main cereal crops: maize, wheat, soybeans, and rice. A massive decrease in production levels of such crucial crops would cause reverberations in every aspect of human economies and societies. This scenario was just for fifty low to medium-yield nukes going off in northern India and southern China. On November 2, over a hundred of the world’s most powerful nukes had been simultaneously detonated on every continent except Antarctica and Penglai.

Crops were hardest hit in northern breadbasket regions, such as the North Eimerican interior, continental Europe, and the Chinese heartland, but other nations which depended on agricultural imports would be hurt even more. Even before the war broke out, famine already reared its ugly head as Jerusalem and China heavily restricted their exports and uncoupled themselves from the global economy. Russia entered a famine in 2037, followed by Yavdi and Turkestan in 2038, and Afghanistan and even India itself were projected to follow suit by 2039 had war not broken out and accelerated the process. Jerusalem and China managed well enough, as they produced huge agricultural surpluses. Before, these surpluses would be exported to other nations for a profit, but after the two superpowers retreated into mercantilism and autarky, they dedicated the surpluses to feeding their own people (though who constituted as “their own” definitely did not count everyone living within their borders) and then callously throwing away what was left in a wanton display for the rest of the world. The twin calamities of agricultural exports drying up and a nuclear attack wiping out or interfering with local production caused ripples throughout global commerce, with at least 1.5 billion survivors of November 2 directly affected. Food supplies in the East Africa Confederation, loyalist Africa, India, Afghanistan, Burma, Siam, Malaya, Nusantara, and Qiandao saw drops of at least 30%, killed off by changes in rainfall, lack of sunlight, temperature drops, fighting, fallout in areas close to nuclear targets. Scandinavia, Russia, Yavdi, Kanata, and northern Fusang suffered even more as their average temperatures plummeted to below freezing, and their already short growing seasons grew even shorter. There, even modest declines in temperatures would make crops struggle to mature if not easily killed by cold snaps. In western Kanata and the interior Eimerican states, harvests of maize declined almost 40%, while in Russia and Yavdi they declined by a staggering 60%, worsening their already terrible situations. Wheat and soybean production saw similar declines across Eurasia. South of the equator, raw production didn’t suffer as badly. Rice harvests declined about 20-30% in Tawantinsuyu and Penglai, while maize harvests in Tawantinsuyu and sub-Saharan Africa actually saw a slight increase of 5%. But it would not be enough to offset the losses in the north.

To save themselves, many nations imposed export bans. Mali, Livonia, and Scandinavia halted all exports (not that they were exporting that much due to the isolation imposed on them by the war). Srivijaya, the Eimerican Federation, the East African Confederation, and the Central Asian Confederation all imposed a temporary ban on agricultural exports outside their supernations. The four supernations had varying responses to such bans. Srivijaya passed its ban without much fuss, as its guiding philosophy had been organized around self-sufficiency and providing for all member states as a way of countering the influence of the Romans, Indians, and Chinese; furthermore, most Southeast Asian exports—which had previously been sold to the Reich, China, and Penglai—had already been repurposed for home distribution, for obvious reasons. The EAC’s leadership was mostly in favor of export bans, but a large minority voiced concerns about the supernation’s culpability for future pan-African famines. The CAC was evenly split between imposing the ban or not, as Turkestan’s economy depended on exports to Yavdi while Afghanistan traded heavily with India, but ultimately the ban went through after Persia’s Shahbanu Gunduz II personally talked the leaders of Turkestan and Afghanistan in a profanity-laced call. The Eimericans, though, had no such luck. A political firestorm swept through Unity as representatives from smaller states pleaded for larger ones to share surpluses, while medium-sized coastal states voiced concerns over trade interruptions, interior states feared increased production would break their economies, and Han-allied Fusang staunchly obstructed anything the federal administration suggested, even if Fusang would also benefit from it. Ultimately, a ban was hurriedly rammed through the Federal Assembly by a coalition of the smaller states which barely outnumbered Fusang and other anti-ban factions. Loyalist Africa, the Pacific islands, and the Indian subcontinent were hit especially hard by these bans. Economists predicted famines in these areas—as well as in Russia, Yavdi, and Scandinavia—would last perhaps ten years. Food scarcity would plummet to levels not seen in 200 years. This was not even factoring in the radioactive fallout yet. Late harvests in northern India, southern Russia, and parts of China and Fusang had to be thrown out due to radioactive contamination. Many fields were completely abandoned due to fallout leaking into the soil and water, and they would have to be entirely abandoned for at least several decades, restricting the size of future harvests as well.

The effects didn’t end there. Scientists feared the soot smothering the atmosphere would cause a greenhouse effect high in the skies. Sunlight—and the heat from such sunlight—would be reflected by the soot and prevented from reaching the ground, causing the surface to cool and the stratosphere to heat up. This would in turn melt the ozone layer. Something like this had happened decades ago, in the 70s and 80s, when the mass use of polluting refrigerants caused a massive hole in the ozone layer to appear over Antarctica and admit more harmful ultraviolet rays that harmed both humans and plants. Although banning such refrigerants in the 90s led to the hole gradually closing up, the war threatened to not only reopen it but tear new holes everywhere. But there was another effect that was even more feared by scientists. Unlike with the ozone layer, the idea of a nuclear summer had little historical precedent.

Although it had never happened before, the idea of a nuclear winter was well-known and well researched: soot in the atmosphere reflected oncoming sunlight away from the surface, cooling the surface and heating the stratosphere, which in turn would damage the ozone layer and lead to an increase in UV radiation. By December, the global average temperature had already plummeted 2 degrees Celsius; it was expected to go down by a staggering 8 degrees and stay there until at least the end of 2039. Even the last ice age was believed to have only been on average 5 degrees colder than the present day. In specific areas, the temperature drop would go even further. Some climatologists believed parts North Eimerica would suffer drops of up to 20 degrees (rendering northern Fusang and Kanata uninhabitable), while parts of Eurasia would suffer a drop of 30 (affecting Scandinavia, Russia, Yavdi, and northern China the most). Such a rapid shift in temperature had already begun killing off plants and animals which couldn’t adapt or flee so quickly. That played directly into concerns about a possible nuclear summer. Eventually, the soot would dissipate, heating up the surface again. Frozen and dead biomass—including over 800 million human bodies, many still lying in the ruins of the cities they once inhabited—would thaw and rot, releasing copious amounts of methane and other greenhouse gases in a rapid and uncontrollable warming. The closest historical precedent to this was the feared thawing of the Siberian taiga and the release of the massive amounts of methane it held, but the Yavdian and Chinese governments had expertly limited warming in the area and no runaway greenhouse effect had happened. If a cold snap threatened to kill off thousands of plants and animals, a sudden warming would kill millions more. This global warming would be more permanent than the global cooling.

Ironically, a committee that was ostensibly environmentalist and dedicated to stopping the warming of the planet seemed likely to not only do the opposite, but also turbocharge global warming. It wanted to protect its own people, but it was poised to starve, freeze, and burn them. The regular winter had slightly dampened the effects of the nuclear winter, but really the consequences had only been delayed to the spring. While it didn’t seem like much had changed besides the sky, it was clear the bill would come due.

The question was no longer when, but rather how much.

In Ludendorff’s Light​

“You cannot wage war with sentimentality. The more ruthlessly war is conducted, the more merciful is it in fact, for it finishes the war the sooner.”
- Paul von Hindenburg

As the nights grew longer and colder, northern fronts froze over, but southern ones remained fluid and chaotic. The Neurhomanian front, running deep through the Amazon from the Caribbean to the Silberfluss estuary, changed constantly over the weeks. Large swathes of jungle and plains on both sides of the border swapped between Eimerican and Crusader control every few days. But everything changed when Crusader forces was placed under the command of a man named General Wilhelm Ludendorff. Ludendorff, as his name implied, was a son of the renowned Ludendorff military noble family. His younger brother was the notorious Reinhold Ludendorff, who in 2016 had embraced Mexicanism and joined the so-called Mexicanist State of Cemanahuac (MSC). Ludendorff, a commissioned officer at the time, requested a transfer to Mexico for the sole purpose of putting his brother down. He earned several commendations and a promotion for his role in wiping out Reinhold’s specific terrorist cell, based out of Tzintzuntzan, and personally shooting Reinhold in the head. He remained loyal to the Regency through everything that happened. Displeased with the perceived incompetence of the current commander in charge of Neurhomania, the Regency had him shot and replaced with Ludendorff. Two expectations were made of him: first, his previous experience fighting in the Eimericas would break the stalemate, and second, a Ludendorff in charge of the front would benefit morale and propaganda. Just like Paul von Hindenburg, the friend and colleague of Erich Ludendorff, took Cusco and brought Tawantinsuyu to its knees in the First World War, a Ludendorff would do the same 120 years later. Getting an actual Hindenburg couldn’t be done, since the family had stopped serving in the military after Oskar von Hindenburg’s generation, and most of them ultimately left for Russia and Persia after Bloody Tuesday.

Upon arriving in New Berlin, Ludendorff overhauled Jerusalem’s strategy. The previous commander had concentrated his forces in Kleinvenedig. It was a safe and pragmatic decision, as the Eimericans had amassed most of their forces in that region, but that strategy did not produce any decisive victories. Progress was slow in Kleinvenedig, and the front lines further south remained fluid but stable. It was time to shake things up. He observed the majority of Eimerican troops in Kleinvenedig were from Tawantinsuyu, with a few from the UPM and Mayapan due to their proximity. Next, he looked at the southern part of the front. All of the troops on the rest of the border were also Tawantinsuyuan, as Tawantinsuyu was the only Eimerican state to share a land border with Neurhomania. That meant the other Eimericans couldn’t reinforce Tawantinsuyu that far south, while Tawantinsuyu’s own forces had been concentrated in the north at Kleinvenedig. The Eimericans meant to break through Kleinvenedig and seize its oil, then using that to fuel a quick offensive into the Amazon delta and the core Neurhomanian cities around it. But what if he could open another offensive elsewhere and draw the Eimericans’ attention away, then come down hard on Kleinvenedig and break the enemy lines that remained? Due to all of the Eimericans focusing on a breakthrough at Kleinvenedig, the southern front was left exposed and would collapse if he pushed hard with a large Crusader force. That might be enough to change the balance of the war.

In early December, Eimerican federal intelligence noted an unusual drawdown of Crusader forces from Kleinvenedig. Initially, this did not seem to pose any tactical value. In fact, the Crusaders had abandoned several crucial chokepoints and minor supply hubs to do this. What they didn’t know was that Ludendorff had reassigned a large number of Crusaders from Kleinvenedig to the southern front, in the Silberfluss region. Three weeks later, backed up with fresh reinforcements from the European mainland, Ludendorff’s forces launched Plan Hindenburg—a massive offensive into the plains and farmlands of southern Tawantinsuyu. All along the southern half of the Tawantinsuyuan border, the front suddenly came alive as reinforced Crusader divisions attacked the overextended and spread out Tawantinsuyu defenses. The city of Good Air, Tawantinsuyu’s largest Atlantic port and the guardian of the Silberfluss estuary, fell by the end of the month, exposing the country’s entire southern regions to attack. In the north, the front was pushed deep into the Tawantinsuyuan Amazon within weeks and would reach within several miles of the UPM border by the end of January. By February, Ludendorff hoped to secure the entire Tawantinsuyuan south, march around the Andes and up the Pacific coast, and take Cusco. It was a bold strategy, but the Ludendorffs were known for boldness and initiative; a mind like Ludendorff’s was perfect for the Regency’s decentralized leadership doctrine.

On the other continent, Atoc Sopa Atoc had been placed in a similar predicament, only he had less land to fight on. While Ludendorff had a front covering hundreds of miles of South Eimerica, Atoc’s forces were crammed onto a section of beach on the east coast of the Muscogean Peninsula. Their goal was to take back the Crusader-occupied city of Cuscowilla, the capital of Este Mvskokvlke, and from there march west along the Gulf coast to relieve Tejas City and then liberate Tenochtitlan. But that was easier said than done. The Crusaders had dug in around Cuscowilla, and they wouldn’t give up a single inch of land without a fight. Despite terrorizing the locals with frequent purges and unspeakable atrocities, their positions remained solid and well-supplied, while the Eimericans, despite possessing the home and numerical advantages, found their assaults stalled by fierce resistance. In late December, Atoc’s main army successfully dislodged the Crusader defenses in eastern Cuscowilla but suffered fourteen thousand casualties in the process, and he was unable to press his advantage. Although the Crusaders lost over two-thirds of their garrison, reinforcements from further westward quickly arrived and pushed the Eimericans back to the sea.

Atoc was forced to reassess the strengths of his armies. Although his main force was made up of elite Mitteleimerican and Mayan troops specializing in humid jungle combat, he couldn’t afford too many casualties as they couldn’t be easily replaced. Backing up the elite Mitteleimerican-Mayan core were thousands of ESOA-administered troops from the inland states, primarily from Niukonska, Inoka, Šawanoki, and Paári. These soldiers were primarily infantry and cavalry trained in militia tactics designed for the open plains. Their tactics and training were not suited for the cramped and swampy jungle environment of the Muscogean Peninsula. Hundreds died from diseases and local wildlife alone, despite ESOA efforts to educate the troops in such dangers. By the time they arrived at the front, they were easily routed by the Crusaders. All Atoc could do was consolidate his lines in the north and on the beach and hope the winter weakened the Crusaders. Despite temperatures reaching record lows in early January, with many Muscogean lakes and rivers freezing over, the cold ended up affecting the Eimericans more than the Crusaders, who were better stocked and sheltered. When temperatures briefly warmed again, the Crusaders launched an attack on Atoc’s beachhead using a new kind of chemical weapon, a red mist of some sort. Thousands died in the attack, and Atoc was forced to withdraw his remaining forces to his fleet off the coast to avoid further exposure. Far from dislodging Jerusalem from Cuscowilla, the Eimericans themselves had been driven out. For all of the Eimerican Federation’s talk about unity and togetherness, it still wasn’t able to do anything against the enemy’s overwhelming firepower. Much of Este Mvskokvlke remained under the Crusader jackboot, to say nothing about Tejas and Mexico further west. As the nights grew darker, so too did the Eimerican Federation’s prospects of winning the war. Something had to happen soon to change the balance. Millions of Eimericans prayed to many different gods and ancestors and spirits, hoping for a change, any change.

They would soon get their wish, though it would be nothing like they wanted.

In Ludendorff’s Shadow​

“The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.”
- Wolfgang Ludendorff

The unexpected intervention of the Russian Army threw a wrench into the Crusaders’ plans for Eastern Europe. The surrender of Russia and Yavdi was originally expected to end the fighting in Europe, cutting off Russian and Yavdian troops from their supply hubs and effectively encircling any remaining pockets of resistance for easy elimination. Yet the Regency had made a grievous mistake in prioritizing the public executions of government leaders such as Chancellor Olga Kirova. Kirova’s death had inspired an entire generation of not only Russians but also Lithuanians and Yavdians to fight even harder. While the Russian civilian government had been forced to surrender, the military fought on. Increasingly, its 160 thousand men answered to a single general, Lev Konstantinov, who consolidated the chain of command and united the majority of resistance forces under him.

Lev Konstantinov was born in 1987, a year after the signing of the Belavezha Peace Accords which ended World War III and formally dissolved the Soviet regime. His mother was a Tsarist exile who had returned from Scandinavia. His father was an ex-Soviet soldier, a Lithuanian conscript, who had defected to the Roman 341st Airborne Infantry Division—the so-called “Lost Legion” which persisted despite being stranded far behind enemy lines—out of protest over the atrocities his unit was ordered to carry out against Lithuanian civilians. As part of the 341st, he provided the Romans with valuable tactical information, translator services, and connections with sympathetic locals. After the war, he raised Konstantinov on stories about the 341st’s exploits in eastern Poland and western Russia but also cautioned him with warnings about the dishonorable tactics he and his generation were forced to use. When Konstantinov entered the officers’ academy and eventually rose to the rank of general, he brought with him a battlefield doctrine influenced by the 341st’s self-sufficiency and a desire to never repeat the atrocities the Soviets perpetrated, particularly against the Lithuanians. This made him the perfect candidate to lead the remnants of the Russian Army.

Fighter jets used by the KL complement of the 341st Airborne Infantry Division during World War III. The 341st had been given outdated jets due to the more advanced models being deployed in important fronts like the Balkans and Austria, but this made no difference to the men of the Lost Legion. Using streets as runways and farms as hangars, they snuck the jets through occupied Poland and launched combined infantry and aerial hit and run attacks on Soviet military installations deep in Warsaw Pact territory. These tactics were crucial in collapsing the Soviet front lines in Eastern Europe, leading to the liberation of the Occupied Territories and the invasion of the Russian heartland.​

Konstantinov’s greatest inspiration was Wolfgang Ludendorff. At the academy, he studied the exploits of the “German Belisarius” during the Maximist Wars. In 1845, Ludendorff got his start as a minor commander of a newly mobilized Bohemian conscripts, tasked with driving Maximist forces out of his hometown of Brünn. Not only did Ludendorff take the city despite being massively outnumbered by the enemy, he also held it against wave after wave of Maximist offensives for six days, which became known as the “Miracle of Brünn.” Loyalist reinforcements soon arrived, and Ludendorff tasked them with constructing an intricate network of trenches, barricades, and chokepoints around and throughout Brünn. Although these tactics proved devastating against the Maximists, whose forces shattered and retreated west, his own forces suffered significant casualties and mass desertions from the conscripts. What happened next was something Konstantinov drilled into his mind. Ludendorff personally rebuilt the army from scratch, either by hunting down deserters and welcoming them back with open arms or personally encouraging the people of Brünn to enlist. Next, he trained his new army in unusual tactics for the time: trench and fortifications building, hit-and-run attacks, working closely with anti-Maximist locals, and gathering supplies from the land. Once he considered his men trained enough, he marched out of Brünn, first intending to go all the way to besieged Constantinople and then deciding to go to Berlin. He emphasized mobility on this campaign, preferring to stay on the move; instead of digging in to destroy an enemy army, he only weakened it enough that it was no longer a threat and then moved on. With these tactics, he inflicted significant casualties on almost every Maximist army between Bohemia and Berlin, crippling Maximist activities in that part of Germania for months. Almost 200 years later, Konstantinov sought to follow in his footsteps for the sake of both Livonians and Russians. Not a Ludendorff by blood, but a Ludendorff in spirit.

Upon being named the leader of the Russian Army remnants, his first task was to reorganize the divisions so those with heavy casualties were folded into intact ones. Next, in a break from centuries of Tsarist Russian doctrine which called for large standing armies to overwhelm any enemy (something learned from the Reich), those divisions were to be split into smaller units emphasizing mobility and conservation of firepower. The size of each unit was to be adjusted depending on the terrain, number of friendly locals, and number of Crusader troops and their collaborators. They were to be self-sufficient in all respects, emphasizing conservation of ammunition, supplies, and fuel at all costs. Local Lithuanian and Russian communities were to be their allies; Konstantinov stressed the importance of knowing how to work closely with civilians. Should there be no willing communities in the area, a unit was to hunt and forage for food and build impromptu shelters, living off the land just as Ludendorff’s men once did. But communities which refused to help were not the enemy unless they were outright collaborators—even neutral communities trying to escape the violence of the war were allies simply because they weren’t collaborators. Regardless, Konstantinov harshly punished any who disobeyed his orders to not harm any civilians, including collaborators. Neutral and friendly civilians were their allies, and they couldn’t afford to lose these allies in their current predicament. Collaborators, though? Konstantinov knew that after the war—assuming they won—the collaborators would go back to being their countrymen. His father had known all too well the vicious cycle of reprisals as Soviet troops executed Roman collaborators in land they took back from the Reich and then later on as Romans and Russians, many of them those same collaborators from before, exacted vengeance on the Soviet regime’s last supporters. Konstantinov himself had seen the same cycle repeat itself in Mexico as Mexicans turned on supporters of Zolton Huicton and then those who embraced MSC and other terrorist organizations after Zolin’s defeat. He did not want the same horrors visited upon his own people. When they won this war, Russia would need decades to heal, and the first step was to respect the rule of law. Collaborators could not be punished extrajudicially. They had to be tried in court to determine the severity of their crimes and the severity of their punishment. Not every collaborator was a mustache-twirling fanatic who acted just as bad as the Crusaders; some probably answered a few Crusaders’ questions in exchange for food, something to be expected in the middle of both a famine and a nuclear winter in the middle of winter. Konstantinov couldn’t afford to stoop to the same level of depravity and barbarism as the Crusaders. Otherwise, he would only betray the values he swore an oath to protect.

Konstantinov ordered his troops to regroup at Vilnius to repel a Crusader counterattack, led by the Crusader general Engelbert von Haynau, which had pushed deep into downtown. Von Haynau had fortified his positions on the southern bank of the Neris River, using the river to push back any Livonian counterattacks. Boris Bradziunas’ base of operations, located south of the river in the Old Town and around the royal palace complex, was now pressured from the south and west, with some Crusader units making it within one block of the palace itself. Bradziunas’ forces suffered greatly in previous battles to relieve Vilnius; most of the Land Force’s divisions had casualty rates of over 70% and had to be consolidated into a smaller number of divisions to maintain fighting strength. This shortage of professional troops forced him to rely on the Commonwealth Rifle’s Union militia (Sandraugos Šaulių Sąjunga). Although the SSS managed to alleviate some of the pressure on the Old Town through hit-and-run tactics and concentrated attacks on supply chains, pushing the front lines west several blocks, they could not fully eliminate the Crusader threat due to their lack of numbers or firepower. That was where Konstantinov came in.

Reinforcing the north bank of the Neris, Konstantinov first scouted out the enemy fortifications, trying to find any potential weaknesses he could exploit. He quickly noticed the bulk of von Haynau’s forces were concentrated in the east at Old Town, while his western flank at Vingis Park primarily consisted of artillery guarded by Argus special forces. To capitalize on this, he drew back his troops in the middle of the front, particularly those guarding a river bridge leading to the Seimas building. Believing Konstantinov made a mistake, von Haynau ordered his tanks across the bridge, hoping to cut the Russian forces in two. But this was exactly what Konstantinov wanted. With many of von Haynau’s armor and infantry units tied up crossing the bridge, the Russians and Livonians made their counterattack. The SSS struck west from Old Town, quickly seizing Crusader artillery guns placed in downtown and turning them against their own users, causing confusion in the back ranks. On the other side of the city, Konstantinov’s forces launched a helicopter and amphibious assault across the Neris into Vingis Park, overwhelming the few Argus troops patrolling the area and seizing its artillery. With large numbers of artillery south of the river seized, the Russians and Livonians bombarded von Haynau’s remaining forces in downtown, and the Crusader center soon crumbled. Although von Haynau escaped to the southwest with the bulk of his surviving troops, much of their materiel—including artillery, tanks, helicopters, drones, guns, and ammunition—fell into Russian hands, replacing hardware that was out of ammunition or badly damaged. Vilnius had been saved again.

Vilnius on December 19, 2038. After the Russians broke the initial Crusader siege, Jerusalem sent wave after wave of Crusaders to take the city. Their most successful offensive, in mid-December, resulted in Crusader forces occupying territory literally a block away from the royal palace, from which Boris Bradziunas and King-Emperor Gediminas oversaw military operations. Things were so dire that Bradziunas himself took up arms and personally defended the streets surrounding the palace alongside the Land Force. Soon afterward, Lev Konstantinov’s forces broke the siege and drove the Crusaders out of Vilnius again. Making sure to not let this happen again, Konstantinov ordered his men to dig trenches and fortifications around the city center and teach the Commonwealth Rifle’s Union how to make the best use of them.​

After Vilnius, Konstantinov wasted little time getting back on the move. Within a week, the Russians had eliminated auxiliary Crusader units besieging the cities of Grodno and Bilaystock and then struck out to the west for their ultimate goal, Prussia. Victory after victory came easily to him, and as more Livonian towns were liberated from Jerusalem’s iron fist, the more Konstantinov’s renown grew. By the time he had reached the border, there was not a single town that did not whisper proudly about the hero Lev Konstantinov and the deeds he did for their community. Some had even begun calling him the “Russian Ludendorff” or even the “Russian Belisarius.” Konstantinov, for his part, didn’t care about the glory or fame. He didn’t want to be remembered as another Belisarius or Ludendorff. The only thing he wanted was to free Livonia and Russia by ending the Crusader menace. He would not rest until the war was over and his enemy was defeated.

Unfortunately, while Konstantinov focused on Prussia, he had been unable to focus on von Haynau. The Crusader commander spent the next month reorganizing his forces and consolidating all Crusader units in Livonia under his command. With much of their materiel seized at Vilnius, the Crusaders had the numbers but not the equipment to project power. All hopes of resupplying had been sent to the bottom of the Gulf of Riga with a Holy Marine fleet that had been torn apart by a combined Scandinavian/Livonian fleet. The only way forward was to take a page out of Konstantinov’s book and live off the land. Not hindered by Konstantinov’s morals and principles, von Haynau directed his forces to take whatever they needed by force and eliminate any who stood in their way. Dozens of villages and towns were put to the torch, their inhabitants either forced to gather materials and equipment at gunpoint or shot for resisting. In early January, von Haynau got a big break when he came across several downed missiles loaded with still potent and unreleased chemical weapons, likely misfires from the chemical attack on Riga. Realizing the power he now had, he immediately marched on Vilnius again. Several Crusader battalions sacrificed themselves to manually detonate his weapons of mass destruction, devastating large swathes of downtown. Once again, his forces were right on the King-Emperor’s doorstep, but this time, there was no Konstantinov to save Vilnius.

Just as Konstantinov’s heroism spread through the hearts and minds of the Livonian people, so too did von Haynau’s ruthlessness and brutality. In time, Livonians would fear him as the Butcher of Lithuania, just as Varennikov had been the Butcher of Bohemia decades ago. They prayed Konstantinov would soon turn around to deliver them from von Haynau.

But would their prayers be answered?

Heir to Temur Khan​

“The eyes might be afraid, but the hands will do their job.” (You never know what you’re capable of until you try it.)
- Russian proverb

In every war between the Reich and China, Yavdi suffered, and this war was no exception. The winter of 2038 saw the country descend into anarchy following the decaptation of the Yavdian government. In the east, the Crusader garrisons had finally consolidated their control over the border regions, pushing back Chinese forces attempting to take over. Between the border and the Urals, no authority reigned supreme. Yavdian military commanders set themselves up as chancellors or even khagans of whatever realm they wanted, be it Yavdi, Saray, Perm, Khazaria, or even a restored Mongol khanate. But their brutal authority only extended several miles around their bases of operations. Towns were pillaged for resources and manpower with which to attack other towns and “reunify” Yavdi, but all that was accomplished was further devastation and the deaths of thousands of innocents, all while the Crusaders and Chinese didn’t have to lift a finger.

Yet despite the chaos happening in the east, the situation west of the Urals, where some semblance of authority remained, was even more dire. After the surrender of the State Great Khural, the Crusaders declared the annexation of Yavdi as the “Steppes District,” just as had been done with Russia (now part of the Eastern District). In cities like Perm, Tsaritsyn, and Kursk, they set about imposing Jerusalem’s biblical law on a population that was almost completely non-Christian. The Suomenusko religion was harshly suppressed, and the Finns were targeted for “cultural civilizing and ideological realignment” through social pressure and education. The Mongols, who believed in Tengri and the traditions of the steppes, were to be afforded the same rights as afforded to them in the original Augustinian Code—namely, none at all. The first “reeducation” camps became operational on Christmas 2038, and by the New Year, thousands of Mongols had been interned in them, to suffer the same fates as their brethren in Taurica. The last Yavdian religious group, the Jews, received the worst punishment. Considered the betrayers of Christ, agents of Judas, and equalist saboteurs, Jews were immediately rounded up as soon as they were found. Each Jewish community received one of two fates. Either they were “baptized” by being drowned in a nearby body of water, generally the Yayiq River near Yekaterinburg, or they were sent on a “march of penance” through the Ural Mountains to the Arctic coast, either freezing to death on the way or being “baptized” in the sea at the end. Their belongings were confiscated and sold to Christian families in Jerusalem, and all proceeds went to the war effort. Vibrant Jewish communities with centuries of cultural heritage dating back to the days of the Khazars and Saray were wiped out in a matter of weeks.

Jerusalem’s control, though, barely extended outside the cities. In the countryside, chaos reigned. Warlords were just as present here as in the east, but they had to also contend with the Crusader occupiers and forces still genuinely loyal to the Yavdian government, though these were rapidly declining in numbers due to being targeted by all sides. Still, thanks to these loyalists, some parts of western Yavdi were able to escape the anarchy engulfing the east. The Astrakhan region quickly emerged as the last loyalist bastion against the Crusader and warlord onslaught. Loyalist divisions regrouped and reestablished defensive lines around Astrakhan to protect civilian leaders who refused to surrender. As was the case with the Russian Army remnants, the Yavdian Army remnants rallied around their own leaders, but far from being Lev Konstantinov, these generals focused on holding Astrakhan and the Volga Delta region. Although the Astrakhan government styled itself as the legitimate continuation of the Yavdian government, the only thing that set it apart from the other warlords who claimed the same thing was its refusal to extort and threaten the people under its rule—though in the current Yavdian situation, this was a disadvantage.

Astrakhan’s first order of business was to rebuild some semblance of an economy. While warlords and Crusaders could make do with pillaging innocent Yavdians and squeezing them dry of every last drop of money and resources, Astrakhan could not afford to alienate its own population and destroy its legitimacy. Although Astrakhan remained under martial law, the military returned as much power to civilian leadership as possible so it could focus on fighting instead of governing. Astrakhan’s provincial and municipal governments immediately took steps to realign the city’s industry along a war economy, encouraging manufacturers to produce weapons and equipment for the troops. The military pitched in as well, prioritizing the protection of supply lines at all costs. While the army patrolled important roadways leading into Astrakhan, making sure trucks and trains delivering resources from further north and east were protected from bandits and warlords, the Yavdian Navy’s Caspian fleet—now acting on its own after contact was lost with fleet headquarters and the Arctic fleet—reestablished order across the Caspian Sea, braving relentless missile barrages from the Caucasus to ensure shipments and airlifts from Turkestan and Persia made it to Astrakhan. As the last bastion of Yavdian resistance, the supply lines had to be protected. Meanwhile, Astrakhan welcomed any loyalists and refugees who made it to the city gates. The Yavdian Army’s ranks soon swelled with thousands of newcomers eager to strike back against the Crusaders who had torn their nation apart.

These Crusaders sat just 30 miles to the southwest, over the border in Jerusalem itself. It was either the best or worst possible place to set up the so-called last bastion—so close to the border that it Astrakhan could easily fall if the Crusaders made any serious effort, but also so close that Jerusalem’s committee either believed Astrakhan had already fallen or no sane Yavdian government would set up its headquarters there. Whatever the case, Astrakhan prepared for the worst. The Army committed most of its troops to guarding the southwestern highway, which the Crusaders would likely use to come up from the border, but this came at the cost of withdrawing troops from the east, allowing warlord armies to advance westwards and come within 50 miles of the city. Any new willing arrivals of combat age were quickly given guns and sent off to the front. Reducing convoy escorts to the bare minimum, the Navy deployed the bulk of its ships to coastal bombardments of missile and artillery installations in the Caucasus. Yavdian military engineers rigged the levees, dams, and marshes of the Volga Delta with explosives, mines, and trenches, intending on using the swampy terrain to take out any invading Crusaders. The civilian government admitted such actions would cause irreparable damage to the delta’s delicate ecosystem, but it had no choice but to proceed as Astrakhan had to choose between its own survival and the delta’s. Besides, if an attack did happen, the Crusaders would most certainly scour the whole area and destroy the marsh anyways with chemical weapons if it meant killing at least a few Yavdians.

Astrakhan in December 2038. Although Astrakhan had styled itself as the legal Yavdian government, its direct control barely extended to a 50 mile radius around the city. Warlords frequently harassed northeastern defenses, probing for weaknesses, while the ever present threat of Jerusalem loomed just over the border. Total collapse was only prevented by regular convoys from Persia and Turkestan guarded by the Yavdian Navy.​

Despite all this preparation, the Crusaders never attacked, and the border remained quiet. Any Crusader reinforcements for the occupied cities came from Russia instead. Astrakhan’s main forces sat awkwardly, waiting for an enemy that never came, while outnumbered forces in the northeast were pushed back by warlords. Although the warlord fronts were soon stabilized, Astrakhan’s leadership concluded the current strategy was unsustainable. There was no guarantee Jerusalem wouldn’t attack from the border, and such an attack would be swift and overwhelming, but the threat from the relatively weaker warlords in the east was more immediate. Moving troops from the border to the northeast would likely trigger a Crusader attack, yet doing nothing and preparing for a Crusader attack would let the warlords walk in through Astrakhan’s back door. No matter what, Astrakhan would fall. Unless…

At one strategy meeting on December 20, a young general named Saikhangiin Börte brought up Lev Konstantinov, specifically his successes pushing back the front from Vilnius and his plans to invade the heartland itself. She asked, what if Yavdi did the same thing? Since the border was nearby, they could invade Jerusalem before Jerusalem invaded them. Like Konstantinov did, they should take the fight to the enemy. At first, only a few generals agreed with her; after all, their present situation was already tenuous enough. But as the status quo grew more and more unsustainable, and the more obvious it became that the two “real” options would both lead to Astrakhan’s defeat, more and more sided with Börte. For her part, Börte unveiled an ambitious plan that might give Astrakhan a way out of its mess. First, they would request reinforcements from the CAC, with the airlifts and convoys protected from Jerusalem’s missile barrages by the Yavdian Navy. These reinforcements would then push back the warlords in the northeast, while the rest of the Yavdian Army threw everything it had in one last assault on the Caucasus and Taurica. The plan was at first written off as implausible. The CAC was already tied up in eastern Turkestan with the Crusaders there, so they couldn’t possibly spare enough troops to reinforce the northeast. And even if those troops were in position, invading the Caucasus was suicide. Nobody knew anything about the strength of Jerusalem’s defenses in the area. If the original two options would lead to Astrakhan’s inevitable destruction, this third option would cause its immediate demise. To that, Börte simply responded: “You never know what you’re capable of until you try it.”

Rumors of Börte’s plan to follow Konstantinov spread across the city like wildfire, giving the people hope and excitement in a time of desperation and bleakness. Whether it spread through natural word of mouth or with Börte herself covertly telling people on the streets could not be determined. But soon, the only thing people were talking about was Börte’s daring plan to sweep into Taurica and not only eliminate the threat to Astrakhan but also free their Mongol and Russian brethren in the camps. A cry went up across the city, echoing up and down the Volga: “Free Taurica! Free our people!”

By the winter solstice, the people had firmly rallied behind taking the fight to the enemy. Feeling public pressure building, the General Staff reluctantly but fully committed to the plan, which was dubbed War Plan Konstantinov. The generals unanimously volunteered Börte for the operation, officially since she had suggested the plan but probably because none of them wanted to go and they could pin the blame on Börte when she failed. Börte didn’t mind, since she was already planning on volunteering. By Christmas, the civilian leadership had been briefed on the plan and agreed to it, and by December 26, the nations of Turkestan and Persia had agreed to airlift troops to Astrakhan.

Preparations began as the New Year approached. The days surrounding January 1 were especially cold across Russia and western Yavdi, but while the Crusaders were forced to pause their operations across the steppes of Eastern Europe and Central Asia due to freezing equipment, health concerns, and religious services, the Yavdians were used to the cold. The winter didn’t slow down the Khazars or the Saray and Mongol empires that succeeded it. It did, however, help the ancestors of the Yavdians repel an ill-advised Catholic crusade for Perm, and now the people of Astrakhan saw echoes of that past war in the current one. Perhaps it was only fitting, then, that Börte was a Borjigin.

Börte grew up in the city of Elista, the largest native Buddhist settlement in Europe, to the west of Astrakhan, which was even closer to the Jerusalem border and on the main roadway the invasion would be taking. The area was home to Oirat Mongols who had settled in the area in successive waves since the 13th century, with most of the modern population descending from the last major wave in the 17th century. The Oirats had played a significant role in the histories of Russia and Yavdi; Lenin was of partial Oirat descent, and several chancellors and Tsar-Khagans of Yavdi were at least part Oirat. Börte herself was also an Oirat on her mother’s side, but on her father’s side she traced her legacy back to Temur Khan himself. The 1261 Battle of Olvia, where Temur Khan and Kaiser Siegfried I fought each other in single combat, marked the end of the Mongols’ conquests in Europe, had forced Temur Khan to retreat to the steppes. Focusing on consolidating on the land he already had and preparing for further conquests, he set himself up in the old Saray capital of Sarai. After his death, the clans of Genghis Khan’s other sons rose to power and split the empire among themselves, plunging the steppes into a decades-long civil war. Temur Khan’s direct descendants, having settled down in Sarai, saw fit to stay in their city and avoid the fighting. But in the early 14th century, Sarai was sacked and captured by the rival Mönkhbat Khanate, and Temur Khan’s descendants lost power. The Borjigins of the Volga Delta persisted, though, and they lived on in scattered villages and towns in the region until the restored Saray Khaganate defeated the Mönkhbatids and marched into Sarai to reestablish their empire. The Borjigins were welcomed back to Sarai, but they were now vassals of the Saray khagan. Even this only lasted another generation as the new khagans were unable to restore the power their predecessors once had. The declining khaganate was ultimately finished off by the rising Yegu Khanate, which sacked Sarai again and this time completely destroyed it. Yavdian rule in the Volga Delta began in 1428 when the Yegu khagan Temur, named after the Mongol khan, conquered the previous Yavdian tsardom, integrated his territories into Yavdi, and declared himself the first Tsar-Khagan. When the Onggirat Khanate fell to Yavdian forces in 1785, ending the last successor khanate of the Mongol Empire, its Borjigin branch was resettled in the Volga Delta, meeting their distant relatives who were already there. Although the two groups had their fair share of disagreements over the centuries, they eventually came together, and the bolstered Borjigins of the Volga Delta persisted, though they never again enjoyed the prestige and authority they had in the thirteenth century. By 2000, only two branches of the Borjigin dynasty remained: the Volga and Mongolian branches. Börte was not the smartest or strongest Borjigin by far, but she was the first to rise out of the obscurity her ancestors had been stuck in for nearly 800 years. Perhaps it was fate that Börte was now poised to invade Taurica, just as her ancestor once did.

War Plan Konstantinov commenced on January 2 with a massive artillery bombardment of the border regions, followed by Yavdian troops crossing the border into the Caucasus. Börte sent two divisions to liberate Tsaritsyn—the ancestral home of the Toghorilids, from which they defeated the Yeguids and took Yavdi for themselves, giving the city its name—and from there invade Taurica. Holding back the majority of her tanks to reinforce the Persian and Turkish arrivals in the northeast, the bulk of Börte’s army was made up of infantry and cavalry divisions, and she immediately embraced Konstantinov’s tactics of mobility and self-sufficiency, which fit in peffectly with Mongol tactics almost unchanged since the days of Genghis Khan. In addition to packing the usual weapons, ammunition, and fuel, the Yavdians were to also bring useful survival tools like fishing rods and hunting equipment. Standard Yavdian rations included dried and ground meat borts, which was light and easy to transport and could be instantly cooked with hot water. Each cavalryperson maintained 2 or 3 horses, for use as backups for each other, emergency transports for non-cavalry personnel, extra sources of food if necessary, and to switch between them to avoid tiring out any particular horse when on the move. This way, her cavalry could travel up to 100 miles per day, outpacing enemy motor vehicles at times and making them ideal for scouting operations.

Börte didn’t centralize command on herself as much as Konstantinov did. Nor did she decentralize her chain of command to the extent Jerusalem did. Instead, she trusted her commanders would find out how to achieve tactical goals in the service of her grander strategy. Although the modern Yavdian military had been organized in the Russian style as a result of 70 years of Soviet rule, tactical and strategic planning drew more on battlefield tactics used by Saray, the Mongol Empire, and the Mongol successor khanates. Her commanders were to keep in close touch with each other and herself so as to avoid the disorganization that plagued the Crusaders and to adapt on the fly to any change in enemy strategy. Börte ordered her troops to train for every possible contingency the Crusaders might use, even if it was as ridiculous as a tactical nuclear strike.

Communication was pivotal to this semi-decentralization. In the time of Genghis Khan, the Mongol Empire had a system of postal-relay horse stations called Örtöö, for the fast delivery of written messages, with reliability and speed of communication rivaling that of the Roman network resurrected by Friedrich the Great. In battle, the Mongols used signal flags, horns, and arrows to communicate orders. Börte modernized these tactics for the 21st century. Considering radio communications a liability due to the potential for Crusader espionage, she instead turned to low-tech smoke signals, flares, and horns. Working with civilian communities, particularly those who could physically pass for Germans, she established a network of informants and spies to inform her on Crusader troop movements. These informants were not to stray too far out of their designated operations zones, not even if they obtained important information on the enemy. Instead, they were to relay their message to another informant in an adjacent zone, and so on until Börte received the message. Of course, this system was still at risk of being infiltrated and subverted by the Crusaders, but Börte had other contingencies. Still, it was unlikely the Crusaders would even suspect such a low-tech system to be set up and used. After all, these methods dated back eight centuries and were associated with the barbarian hordes that had rampaged across Eurasia. Why would any sane modern general use them?

Before battles, Börte did as Friedrich the Great did in getting as much information on the terrain and enemy as she possibly could. She and her commanders would find the highest ground available and set up their base of operations there. They would thus gain the best view of the ongoing battle, and her troops would find it easier to see orders sent by flares and smoke signals from the high ground. Finally, the high ground was easier defended from enemy counterattacks. Next, Börte would also send scouts out to figure out the enemy’s strength, location, and tactics. Up to ten days prior to her advance into any particular area, she would send spies in to map the area, gauge the enemy’s strengths, identify important fortifications and useful terrain, and find any potential allies.

Once any particular engagement began, Börte knew she couldn’t match up to the raw firepower Jerusalem had inherited from the Reich, especially with a lack of tanks and heavy artillery, but she turned that to her advantage as well. With the winter intensifying, heavy vehicles would become almost useless. As she advanced west, her troops passed column after column of abandoned Crusader tanks, many of them not even damaged in battle. She didn’t know these new tank models had several glaring design flaws, as a result of Tesla Dynamic attempting to cut costs and increase profits, which led to their fuel freezing solid and mechanical and electrical systems becoming unresponsive or even stuck in place. But it benefited her, because her army had been reorganized to not depend on armor, as opposed to the Crusader army, which now lacked artillery that would have been provided by tanks. In the opening moves of any engagement, Börte attacked with what would appear to be an overwhelming barrage from her mortars and light artillery, but to conserve ammunition, many of the volleys fired blanks. The goal wasn’t to blast the enemy into the snow immediately. Instead, it was supposed to intimidate the enemy into spreading out and seeking cover, breaking up their formations. Once her scouts confirmed the formations had broken, they would send a signal to the cavalry, generally in the form of the sounding of horns or the beating of drums. The cavalry would begin its charge and wipe out the remnants.

Although Börte wasn’t as bloodthirsty as the Khan of Khans or Temur Khan, she wasn’t above using subterfuge. For example, Börte would expose a “weakened” unit in a certain location with known enemy presence and entice the enemy into attacking. Once the enemy was on the move, the luring unit would disappear, and units at full strength would flank the enemy from the sides and the rear. Börte would sometimes feign numerical superiority by having her soldiers light at least five lamps or campfires each when setting up camp. When a battle began, she would on occasion have her cavalry tie foliage to their horses and drag it behind them to kick up snow so that enemies would perceive a much larger attacking force and have the terrifying image of a rampaging Mongol horde straight out of the Thirteenth Century Crisis put in their heads. If she came across a mobile Crusader army, where most of the formation consisted of tanks, armored personnel vehicles, and mobile artillery, she would split her forces in three to outflank and surprise the enemy from at least three directions. To the Crusaders, the Yavdians would appear to come out of nowhere and in greater numbers than they actually were. If the Crusaders managed to push back against one flank, Börte had positioned all three flanks at equal distances from each other so they could easily reinforce themselves. And if the Crusaders still managed to prevail, Börte would pull back and retreat; she saw no shame in retreating, as the engagement still taught her much about the enemy’s tactics and defenses, and she could always fight another day.

There were situations when Börte “retreated” as well. In his time, Genghis Khan had perfected the difficult tactic that was the feigned retreat. It sounded simple enough: fake a rout of one’s own forces so that the enemy breaks ranks to pursue, expecting an easy victory over the shattered remnants, but then lure them deep into one’s own lines and then destroy them. Yet it was much harder to carry out, because untrained troops could mistake a feigned rout for a real one. This was where Börte’s emphasis on discipline came in. All of her troops were trained in feigned retreats. A special signal, close to the signal for a real retreat, was designated for declaring feigned retreats. If the enemy didn’t bite, they were to continue the “retreat” as long as necessary, even if that would take more than a week. Her detractors argued this would only encourage the Crusaders to attack genuinely retreating units and continue disregarding the rules of war, but Börte dismissed them. The Crusaders already didn’t make any distinction between fighting units, retreating ones, and those who had surrendered or otherwise couldn’t fight back. They attacked all without mercy. There was no reason not to feign retreats, as they would still be attacked regardless.

In the early hours of the invasion, enemy garrisons in Tsaritsyn and on the border were surprised and easily overrun, as if they hadn’t even been expecting to fight. Börte realized exactly why Astrakhan had never been attacked: the Crusaders couldn’t even attack to begin with. Of course, Crusader units further west put up more resistance, but her tactics proved extremely effective against them. However, the most pressing threat to the success of War Plan Konstantinov was not the Crusaders but the civilian population itself. Years of state propaganda from Bysandros Malecares had painted the Yavdians as barbarian steppe nomads bent on restoring the Mongol Empire and completing Temur Khan’s conquest of the Reich. Börte’s spies and informants were still present, but their reach influence became even more limited as civilians patrolled the streets on their own and rooted out suspected traitors. Many less careful spies, and even many unlucky innocents, were exposed and lynched by their vengeful neighbors. The underground resistance network Börte had hoped to rely on for supplies and intel never materialized. As a result, she had to rely on conventional supply lines. As a single city barely controlling the surrounding areas, Astrakhan was unable to guarantee the protection of supply lines runinng over the border. She would have to take her supplies from Jerusalem by force.

Quickly, Börte devised a new plan. Before their supplies ran out, they would push west into three important cities: Luganzig, Azach, and Tamatarcha. Luganzig and nearby Donetzig were mining towns founded during the Imperial Century, and their raw materials could be used to repair and fuel Yavdian vehicles. Azach (known as Azaq by its former non-German populations) was a major port city controlling trade on the Don, so Astrakhan could ship in more supplies downriver from where the river left Yavdian territory near Tsaritsyn. Tamatarcha sat on the Bospor Strait (not to be confused with the Bosphorus) that connected the Sea of Azach and Black Sea and separated Crimea and the mainland Kuban region; controlling Tamatarcha and its medieval fortress would prevent Holy Marine reinforcements from entering the Sea of Azach, allowing Yavdian ships to offload their supplies in relative peace. With no time to lose, the operation quickly adapted, and Börte’s army swept onto the Black Sea coast with a speed not seen since the hordes of her ancestor, taking Tamatarcha and Azach on January 8. But the weather didn’t cooperate, and the winter only intensified. Just as Lake Texcoco froze over in North Eimerica, the Don froze over in Taurica.

The river’s freezing presented Börte with a new problem. Now supply ships from Tsaritsyn were trapped, their supplies stuck in port until the river thawed. Attempting to blow up the ice with drills and explosives—as all of the icebreaker ships were either destroyed or stuck in the Arctic—proved useless as it was too thick. Börte solved it in a unique manner. Instead of trying to blast or cut their way through the ice, why not use the ice itself to their advantage? She tasked soldiers in Tsaritsyn with putting city supplies on sleds, tying the sleds to vehicles and horses outfitted for travel on ice, and then send the supplies down the frozen river to Azach; they would then head back upriver to pick up more supplies in Tsaritsyn. To the Crusaders, who were expecting Börte to ship in supplies via helicopter or airplane, this course of action seemed absurd. But the shipments did their job. The troops got their food, and a supply line to the Black Sea had been established. This tactic wasn’t actually as crazy as it sounded; during the Mongol Empire’s invasion of Russia following the subjugation of Saray, the Mongols used frozen rivers as highways.

With that crisis resolved, Börte turned back to her main objective. She ordered her Tamatarcha troops to hold their positions and keep the city out of Crusader hands; in the meantime, they would shell Crimea and apply pressure on the towns of Theodoro and Theodosia. Reinforcements from Astrakhan would watch their southern flank and seize the silos firing missiles in the Caucasus; ideally a concurrent Persian invasion into Mesopotamia would significantly help take pressure off Börte’s army in Taurica, but the Persian government was at the moment unwilling to do more than send troops to Astrakhan. Finally, the remaining troops would march on Luganzig and Donetzig. As blizzards raged and temperatures plummeted below zero, the Yavdians marched west, easily braving the winter cold. Now realizing what Börte’s goal was, the Crusaders threw everything they had at her. Wave after wave of enemy soldiers crashed against the Yavdian front lines, only to crumble under a combined assault from both Börte and Tengri itself. Börte didn’t believe in such symbolism, being a practicing Buddhist like many in Elista, but she didn’t dissuade her troops from believing in it either. By January 10, all High Command could do was have drones harass the Yavdians in an attempt to slow them down, but many of them also froze in the cold, and the rest were easly dealt with. Local Crusader commanders ordered their troops to not take a single step back, “for to let the heathen barbarian profane our sacred soil is the greatest sin before God.” Either believing in their own propaganda or fearing retribution from a superior officer, they launched countless counterattacks even when they made no logistical or tactical sense. The only thing achieved was a dramatic increase in Crusader deaths. The Caucasian missile sites were taken on the 10th, followed by Luganzig on the 12th.

Taurica in January 2039. From Astrakhan, Börte launched a three-pronged offensive into eastern Taurica, first taking out the border defenses and then seizing Luganzig, Azach, and Tamatarcha. Next, she then captured the missile launch sites in the Caucasus to both stop the attacks on CAC supply convoys and turn the missiles against Crusader targets in Taurica. After that, she planned to march on Donetzig, Marioúpoli, Sich, and Theodosia. The ethnic groups living in Taurica reacted differently to her invasion. The Mongols sided with Astrakhan as a way to free their brethren in the camps and stop the cultural erasure Jerusalem had enforced on them. The Russians also helped Börte, but many took their weapons and set out for Russia. The Greeks and Germans, though, firmly supported Jerusalem and fiercely resisted with everything they had.​

The capture of Luganzig was the last of Börte’s three objectives. Now her control over eastern Taurica and the Sea of Azach region had been consolidated. From Luganzig, the troops could now restock on ammunition and repair vehicles; from Azach, they got supplies from Tsaritsyn; in Tamatarcha, they could prevent reinforcements from coming up through the Caucasus. Börte’s next move was to give her troops time to rest and regroup. They could not hope to take the rest of Taurica if they were completely exhausted. But in the meantime, they could still attack. With the Caucasian missile sites in her hands, she now turned them against Jerusalem, firing long range missiles at military targets in western Taurica, Mesopotamia, and even eastern Anatolia. Most were shot down, while a few hit their marks, but they served their purpose in keeping Jerusalem’s forces off balance and in disarray. And with the missiles no longer aimed at Turkestan, that meant more CAC reinforcements and supplies could safely arrive in Astrakhan, allowing the city to not only decisively push back the warlords but begin seriously considering the liberation of the rest of the country. Astrakhan had survived its darkest hour. The dream of a free Yavdi was not yet lost. And it was all thanks to a plan nobody had believed would work less than a month ago, drawn up by a general many would have forgotten about if not for her name.

But as Börte said, they wouldn’t have known it would work if they didn’t try it.

Like Clockwork​

“The Lord spoke to Moses saying,
‘Take revenge for the children of Israel against the Midianites; afterwards you will be gathered to your people.’
So Moses spoke to the people, saying, ‘Arm from among you men for the army, that they can be against Midian, and carry out the revenge of the Lord against Midian.
A thousand for each tribe, a thousand for each tribe, from all the tribes of Israel you shall send into the army.’
From the thousands of Israel one thousand was given over for each tribe, twelve thousand armed for battle.
Moses sent them the thousand from each tribe to the army, them along with Phinehas the son of Eleazar the kohen to the army, with the sacred utensils and the trumpets for sounding in his possession.
They mounted an attack against Midian, as the Lord had commanded Moses, and they killed every male.
And they killed the Midianite kings upon their slain: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian, and Balaam the son of Beor they slew with the sword.
The children of Israel took the Midianite women and their small children captive, and they plundered all their beasts, livestock, and all their possessions.
They set fire to all their residential cities and their castles.
They took all the booty and all the plunder of man and beast.
They brought the captives, the plunder, and the booty to Moses and to Eleazar the kohen and to the entire community of Israel in the camp, in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho.
Moses, Eleazar the kohen, and all princes of the community went out to meet them, outside the camp.
Moses became angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had returned from the campaign of war.
Moses said to them, ‘Did you allow all the females to live?
They were the same ones who were involved with the children of Israel on Balaam's advice to betray the Lord over the incident of Peor, resulting in a plague among the congregation of the Lord.
So now kill every male child, and every woman who can lie intimately with a man you shall kill.
And all the young girls who have no experience of intimate relations with a man, you may keep alive for yourselves’.”
- Numbers 31:1-18

The war in Europe had not gone according to Jerusalem’s plans, to put it lightly. Every day brought new reports of unexpected resistance or setbacks on multiple fronts. Within the halls of the Pentagon, the High Command observed the casualty rates on each front. It was an open secret that the decision to decentralize the chain of command away from the Megas Domestikos and onto field commanders was a politically motivated one; at the time, the most persistent rumor was that there was a falling out between General Heinrich Dandolo and the rest of the committee over Dandolo’s perceived role in not being able to prevent the Chinese-sponsored assassinations of Autokrators Wilhelm IV and Wilhelm V. But none dared voice their concerns, lest they end up like Dandolo—in a powerless post that was the only thing standing between them and joblessness, which would lead them to “social services” (though why Dandolo had not been simply fired and sent into that hell yet baffled them all). So High Command continued following the orders the Regency handed down, even as said orders grew increasingly erratic and personally motivated.

All this was concealed from the public, naturally. Thanks to the efforts of Bysandros Malecares, the average Jerusalemite was constantly coddled and reminded of their quality of life as opposed to how things were in the times of the party cartel. The media showed constant prayer services led by the state, hailing the righteousness of the Great Crusade that had been declared in November. Malecares’ “news” showed the chaos rampant across places like Russia, Yavdi, and India; the brutal authoritarian crackdowns of Han Xianyu’s China (though, ironically, many details were censored for being too similar to the committee’s own crackdowns); riots across the Pacific islands controlled by the loyalists, particularly the ongoing strife splitting the Hawaiian islands; and even warzones like Vilnius and Sumatra passed off as anarchic territories where Crusaders were bringing back order. It didn’t matter that most of the chaos was Jerusalem’s doing. Most didn’t care, for their basic needs were taken care of. Those who did care, though, didn’t doubt that pagan barbarism would sweep into the Holy Land and erase allegedly six thousand years of Christian civilization and culture should Jerusalem fall. After the casualties grew too high for Malecares to simply ignore, he spun it another way, calling on all Christians to make sacrifices for God to bring them victory. After all, just as Jesus sacrificed his life on the cross to redeem all of humanity for its sins, so too must Jerusalemites make sacrifices to redeem all of humanity from its sinful barbarism and bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. Victory wasn’t going to be easy, but it was God’s will, and it would happen, God willing. Defeatism became equated with heresy. By December, Jerusalemites had become completely accustomed to all this. They went through the motions like clockwork, turning in any neighbors who expressed any thoughts that deviated from the Regency’s line before returning to work as usual. It was a simple way of life they had long accepted. Those who didn’t accept it or had slight doubts about it still kept their mouths shut and continued with their lives, for they no longer knew who to trust, except the committee from on high. Jerusalem, now, was like a clock, its people were the gears, and everything was oriented towards keeping the clock going.

It was this complacency and unity, garnered through fear and propaganda, that gave the Regency leeway to consider even more extreme military operations to turn the tide of the war. A month into the war, things could still go either way; the Crusaders’ initial November offensives had stalled, but the enemy had not made any major breakthroughs. The Regency aimed to retake the advantage through the use of powerful chemical weapons. Chemical weapons had been used on the tactical level in Livonia and other fronts, such as India and North Eimerica, but the Regency now wanted to deploy them on the strategic level. This provoked a rare round of dissent from some of the regents, who feared it would poison the land they aimed to resettle with Christian populations or come back to affect citizens in the heartland, but they were outvoted. The weapons were necessary for Christendom’s victory. In a world where barbarians would do anything to cheat and steal victory, Christendom must fight back with everything at its disposal, ready to eliminate any and all threats to its existence. Chemical weapons were to be one prong of the newly devised Herem (“Total Destruction”) Doctrine, which called for the extension of total war to its natural extreme—the complete and utter eradication of enemies of Christendom—not only their political, military, and economic institutions but also the people and cultures themselves. High Command dutifully relayed the new orders to its Crusaders on the front lines. Citing Numbers 31 as divine justification, girls and women of childbearing age were to be taken for assimilation into the melting pot. Everyone else was to be put to death. Infrastructure was to be burned and scoured, so that enemy resistance would never grow back. In doing so, the enemy would be made a part of the Christian nation and become incapable of further resistance. Once the Crusade was completed, the land would be granted to faithful of God, just as the tribes of Israel swept away the Canaanites to settle their promised land.

Implementation of the Herem Doctrine began in mid-December with the Regency deciding to target Scandinavia first, for various reasons both military and religious. High Command was aware the Scandinavian front had stagnated in Denmark due to heavy resistance from both native Scandinavians and ethnic Germans who had lived there for centuries. The rest of the country had only been hit with nuclear warheads on November 2 and infrequent air and missile strikes since then. In fact, the Scandinavian Navy had dealt the Holy Navy several major defeats in the Baltic Sea, and its control of the Øresund, Kattegat, and Skagerrak prevented reinforcements from entering. The Regency, though, was more concerned about the religious aspect. The Vikings had been a blight on Christendom for over a thousand years. Their bloodthirsty gods had commanded they raid and pillage monasteries and Christian settlements all over Europe, from Hispania all the way to Constantinople itself. In the so-called Pagan Resurgence of the 11th century (known by the 1105 Commission as the “Christian Dark Ages”), they had even renounced the love of God to remain with their barbaric ways. For the next eight centuries, Scandinavians had waged dozens of wars against Christian Rome, each time seeking to overthrow Christendom and put all of its achievements to the torch. Now they aimed to finish what Harald Hardrada started. It was time to do what Saint Gunhilda should have done centuries ago.

On December 18, at 0400 hours, High Command issued the code word to begin Operation “Judgment of Lindisfarne.” Missile silos in the Central District primed their warheads and prepared for launch; long range bombers took off and marked their targets in major Scandinavian cities; submarines and destroyers moved into position off the Norwegian and Swedish coasts; the Crusaders of Denmark retreated to safe locations. At 0430, bombers reached their targets simultaneously with the missiles fired from the coasts and the heartland; Scandinavian anti-aircraft defenses had been significantly weakened from previous air attacks and were unable to shoot down more than a handful of bombers or missiles. Initially, Scandinavian military leadership saw nothing out of the ordinary with what appeared to be another air raid and missile barrage. Bombers had been spotted over Scandinavian cities for many weeks now, and the missile designs were the same as those from previous raids. What they didn’t know was that these missiles had been modified specifically to carry modified homing cluster bombs, like the MIRV nuclear warheads used on November 2. Each mini-bomb contained various chemical weapons depending on the missile, including but not limited to tabun, chlorine gas, sarin, Novichok, hydrogen cyanide, mustard gas, napalm, LSDM, and the Neuspartikoi agents. Guided by an advanced computer targeting system, with human operators in the heartland correcting glitches and deviations, each warhead was capable of spreading its truly unholy cocktail over ten square miles, and targets had been chosen for maximum coverage over each city.

The plan was to attack both military and civilian targets, ranging from army bases and supply hubs to civilian housing, hospitals, and government buildings for total coverage against all aspects of “pagan barbarian” Scandinavian society. Every mainland Scandinavian settlement with a population of at least 100,000 as of November 1, 2038 was targeted. At 0431, missiles and bombs fell on Copenhagen, the first city to be targeted for its proximity to Jerusalem. Due to the vast majority of city structures being made of concrete, bricks, or metal, napalm had little effect beyond incinerating hundreds of civilians and large swathes of farmland and woods on the outskirts. Chemical agents, though, saw far more success. While many Scandinavian pilots and naval crews escaped on account of being out of the city for missions, army personnel were hit especially hard as many Scandinavian soldiers were still sleeping in their barracks at half past four in the morning. These barracks would become death traps as the toxic chemicals corroded through windows and walls and sprayed in through ventilation shafts. When chemical hazard teams arrived 8 hours later (after determining the levels of toxicity present and instituting appropriate safety measures), they found most of the bodies crowded around doors and windows, their hands particularly corroded and almost reduced to bone attempting to open contaminated doorknobs or windowsills. Approximately 80% of all soldiers in barracks in Copenhagen and elsewhere in Scandinavia were killed that day. Civilian casualties were similarly high, with some neighborhoods suffering 90% or even full depopulation. The same thing repeated itself minutes later in Stockholm, Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Helsinki, and many other cities. Large swathes of cities became completely uninhabitable, making it difficult to assess the final death toll and structural damage. As a result of fire crews being unable to safely approach, napalm fires in affected neighborhoods burned out of control, consuming far more blocks and killing more fleeing civilians. Much of Scandinavia’s wood-based cultural heritage—stave temples, sacred groves, paintings, preserved longships—went up in flames. In Stockholm, royal palaces which had escaped the nuclear attack melted and corroded and burned; only a handful of royal family members, those lucky enough to not have been in the city that day, survived the attack. The temples and sacred groves of Uppsala—the very heart of the Norse traditions—were reduced to ash. Millions of Scandinavians died in a single day. Their homes lay in flames. Their cultural heritage had been razed. Their cities had been reduced into toxic wastes and made uninhabitable for many years. And that was only on the first day. Many more such days were to follow.

The extent of Operation Judgment of Lindisfarne’s scouring of Scandinavia. Surviving government agencies and leaders relocated to the inland city of Tingvalla, whose population was small enough that it was ignored. A provisional capital was soon established, after which thousands of refugees from the coasts descended upon it. The refugee camps appearing around the city became notorious for their squalid conditions, due to a combination of the city’s small economy not being used to such large population sizes, farmland being poisoned or burned, imports from coastal cities ceasing, and the cold winter only intensifying as December and January went on.
(It took me until editing this map for me to realize Åland is still part of Russia as of 2030 (I used the 2030 world map because I deleted the 2038 one with every other year that isn’t at the start of the decade for disk space, and there were no border changes as of 2038). I’m sure this happened because my script doing the post-Soviet territorial redistribution either forgot Åland or assumed it was included in a Scandinavian state and it ended up not being in one. Canonically? I don't know. Maybe Russia was allowed to keep it as a naval base since its only other access to the sea is through Tsarberg. Maybe it shares ownership with Scandinavia. Maybe I’ll give it back to Scandinavia on story side. Yeah, I have no ideas about this.
You have no idea how long it took me to hand draw all those borders since my software can’t do it for me.)​

Jerusalem had not only devastated the population and infrastructure of Scandinavia, but it had also grievously wounded its very soul. To the Scandinavians, December 18 might as well have been the beginning of Ragnarok. Had they not collapsed the previous month, the Ragnaroker movement would have revelled in the fact that Ragnarok, or at least the Fimbulwinter that preceded it, had finally come, just as they had been preparing for. Everyone else was too busy fleeing inland or to northern cities which had escaped the attack, though most froze to death in the process. Anarchy reigned on the plains and coasts of Sweden. In southern Norway, panicking civilians stampeded and ran over each other in a desperate dash inland. The islands and peninsula of Denmark grew unnaturally quiet, with the burning husks of both military and civilian ships corroding across the Øresund. Forests and farmland became wastelands uninhabitable by almost all living things. The hills echoed with the screams of the dying and fleeing.

Jerusalem’s propaganda revelled in the suffering its bombs and missiles caused. Bysandros Malecares declared the atrocities of Lindisfarne, the Viking raids, the Pagan Resurgence, the Commonwealth Wars, and World War I repaid with interest. The Viking barbarians had been given the battlefield deaths they always wanted, but they would be condemned to the fires of hell after burning in life. One of the greatest threats—both physical and spiritual—to Christendom had been finally neutralized. It was everything Saint Gunhilda ever wanted. The warrior saint had descended from Heaven in the middle of a Norse crusade. Yet the cowardly party cartel refused to let her finish the job and reconvert all of the heathens of Scandinavia, whether by the cross or the sword. With the party cartel finally eradicated, there was nothing holding back Christendom from fulfilling Saint Gunhilda’s dream. This was a second war against the Midianites—hated enemies of God and His chosen people. When the Israelites entered Canaan, they swept aside the Midianites on God’s orders, and He demanded they put their men to the torch and take their women and children into their ranks, so that they may be made part of the nation. With all land-based resistance in Scandinavia effectively neutralized, now the Crusaders moved to bring Scandinavia’s women and children into the melting pot of Jerusalem, so that they may be cleansed of their heathenry and barbaric ways. Any girls and women of childbearing age were to be captured for processing. Boys under 10 were given a temporary exemption from the Herem Doctrine for this specific front to test if they could be processed as well as the girls. All other Scandinavians—males over 10 and women who were past menopause—were to be shot on sight. Propaganda hailed each new “run” of Crusaders braving the toxic wastes of Denmark and returning with a new batch of barbarians to civilize. But on the ground, the reality was far more complicated. Ironically, High Command couldn’t fully capitalize on the opening provided by Judgment of Lindisfarne. It would be quite easy to seize all of Jutland, but the remnants of the Scandinavian Navy still controlled the Øresund, so the Danish islands—including Copenhagen—and Sweden and Norway remained out of reach. An invasion of Finland from occupied Tsarberg was out of the question too, as all Crusader resources in Russia were dedicated to maintaining the occupation of an increasingly unruly local population. Furthermore, the dual threats of Lev Konstantinov and Saikhangiin Börte in the east forced High Command to redeploy many troops from Scandinavia and Russia to Livonia and Taurica. But at least the threat of a Scandinavian attack on Tsarberg through Finland or the Central District through Denmark had been neutralized for now.

The initial worldwide reaction was the usual shock, horror, and universal condemnation. Although chemical weapons had been used on the tactical level in Livonia, but nobody had ever expected Jerusalem to use them with such abandon, recklessness, and disregard. Even the Soviets and various Chinese regimes since Wang Jingwei had largely avoided using chemical weapons in battle (though using them in covert experiments was another thing). The horror intensified when video and images of the Scandinavians’ suffering began leaking out. One such image shared around the world showed the withered trunks of Uppsala’s sacred groves, surrounded by dead goðar still clutching priceless relics in their hands. The grass had been burned away, and the ground reeked with green and purple mud. Global populations already had almost universally negative opinions on Jerusalem, but the “Scouring of Scandinavia” finally ended any remaining sympathies for Jerusalem. Nobody tried rationalizing Jerusalem’s worldview, goals, or actions anymore. It was now pointless to negotiate. Even the most ardent anti-war proponents threw their full support behind the war. In every country, public opinion for continuing and fully committing to the war surged to effectively unanimous levels. In Nanjing, Han Xianyu appeared for the first time outside his palace bunker, touring a camp for those displaced by the nuclear attack. He could barely hold back his smugness when he spoke to the cameras:

“This is the Reich’s true nature. See how the supposed champion of human rights treats human lives. See the hypocrisy of Romans as they remake the world in their bloody image, with no concern for the lives of innocents. See the lies of Christianity, an apocalyptic death cult calling itself a religion of peace, a creed of hate and evil that has the gall to say it preaches love and justice. They call themselves civilized. Superior to the rest of us barbarians. In reality, they are the true barbarians. They have been a plight on humanity for a thousand years, bringing chaos and devastation wherever they go. The same story can be seen on every continent in every century. The Reich does not deserve to rule the world. It is time for us to hand the world back to its people. It is time to free humanity from the Roman yoke, before more suffer the fate of Scandinavia.”

His speech went viral on what remained of the Internet, with videos of it being viewed, shared, and downloaded millions of times even outside China. Traditional media and word of mouth spread his words even further. Han had struck a nerve with all of humanity, which came around to agreeing with him. Outside Persia, public opinion of Romanitas, Roman culture and society, the Roman people, and anything Roman dramatically plummeted. It became social suicide to vouch for any Roman ideas, because they had now been equated with Jerusalem and its atrocities. On the other hand, global opinion of Han Xianyu surged as many began seeing him as a hero fighting to free humanity from the madness of Jerusalem.

Governments, both liberal and authoritarian, received a blank check to wage the war. Due to popular demand, the Tingvalla emergency government resisted calls to surrender, though proponents of surrender gained more influence in Tingvalla as the humanitarian situation worsened in January and hundreds began freezing to death. Boris Bradziunas’ entire cabinet and many politicians from current and previous Livonian administrations, including aging World War III veterans and even many Galdikas family members, took up arms and joined him on the battlefield. The Commonwealth Rifles’ Union saw an unprecedented surge in membership to the point where it ran out of guns to give to new volunteers and started handing out swords and bows. Many union volunteers would also join Konstantinov’s army or form their own resistance cells in Russia, where they passed on valuable intelligence further south to Börte once she began her offensive in January. Börte had no shortage of volunteers to draw on from Astrakhan, southern Russia, and even Taurica. The peoples of Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan, and India, all dealing with Crusader incursions on their borders or within their own nations, learned exactly what fate would befall them if they lost. Gunduz II immediately ordered a massive upgrade and expansion of Persia’s Iron Dome anti-aircraft and missile interception system to cover its neighbors as well. Turkestan sent more troops to reinforce Astrakhan, while Afghanistan sent its own army to drive out the Crusaders rampaging in eastern Turkestan. The Ahluwalia brothers immediately drew up plans for another shot at retaking Delhi. Han Xianyu, though, used the opportunity to crack down even further on any remaining opposition to his regime. With public opinion overwhelmingly in his favor, the last remnants of the Fuxingyundong, Minjindang, and other assorted anti-Han opposition were eliminated in flashy and dramatic public arrests and trials which utterly discredited them in the public eye. Han had successfully used the war to paint all of his opponents as Jerusalem sympathizers, and the only true Chinese were those who supported him and the Emperor. Even Wang Jingwei and Chuang Kai-Shek would have envied the nearly total adulation and support Han achieved. The international community, having been swayed to his side by his moving speech about the freedom of humanity, looked the other way as he delivered the final blows to Chinese democracy. After a fifty year run, the dream of the Tangwai movement was finally dead.

In a war between two totalitarian nations and their murderous ideologies, the good suffered. Good people were rewarded with death and demonization. Good ideas were stamped out in favor of militarism, chauvinism, and blind faith and obedience. The wicked and evil were celebrated as heroes and saviors, afforded undeserved respect and fame. Not only had entire nations and civilizations had become victims of the war, but also values and ideas. Chinese democracy. Scandinavian anti-militarism. Russian optimism. Roman meritocracy. All were sacrificed on the altar of hatred and fear, to fuel a war between two monstrous regimes bent on the complete annihilation of the other and all who stood in their way.

And it would not stop, for Scandinavia would not be the last victim of these monsters.

Schengen Endures​

“May Ahura Mazda bear me aid, with the gods of the royal house; and may Ahura Mazda protect this country from a hostile army, from famine, from the Lie!”
- Darius the Great of Persia

Schengen couldn’t catch a break. Already vastly reduced in influence and relevance over the last few years, the war did it no favors. Russia and Yavdi had surrendered and no longer existed. Livonia’s membership existed on paper only, as Vilnius prioritized its own survival. Scandinavia had been reduced to a toxic husk that threatened to collapse into Yavdi-style warlordism and famine at any moment. India had never rejoined Schengen, its government still deeply opposed to rejoining a formerly Roman-run alliance after what Jerusalem did to Chancellor Jayapal and Samrat Chakravartin Jayasimha. Mali, Abyssinia, and the East Africa Federation (not to be confused with the supernational East Africa Confederation) had formed their own partnership with the African loyalists, which ironically was far more effective than continued Schengen participation as it was focused on Africa. And of the last three Schengen members who still believed in the values and ideals of the old alliance—Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkestan—two had been turned into battlefields for the Chinese and Jerusalemite juggernauts, and the third was trying to save the other two from complete oblivion. India continued to burn. The Crusader garrisons, in between easily repelling anything the Ahluwalia brothers threw at them, had taken to looting the cities under their occuption for resources, money, or just for fun. Afghanistan had so far drove out any Crusaders attempting to take its cities, but it had no counter to the bombs and missiles Jerusalem dropped on Kabul, Ghazni, Kunduz, and Herat. The Crusaders swept into the eastern cities from their border garrisons, repeating the tactics they used in eastern Yavdi, but after December 4 they were forced to content with a Chinese invasion which pushed them westward. Bukhara and Tashkent suffered under the Crusader yoke, while further east, the Chinese had taken Almaty and advanced on Bishkek. The Turkish capital of Samarkand was now exposed.

Amid the raging storm of ice and fallout that was World War IV, Persia tried to stand. Shahbanu Gunduz knew the precarious situation her country was in. Despite being one of the only two nations that escaped November 2, Persia was still a minor regional power at best. It hadn’t been a serious major power in over 200 years. Despite Gunduz’s military and infrastructure being the only ones that weren’t devastated by the nukes, she didn’t have enough men or firepower to project power beyond the Central Asia region. She barely had enough troops to spare for helping out Turkestan. The vast majority of the Artesh was stationed on the border with Jerusalem. Unlike the “false front” that almost doomed Astrakhan, the Mesopotamian front saw sporadic conflict at every stretch between the Caspian and the Gulf. There wasn’t too much fighting that Gunduz had to commit her entire army to defending the border, but there wasn’t too little that she could safely move more troops away from the border to help Turkestan. In a way, there were echoes of Astrakhan’s dilemma here as well. Turkestan almost surely would fall without more Persian reinforcements, which would not only open up northern Persia to attack but also allow Chinese reinforcements to go around the Crusader-controlled Yavdian border regions and spill into the Yavdian interior. Just like in Astrakhan, it seemed like suicide to change the situation and move troops from the border to Turkestan. Gunduz knew there was a significant chance of the Crusaders having much larger and more powerful armies deeper in Mesopotamia, ready to strike as soon as her border defenses weakened, though she had no way of being sure as Persia’s military and intelligence satellites had almost all been destroyed. Over the years, Gunduz had cultivated an image of being careful, pragmatic, but also blunt and to the point, not afraid to speak her mind but also knowing what had to be done for Persia’s sake. So naturally, people expected her to take the safest and most pragmatic option. But they forgot she was not afraid to make hard calls.

Shahbanu Gunduz II of Persia. Notorious for her sharp tongue and take-no-prisoners attitude, she was loved by the Persian public for calling out corruption and incompetence within the Majlis and her own royal court. Even before the war began, she was one of the most aggressively anti-Jerusalem world leaders and fiercely resisted anything that would empower Jerusalem. After the death of Olga Kirova and the collapse of Russia, she positioned herself and Persia as the leaders of the anti-Jerusalem resistance, though the charisma of Han Xianyu now threatened to split apart what remained of the Schengen alliance and hand leadership to Han and his authoritarian ideals. Gunduz was also known to be a childhood friend of the missing Roman princess Wilhelmina.​

In mid-January, one hundred thousand Artesh troops left the border and marched to Mashhad, on the Turkish border, where they linked up with another one hundred thousand Afghan and Turkish troops. The Artesh deployed newly developed surveillance technology—ground-based to get around the satellite issue—to peer into the Crusaders’ logistics and intelligence, learning the strength of their formations and the supply lines propping up the siege of Samarkand. The siege was sustained with reinforcements and firepower from Bukhara and Tashkent; coming to Samarkand’s aid with the two hundred thousand reinforcements would provoke an equivalent response from the Crusaders, who would easily flank and encircle them. Furthermore, the Chinese in the east could wait until their two enemies exhausted themselves fighting each other, then eliminate the weakened victor. Gunduz decided she couldn’t rush straight to Samarkand. She ordered the garrison of Bishkek to evacuate and escort civilians to safety, effectively giving it up to the Chinese. Not only would this free up the Bishkek garrison to help with Samarkand, but it would also force the Chinese to tie up manpower defending Bishkek from any Crusader reprisals. Chinese-occupied Bishkek would additionally worry Jerusalem, which feared a Chinese presence that close to Tashkent, and prompt High Command to send troops from Bukhara and Tashkent to take Bishkek for itself. The end result was that the original “Russian standoff” predicament would be completely flipped: instead of Jerusalem and Persia weakening each other for China’s benefit, Jerusalem and China would undermine their own positions for Persia’s benefit.

With that out of the way, Gunduz began the operation to retake Samarkand. Knowing the Crusaders’ playbook, as demonstrated by their Delhi campaign, any frontal assault on Samarkand would still be costly. She decided to sever the supply lines holding up the siege instead. Her entire army descended on Bukhara, while a smaller task force arrived in Samarkand. This task force was made up of Gunduz’s best units: Persian special forces, Afghan militias trained in urban warfare, Turkish cavalry to flank the Crusaders, and, most importantly, Roman exiles led by the Mexico War veteran and de facto Megas Domestikos Gebhard Remmele, all eager for vengeance against Jerusalem.

What happened next immediately became the subject of furious debate for the next several months. Although it was quite clear what the outcome was—the Battle of Bukhara concluded on January 17 with a decisive Persian victory, while the siege of Samarkand broke on January 8 with almost every besieging Crusader being killed—the specific details of the latter operation remained unclear. Many soldiers, including General Remmele, claimed the missing Roman princess Wilhelmina, having survived the invasion and collapse of Yavdi, had personally led them into battle and fought the enemy herself. Others claimed the Crusaders all committed suicide once Persia had made significant progress in retaking the city. The Crusader general overseeing the Turkish front denied all such claims and maintained the city remained in his hands the whole time and still was under his control. Obviously, the last claim was blatantly false, since Samarkand was still under Turkish control. But the other two claims sounded so outlandish nobody believed them, despite no other claims being put forward. There was some evidence to support either one, though. Examination of the Crusader bodies recovered from Samarkand indicated over 80% of them died via shots from Roman-made guns, stab wounds from their knives, rocks in their colleagues’ hands, or strangulation by other Crusaders. Many of their guns and other weapons appeared to have been cut in pieces by a sharp object. As for Remmele’s claim, an overwhelming majority of his soldiers claimed the same thing, with enough variation in their retellings that it was clear they weren’t repeating a script. And for the last few weeks, rumors had been spreading through all of Central Asia about sightings of the princess. Villagers in the Ural foothills claimed to have seen her leaving the mountains several weeks ago, while Turkish and Persian villagers on the Caspian coast reported seeing a purple-clad woman riding south on horseback, and many in Isfahan itself maintained they had seen Gunduz frequently meeting with a royally-dressed German woman her age. Gunduz refused to comment on the rumors, only saying, “There is a time and place for everything, but not now.”

Not concerning herself with the rumors for now, she continued focusing on Turkestan. Bukhara’s Crusader garrison had suffered heavy casualties and retreated east to Tashkent. While her army would have to spend a few days sweeping out any remaining Crusaders from Bukhara, it would soon be on the move again. The Crusaders’ presence in Turkestan had been reduced to only the area around Tashkent now, and with the Chinese pressing in from the east through Bishkek, Gunduz knew it was time to push from the west. She planned to use China as the anvil to the Artesh’s hammer. Once Tashkent had been liberated and the Crusaders completely driven out of Turkestan, she would drive the Chinese back over the border. And once that was accomplished, she could focus on her ultimate goal: the invasion of Mesopotamia.

Having seen the successes of Lev Konstantinov, Saikhangiin Börte, Boris Bradziunas, and Higa Ryunosuke, Gunduz knew it was time to act. While they all acted independently of each other, if they could all attack at roughly the same time, they could present a united front against Jerusalem and overwhelm it with attacks from all sides. With Konstantinov striking into the heartland through Prussia, Börte liberating the camps of Taurica, Bradziunas tying up Crusader forces in Livonia and Russia, and Higa generally inflicting humiliation after humiliation on the so-called most powerful nation in the world, it was time for Gunduz to do the same and take the fight to the enemy.

Schengen wasn’t out of the fight yet.

Prince Horst’s Blessing​

“If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Battle of Hoang Sa had dramatically upended the balance of power in the Pacific Ocean. When the war began, everybody expected the region to be divided between China, Penglai, and Jerusalem, with everyone else—including the rump Roman loyalists scattered across the islands—becoming their pawns…if not prawns for lunch. But Ryukyu had rejected this fate. Not only did it fight back against both China and Penglai, but it also won. The burning wrecks of the Chinese and Penglai fleets off the coast of Vietnam was evidence enough of the new Pacific order and foreshadowed the developments to come. The three major Pacific powers wrote off Hoang Sa as a fluke, a stroke of dumb luck from an upstart island that would soon be put in its place. Han Xianyu delivered speech after speech in which he reminded his people that Ryukyu had for centuries been a tributary state of the empire, acknowledging its rightful place in the celestial hierarchy under the emperor, before democratic radicals took over and declared Ryukyu had the Mandate of Heaven. In truth, nobody in Ryukyu seriously advocated that, but popular memes on the remains of the Ryukyuan Internet joked that under a very loose interpretation of the Mandate of Heaven, Higa Ryunosuke was now the rightful emperor of China. Penglai’s Zhao Yu fumed in “his” palace, the one he had evicted Penglai’s emperor from several years earlier, but Hoang Sa had largely reduced his naval presence to the waters immediately around Penglai, so he was unable to follow through on his incoherent threats of putting Ryukyu in its place.

Jerusalem’s reaction was…actually, there wasn’t a reaction. Jerusalem’s presence in eastern Asia and the Pacific was the weakest out of the three major powers and almost entirely land-based. Throughout the year, Crusaders and Jerusalem-allied rebels had gradually taken over Sumatra. The loyalist cities of Bengkulu and Bandar Lampung finally surrendered on December 5, leaving only the islands of Bangka Belitung in loyalist hands. A Holy Marine fleet established a blockade of the two islands, intending to starve out the last remaining loyalists and complete the conquest of Sumatra. On the main island, Crusaders and their allies had constructed an impressive array of fortifications to ward off any attempts by Srivijaya to retake the city, while another Holy Marine fleet maintained a connection to Arabia through which reinforcements and materiel could arrive. The most important deliveries were thermobaric missiles. Thermobaric weapons were particularly destructive due to using oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion, with their blast waves lasting significantly longer than those of conventional explosions. This consumption of oxygen and longer blast wave made thermobaric weapons considerably more useful to attack infrastructure and field fortifications, so High Command ordered the Sumatra garrisons to target Srivijaya’s major cities with them. Starting in late November, thermobaric missiles relentlessly fell on cities like Bangkok, Yangon, Saigon, Hanoi, and even Kunming in China. While the explosions themselves caused massive casualties, many Southeast Asians came to fear the blast wave more for its effects on the human body. Common injuries from the blast wave included ruptured lungs and other internal organs, with some particularly unlucky victims having their entire lungs straight up sucked out of their mouths; severe external and internal burns resulting from the inhalation of still burning warhead fuel; burst or even completely crushed eardrums; severe concussions; blindness; and even brain damage, though it was determined the severity of the brain damage was not extensive enough to cause immediate unconsciousness but rather leave victims alive long enough to feel themselves burning and suffocating to death.

Higa Ryunosuke bravely sailed into this maelstrom. With Sumatra literally over the horizon now, Higa began planning how to take the island. His had only three Ryukyuan carrier groups with 500 Ryukyuan marines. With reinforcements from home unlikely to come, let alone change much in terms of numbers, Higa had to prioritize the minimization of casualties far more than Konstantinov, Börte, or Gunduz did. He first studied up on the geography and weather patterns of Sumatra, then on the strengths and backgrounds of the Crusaders. As a tropical island, Sumatra was much smaller than Jerusalem’s heartland and had a much hotter and more humid climate. The Crusader garrisons, having been shipped over from the heartland, would find the geography and climate more unfamiliar than the Ryukyuans did; the southern Ryukyuan islands were tropical, and the marines had trained in such climates before. Furthermore, a storm was brewing, and the area would soon be covered in heavy rain he could use to mask his movements. Sumatra’s distance meant it would take hours before major news made its way back to High Command, and several days before reinforcements arrived. Any attack would have a grace period of at most a week. A beachhead had to quickly established before then.

The next question was where to make the beachhead. The obvious answer was Bangka Belitung, where the loyalists still held out against the Crusaders. But that would require breaking the Holy Marine blockade. Higa knew the SZI couldn’t go up against the Holy Marine in a fair fight. For all of his bluster in public, he knew Hoang Sa could easily have gone the wrong way if even a few variables changed. The enemy fleet blockading Bangka Belitung was very different from the Chinese and Penglai fleets at Hoang Sa. His surveillance reported three carrier strike groups. Two sat off the coast of Bangka Island, the larger one, while the other watched Belitung Island. Their positioning, aided by air forces from the main island, gave them complete air superiority in the area. Furthermore, a Roman carrier strike group possessed far greater firepower than anything the Chinese fielded. Each carrier strick group consisted of one aircraft supercarrier, two cruisers, three destroyers, and two logistics and supply ships.

SMS Helmut Kohl leaving Wilhelmshaven in 2017. Introduced as a replacement for the aging Ruprecht von Spee class, the Helmut Kohl class perfectly embodied the strength of the modern Kaiserliche Marine and the economic, military, and diplomatic clout of the Reich. Its supercarriers were routinely seen patrolling every ocean and making calls in major port cities. To Romans, the Helmut Kohl class was a symbol of national pride, and to non-Romans, it was a symbol of Roman global hegemony.​

The three supercarriers stationed around Bangka Belitung were of the Helmut Kohl class, which was introduced in 2017. In 2036, the Helmut Kohl class was rechristened as the Noah’s Ark class, with some improvements made by the Jerusalem regime. The Noah’s Ark class was the pinnacle of Roman naval technology, boasting the following:

• Highly automated systems allowing for a smaller crew. Compared to crew sizes for the previous Ruprecht von Spee class, the Noah’s Ark class needed 25% fewer crewmen to operate at full efficiency.
• A more efficient nuclear reactor design for increased power generation, allowing energy to be used not only for propulsion and essential systems but also offensive and defensive technologies like Lahat Chereb and electromagnetic armor (see below).
• SA-162H (Schnelle Abfangrakete, “Rapid Intercept Missile”) missiles, also known as “Lance of Longinus” missiles. Incorporating the latest in artificial intelligence and rocketry technology, the SA-162H (H for Heilige, “Holy”) was an improvement on the older 162 model which afforded greater range, agility, adaptability, and destructive potential. While initially designed for point defense, the SA-162H model was redesigned for offensive use. A single missile could destroy an enemy frigate if fitted with a thermobaric or other high-power warhead. It could also be used to destroy well-defended land targets such as underground bunkers.
• The Lahat Chereb (LC) point defense system, named after the flaming sword that guarded the Garden of Eden. The committee contracted Tesla Dynamic to replace conventional point defense cannons with computer-guided directed energy weapons, using the same design as that used for SVI satellites. Like with the SA-162H missile, the LC could also be used for offensive operations against cruise missiles and even enemy ships. The LC could fire two kinds of energy: lasers for precision and speed, useful for point defense against incoming missiles; and plasma for to attack enemy targets. The nuclear reactor provided the power needed to generate such energy projectiles. Due to cost overruns and the war beginning when it did, plans to install tungsten railguns (SVI’s primary weapon, scaled down for use on ships) were cancelled.
• Electromagnetic armor (also known as electric armor). A relatively new innovation, first developed in 2029, electromagnetic armor was made up of two or more conductive plates separated by an insulating material, creating a capacitor. In operation, the carrier’s nuclear reactor charged the armor. When an enemy projectile hit the plates, the circuit closed and the capacitor discharged, vaporizing or otherwise neutralizing it and significantly weakening the attack.
• The Archangel Michael (formerly Aegis) Combat System (EMKS). The EMKS utilized computers and radar to track and guide weapons, consolidating both defensive and offensive weapon control into the same system. The EMKS was integrated into every weapon system on the ship, ranging from SA-162H missiles to LC energy weapons to even the electromagnetic armor to prioritize which parts of the armor to charge. A machine learning algorithm constantly analyzed data coming in from radar systems, with the capability to simultaneously track, target, and neutralize over 100 different targets within a 100 nautical mile radius.
• Advanced stealth features to greatly reduce the carrier’s radar signature.
• An air wing of 90 state-of-the-art aircraft, including jets, helicopters, and drones.

Of the three supercarriers identified, Higa recognized two of them from news and military academy footage. Before, they had been known as the SMS Franz von Papen and SMS Helmut Schmidt, but the committee had rechristened them the Moses and Jonah’s Whale. The third supercarrier had just had its keel laid down weeks before Bloody Tuesday and as such had not been named yet, so throughout the early years of the committee, so it had been built almost from the ground up as a centerpiece of the emerging Holy Marine. With crosses and Bible verses bolted and engraved on its hull, a figurehead of the archangel Uriel mounted to its prow, and its deck painted a dark imperial purple, the Heilige Marine Cherub (HMC) Miracle of Galilee was a symbol of Jerusalem’s military might, its massive figure striking fear into all who behld it. Of course, if Higa slew the beast and show even Jerusalem’s most powerful supercarrier could be sunk, then all that fear would evaporate. The problem was actually sinking it.

The initial situation in Sumatra on December 7, 2038, just 5 days after the Battle of Hoang Sa. Jerusalem controlled over 95% of the main island and blockaded the loyalist-controlled Bangka Belitung. Higa and the Ryukyuans approached Sumatra from the northeast through the Riau Archipelago. Srivijayan naval forces initially stuck to coastal patrols, convoy escorts, and missile interception.
(The borders I drew here and in the next few infographics are a bit blocky due to using a line tool because my hand really hurt after drawing the borders for the Scandinavia map.)​

Higa knew a direct engagement with this fleet would result in his immediate annihilation. The only way he won at Hoang Sa was by goading the Chinese and Penglairen into destroying each other first, then finishing off the survivors, but here the enemy was a single united force. That meant he had two options. The first was to increase his numbers to be on par with the Holy Marine, which was impossible. That left the second option, splitting the enemy force into manageable pieces. While off the coast of Vietnam, he had kept in regular contact with the Vietnamese, Siamese, Malayan, Qiandao, and Nusantaran navies. All were either too busy dealing with internal affairs or would arrive too late, just as had happened at Hoang Sa. That left only the second option: dividing the enemy. Fortunately, the Holy Marine had already started for him by stationing each carrier strike group around the islands instead of in one large force. Still, each strike group was within missile and aircraft range of the other two, so it wasn’t that better off. He had work to do.

Entering the Straits of Malacca from the west was straightforward, but the eastern entrance was different. There, the Riau Archipelago consisted of countless islands stretching between Singapura and Sumatra. The two largest islands—Bintan and Batam—formed a natural chokepoint; all traffic through the straits had to pass through the archipelago, either north between Bintan and Singapura or south between the other islands and Sumatra. After the Crusaders had taken the main island, they established footholds on Bintan Island, placing artillery within ten miles of Singapura. An amphibious invasion followed shortly afterward, and fifteen thousand Crusaders marched ashore at key beaches between Singapura and Kuantan. Higa had to cut through the Riau Archipelago both stall this invasion and reopen the straits.

Studying at the JDDR, Higa had been taught about the importance of shore bombardment. In the Mediterranean campaign of World War II, loyalist forces had taken enemy controlled islands such as Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Aegean islands by first bombarding them as thoroughly as they could and then deploying troops ashore to finish off remaining resistance. This, however, assumed the navy had the resources of a global superpower on its side. Fortunately, their target—Bintan Island—was much smaller than the above targets. Higa’s objective was to take the largest town on Bintan, Tanjunpinang, capture the missile and artillery installations around it and turn them against the main island, and then use that as cover to invade the main island. They would have to move fast and stay in motion. Losing momentum would give the enemy time to regroup, counterattack, and call for reinforcements.

Opening stages of the Battle of Sumatra. Higa initially positioned his fleet halfway between Singapura, Malaya and Pontianak, Nusantara before spreading them out across the sea. Intentionally not directly engaging the carrier strike groups themselves, the Ryukyuans covertly hit smaller targets like the defenses on Bintan Island and submarines and troop transports heading to Malaya. Electronic countermeasures were deployed to jam enemy radar and spoof Ryukyuan radar signatures to exaggerate the size of the Ryukyuan forces. The intensifying storm and its interference with radar systems provided a convenient cover for activities which normally would be easily detected by EMKS. Offensive operations commenced with Noguchigera and its carrier group, while Yanbaru Kuina hung back and Ōryu left Sanzan and its carrier group, plotting a course for Lingga Island.​

In the early morning of December 7—97 years to the day after China’s attack on Singapura opened the Pacific front of World War II—at approximately 0300 hours, the Ryukyuans began their attack. The SZI Noguchigera and its carrier group massed off the coast of Bintan Island, positioning itself in between Bintan and Singapura. Higa’s submarines set to work quietly sinking any troop transports and convoys heading across the strait, then surfaced and launched their missiles at Tanjunpinang, targeting barracks and supply hubs. Crusaders stationed on the island slowly woke up to the sound of Ryukyuan jets screaming overhead and dropping bombs and missiles on them, aided by bombardment from the main guns of the battleships Hokuzan and Chūzan. At 0400 hours, Higa’s marines stormed the town and overwhelmed its occupiers. The survivors continued resisting on the rest of the island and in varoius parts of Tanjunpinang. It would take several more days to fully eradicate them, but the island was effectively in Ryukyu’s hands now. Higa radioed the Srivijayan military and informed them the Crusaders in Malaya had now been cut off from their supplies: “You all have fun. I have gods to slay.”

(There was supposed to be a twist where Horst von Hohenzollern had secretly survived all these years and would reveal himself here as fighting for Srivijaya against Jerusalem, but I decided against it since it would take away from the impact of his death. The name Horst came from me noticing the commander of this specific battle, and when I was writing content for Horst I had this in mind. Consider the in-universe commander of the forces at Kuantan someone else.)​

Higa immediately moved onto the next part of his plan. At 0500, the Ryukyuans turned Bintan Island’s missile launchers around and fired them all at Sumatra. Although 40% of the missiles were intercepted by anti-aircraft guns, most Crusader gunners had been asleep or hastily awoken to man their stations, allowing the rest to break through and devastate military targets as far away as Banda Aceh—the first Sumatran town to come under Roman rule in the early modern era—and Palembang—the ancient capital of medieval Srivijaya and India’s subsequent eastern colonies. Now came the invasion of the main island. Noguchigera and its carrier group had previously focused on Bintan Island, using flashy shock and awe tactics to draw the enemy’s attention. Drones and radar jammers spoofed the ships’ signatures, making it appear like all four carrier groups had massed around Bintan Island. The heavy cloud cover made it significantly more difficult for the enemy to realize the deception. In the end, Jerusalem took the bait. The Jonah’s Whale carrier strike group broke formation and began sailing north to take back Bintan Island. Higa then ordered Noguchigera to sail south and take its decoys with it, putting the Lingga and Singkep Islands between it and Jonah’s Whale. With Jonah’s Whale distracted and the enemy formation split up, Yanbaru Kuina’s group sailed north through the straits to Medan, the second-largest city in Sumatra. While Jonah’s Whale and its ships approached the eastern coast of Lingga Island, Ōryu’s group covertly snuck around it by sailing down the western side of Lingga and Singkep. Meanwhile, Sanzan finally entered the battle. So far, Higa had held back his flagship, Sakishima, and the rest of his group, stationing it to the east among the coral reefs of the Tambelan Archipelago near Borneo. Sanzan and Ōryu converged and bore down on Bangka and Belitung Island.

The second stage of the Battle of Sumatra. All Ryukyuan carrier groups were now positioned where Higa wanted them to be. The Holy Marine commander, Dorian Scheer, reacted exactly as he had predicted. Scheer split up his carrier strike groups and abandoned his position around Bangka Belitung to engage the Ryukyuans further north. The Jonah’s Whale group split off from the other two to engage the intentionally isolated Noguchigera near Bintan Island. Moses and Miracle of Galilee targeted Sanzan off the coast of Borneo. Due to a combination of bad weather, Ryukyuan electronic countermeasures, and general dogmatic stubbornness from Scheer and his officers, the Holy Marine failed to notice Ōryu and its group flanking them by way of Lingga and Singkep Island.​

At 0600, the Battle of Sumatra officially began. Higa adopted an asymmetrical strategy, drawing on both old tactics and the electronic warfare capabilities of Sanzan and Ōryu to take full advantage of his circumstances. Once Jonah’s Whale had engaged Noguchigera, Noguchigera’s radar operators figured out the approximate signatures of the enemy carrier and its support vessels and relayed them to Higa, who had Sanzan’s operators spoof them to appear like Jonah’s Whale had sailed back to catch the Ryukyuans in a pincer attack. Furthermore, like Noguchigera, Sanzan and Ōryu used decoy drones to duplicate their own signatures, doubling the size of the Ryukyuan fleet on enemy radar to make it appear like the entire armada had been committed. Again, it was difficult for Moses and Miracle of Galilee to break this illusion. By now, the storm had fully set in, lashing the sea with furious sheets of rain which generated even more useless radar signatures that overwhelmed their EMKS. Higa knew he couldn’t rely on his own radar systems in such conditions, so he used other methods. He moved several submarines into positions around the enemy formation, with each submarine monitoring a specific ship using sonar and relaying their coordinates back to Sanzan with quick sonar bursts in Morse code. Knowing the enemy would use its sophisticated surveillance network to eavesdrop on his radio communications, he ordered complete radio silence. Instead of using radios, his ships communicated using light signals or, at times, written notes delivered by drones. Tied up further to the north and out of effective communications range, Noguchigera’s commander had been given leeway to handle Jonah’s Whale as he saw fit. At 0615, Higa began launching his air wings, again using light signals to coordinate launches. All pilots were given their targets and times of attack before launch and flare signals to look out for.

The third stage of the Battle of Sumatra, considered the beginning of the official battle. By 0600, the storm had reached full strength, significantly reducing radar and physical visibility. This allowed Higa to surrounded the Holy Marine forces on three sides with Sanzan, Sakishima, Ōryu, and his submarines. Meanwhile, Noguchigera engaged Jonah’s Whale on relatively even footing. Although on paper a Holy Marine supercarrier easily possessed enough firepower to wipe out Noguchigera and its group on its own, the Ryukyuans evened the playing field by taking advantage of the weather and electronic countermeasures to confuse and distract the enemy.​

At 0630, Admiral Dorian Scheer of Miracle of Galilee broadcast a message demanding Higa’s immediate unconditional surrender. Higa did not respond, as he was busy helping his communications team triangulate the signal’s point of origin and calculate how much time they had before Jerusalem attacked. In any case, he decided now was the time to strike. He predicted the enemy would not risk trying to launch fighters in such dangerous weather and with such poor visibility. However, Ryukyuan pilots had trained for operations during storms, and they had launched without issues. At 0634, Sanzan fired a white-blue-red sequence of flares, which signaled all Ryukyuan forces to attack. Ryukyuan jets descended on Moses and Miracle of Galilee and immediately fired off a salvo of missiles targeting radar, Lahat Chereb, and power conduits for electromagnetic armor. Simultaneously, the main fleet launched an overwhelming salvo of cruise missiles which inundated Jerusalem’s electronic sensors, already overwhelmed from the storm, with more useless data. The submarines then launched their torpedoes at easy or isolated targets. Moses suffered massive damage to its radar, LC, EMKS, and SA-162H launchers and began listing to port. Of its carrier strike group, two destroyers, one cruiser, and both logistics and supply ships were immediately sunk. Miracle of Galilee’s LC automatically activated and shot down most of the missiles targeting it with lasers, although it suffered substantial damage to its flight deck, superstructure, and missile launchers. Of its group, it lost one destroyer, both cruisers, and both logistics and supply ships, the latter of which ran aground nearby. The enemy’s remaining three destroyers and single cruiser turned their LCs on the jets. Moving at the speed of light, the lasers easily sought out and eliminated ten jets before Sanzan fired a red-blue-white flare to recall the jets, and five more were destroyed during retreat. They then targeted the Ryukyuan fleet with missiles and plasma. Sakishima’s flak cannons responded by lighting up the dark and stormy morning sky with myriads of tiny shrapnel explosions, creating a barrier of flak between the Ryukyuans and the enemy projectiles. Every missile was intercepted, but although each plasma blast was significantly weakened by flak and rain, none were fully neutralized. Two blasts struck the upper hull of Sakishima, easily melting through its thick World War II armor, crippling several secondary guns, and starting multiple internal fires. Four more hit Sanzan, and one blast narrowly ran out of momentum short of reaching Higa’s quarters, though the admiral was on the bridge at the time. One grazed the deck of Ōryu, destroying a helicopter and killing several deckhands. In just several minutes, the Ryukyuans had already suffered more casualties than they did five days ago at Hoang Sa.

Realizing he had to take out the plasma guns before they tore through his fleet, Higa fired another flare: red-red-blue. His fighter jets regrouped and targeted the enemy’s LC, specifically plasma guns. EMKS directed LC to shoot the jets down again with lasers, but Sakishima oriented its flak cannons to fire at an almost horizontal angle, lowering the flak field to just above the water surface. The battleship’s firing solution left a path through which the jets could safely fly, while the flak scrambled EMKS and prevented it from identifying and locking onto targets for LC. With their approach cleared, Ryukyuan aircraft neutralized all LC systems except Miracle of Galilee’s by 0643. One more destroyer sunk under the assault, and the other two were easily picked off by missile and cannon salvos from Sakishima and its support ships. That left only Moses, Miracle of Galilee, and one cruiser intact. The cruiser deployed depth charges to force the Ryukyuan submarines back. Miracle of Galilee managed to launch a quarter of its air wing. Scheer issued another ultimatum, still demanding Higa’s immediate surrender with copious Bible quotes and threats of divine retribution. Higa broke radio silence to respond with a single word: “Nuts.”

That was the final nail in the coffin for the Holy Marine’s image of invincibility. For all their bluster and firepower, their commanders were utterly incompetent and full of themselves. Like with the Chinese and Penglai forces at Hoang Sa, High Command had already assured itself of its inevitable victory in Sumatra. Even when faced with an enemy like Ryukyu, Jerusalem’s tactics hadn’t changed at all. Higa was surprised his submarines took so longer to be attacked; that was incomptence even he wasn’t expecting, but he didn’t complain.

At 0653, the cruiser came under a withering assault from Sakishima’s guns, the jets’ missiles, and the submarines’ torpedoes. It immediately crumbled under the relentless attack and tore itself apart in a giant fireball. Moses followed it three minutes later after a torpedo took out its propulsion and a shell from Sakishima landed a lucky hit on an ammunition storage room, ripping apart the entire front half of the supercarrier. However, Miracle of Galilee pushed on, steadily launching the remainder of its air wing to defend itself. With its LC still intact, Higa kept his jets far away from the supercarrier, instead having them engage enemy aircraft and protect the fleet.

The fourth stage of the Battle of Sumatra. Mose was eliminated by a combined effort from Sanzan and Ōryu, allowing almost the entire Ryukyuan fleet to focus on defeating Miracle of Galilee. Noguchigera remained in complete control over its battle with Jonah’s Whale. After going through Hoang Sa and the first three stages without casualties, Ryukyu finally suffered some casualties here due to the speed of laser weapons and the destructive power of plasma weapons. However, Higa quickly adapted to these new weapons and found ways to counter them. ​

At 0655, the first messages went out from Miracle of Galilee to High Command requesting reinforcements. In Scheer’s haste, he had not bothered to encrypt the message, and so his desperate plea for help was heard by everyone on the right frequency. Higa could hear the shock in his young voice as he expressed surprise that the “inferior heathens” had somehow sunk his entire fleet. Scheer didn’t even believe that the Ryukyuans were a real threat. He had thought the news of the upset at Hoang Sa was just a rumor or propaganda. He also seemed to undergo a crisis of faith during his broadcast. He talked about how he had truly believed in the committee’s message of holy restoration. How he had been one of the few naval officers to side with the committee after Bloody Tuesday. How he had believed it when the committee told him God would protect him.

“Where did God go? Why isn’t he protecting me?”

There was half an hour of silence. Then High Command replied: “Saint Paul tells us: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat’.”

At 0726, Noguchigera’s reconnaissance planes reported the Holy Marine supply fleet in the Indian Ocean was pulling back to Arabia. Simultaneously, Higa’s marines grappled up Miracle of Galilee’s hull, using the crosses as anchors. The supercarrier’s Cherubim detachment fiercely resisted, but once it became clear they were outmatched despite possessing numerical superiority, they turned their guns on the crew and then each other, leaving few survivors. By 0800, the supercarrier had been secured. At the same time, Noguchigera finished off the last of Jonah’s Whale’s group. The battle between Noguchigera and Jonah’s Whale wasn’t as interesting as the main conflict Higa was in. Noguchigera’s crew simply rigged captured ships from Bintan Island with explosives and sent them adrift towards the enemy, shattering their formation and inflicting serious damage to some ships, which left them open to a barrage of cruise missiles launched from Tanjunpinang and broadsides from Hokuzan and Chūzan. Not a single plane had been launched on either side.

Higa honestly hadn’t planned on capturing Miracle of Galilee, but he decided to do so after realizing the immense tactical, logistical, and symbolic value the ship would provide for the anti-Jerusalem cause. The supercarrier’s weapons, navigation, surveillance, and communications systems were the most advanced in the world and would significantly help Ryukyu and its allies reverse engineer similarly advanced technologies of their own or develop countermeasures to them. Its computers would also contain valuable information on Holy Marine fleet locations and orders, supply lines, chain of command, and other subjects that would provide insights into how the Holy Marine worked and what weaknesses it had. The marines’ priority was to secure the bridge and all remaining computer servers, which they completed by 0802. Some surviving crewmen had tried wiping the servers or encrypting them with passwords, but they didn’t get far before they were stopped. Dorian Scheer’s body was found hung from the window of the bridge, with the sign “I betrayed God and country by surrendering to barbarians” bolted to his chest.

At 0814, the storm abated, and the rain gradually died down. The clouds parted, allowing sunlight to peer through. It hadn’t been that long after sunrise, but the light poured through and illuminated the dark seas below, revealing the burning wrecks of the entire Holy Marine fleet and the captured Miracle of Galilee drifting among them. To many Ryukyuan sailors, it was like a sign from the heavens. They gave thanks to Amamikyu, the goddess who created the Ryukyuan Islands, but more thanked Prince Horst von Hohenzollern, believing his spirit had been with them during the battle. Seeing much his crew giving thanks to the same person, Higa got an idea and called up Sanzan’s nūru.

Over the next two hours, the Ryukyuans shored up their position in Sumatra. Yanbaru Kuina arrived in the port of Medan. Noguchigera entered the strait to reinforce it. Sanzan and Ōryu’s bombers and transport planes flew out for Palembang, while the fleets hung back around Bangka Island. Higa assessed the damage he had suffered during this battle. Sanzan, Ōryu, and Sakishima had all taken serious damage from plasma attacks. Total aircraft casualties stood at 32. Personnel casualties stood at 74 fatalities and 319 injuries. On the bright side, the fleet had still conserved its ammunition and didn’t need to resupply anytime soon. Furthermore, two enemy logistics and supply ships were still afloat, having run aground, so they could take Jerusalem’s supplies for themselves. At 1229, Medan fell, and its Crusaders committed suicide. Soon afterward, Banda Aceh was overrun by loyalist resistance cells which promptly declared its liberation from Jerusalem. By 1300, the entire northern half of Sumatra had been liberated. Although some parts of the interior remained under Crusader control for now, they would be dealt with by the revitalized Sumatran loyalists, and more importantly, the straits had been reopened.

The end of the Battle of Sumatra. The capture of Miracle of Galilee effectively marked the end of the Holy Marine east of the Straits of Malacca. By the end of December 7, the straits had been reopened, and many cities on the main island freed themselves of Crusader occupation.​

Gradually, shipments from Burma and eastern India began flowing through to the Pacific loyalists. East Africa and Abyssinia sortied their fleets into the Indian Ocean. The retreating Holy Marine fleet, trying to return to Arabia, was caught between them and the Indian Navy near Sri Lanka. Jerusalem’s naval presence in the ocean was permanently shattered and scattered to all corners of the ocean, though not before inflicting heavy casualties on both of its enemies. Its plasma weapons wiped out almost all of India’s capital ships and a good number of East Africa’s and Abyssinia’s, forcing all to retreat to safe harbors. Still, this was a victory for Schengen forces, as the Pacific loyalists could again be resupplied. But getting the resources to the loyalists would be difficult. Penglai still contested the waters of Maritime Southeast Asia, while Chinese fleets, now aided by Fusang ones, roamed the wider Pacific east of Qiandao. The convoys to Hawaii and Mittagsland had to be protected. Higa knew he couldn’t stay in Sumatra forever. Once his fleet had been repaired and readied for battle, he planned to go to Hawaii. He had heard a Chinese fleet had been sent to end the loyalists for good, and he knew the loyalist fleets didn’t have the numbers to match up to them. Supplies and reinforcements wouldn’t mean anything if the loyalists had been destroyed. But if Ryukyu joined the fight, then maybe they could pull off another upset victory like at Hoang Sa and Sumatra.

The Ryukyuans spent the rest of the month in Sumatra, preparing for the long journey across the Pacific. On the high seas, they wouldn’t be able to refuel and resupply as much as they did on the way from Ryukyu to Sumatra. With the straits secured, Srivijaya sent supplies and troops down from Singapura, helping the loyalists restore order to Sumatra and root out any remaining Crusaders hiding in the jungles and mountains. Engineers and construction crews attended to the Ryukyuan fleet, repairing damage and providing ammunition and fuel. The latest addition to the fleet underwent a significant overhaul. The crosses were cut off and melted down into improvised armor plates to cover the scars on Sanzan, Ōryu, Sakishima, and other ships hit by plasma. Any remaining metal was bolted over the Bible verses and engraved with mitsudomoes. The figurehead of Uriel was carved and reshaped to resemble an eastern dragon, specifically Shuryū, the Dragon King of the South Sea in Chinese and Japanese mythology. More dragons were painted along the length of the hull. The flight deck’s purple became a much nicer black and blue, with another painted dragon stretching from stern to bow. As with Ōryu, a new crew drawn from qualified Southeast Asians and loyalist Sumatrans was rotated onto the new supercarrier, and surviving captured crewmen were forced to teach them how to use the ship’s systems and repair damaged equipment. Once the new crew learned how to operate the ship, the prisoners were sent to Singapura to be interned for the rest of the war.

The final step was to give the ship its new name. On December 21, Sanzan’s nūru held a special ceremony to bless the ship and purify it of the Jerusalemite negativity contained within it, as well as ease the spirits of the dead former crew. At the end of the ceremony, she declared the aircraft carrier reborn as the SZI Prince Horst von Hohenzollern, in honor of the man who guided the Ryukyuans to victory. Prince Horst would be Higa’s fifth carrier and the most advanced ship in his entire fleet. He now possessed two ancient Chinese carriers, one modern Chinese carrier, one indigenous Ryukyuan carrier, and a Roman supercarrier. In terms of raw firepower, his fleet was now one of the most powerful in the entire Pacific. But he reminded himself to not get overconfident. Firepower meant nothing without crew and logistics.

He would get more of both soon enough. A backup fleet consisting mainly of troop transports arrived on December 23, dropping off hundreds of eager Ryukyuan volunteers who were ready to do their part. Higa quickly put them to work filling in for the dead and injured, aiding the Crusader suppression on the island, or supplementng the loyalist crew of Prince Horst. On December 25, on the same day Ryukyuan marines marched through Palembang and declared the liberation of the ancient Srivijayan capital, the governments of Nusantara, Qiandao, and Vietnam promised to provide fleets to join Higa, which would arrive in Sumatra over the next couple weeks. Three days later, more volunteers arrived, but this batch consisted of officers. There were many officers from Vietnam, Nusantara, India, Ainu Mosir, and the northern Republic of Japan, but most surprisingly there was a single defecting Chinese officer among them: ex-admiral Hong Wuchang, the commander of the Chinese forces at Hoang Sa.

Hong explained Han had declared him a traitor for losing Hoang Sa, and the emperor had decreed his execution should he return to China. As a result, Hong defected to Ryukyu, considering Higa an honorable leader he could respect and follow. He offered his services in commanding his old flagship, as he knew the systems of the Xi Wangmu-class carriers better than any of Higa’s crew could. Although Higa’s officers remained wary of Hong’s loyalties, some of them expressing concern that Hong might backstab them and take Ōryu back to China, Higa welcomed Hong into his ranks. He believed Hong genuinely wanted to help Ryukyu now that he was marked for death in his own homeland. Those reports of Hong’s execution being ordered had also been verified by Vietnamese intelligence. Vietnam maintained an extensive conventional spy ring throughout parts of southeastern China, its agents blending in well due to having been raised in a Sinosphere culture. Although they were unable to gather intel on Han and his inner circle, they were able to confirm Hong was now an enemy of the state. His few remaining family members who were unlucky enough to still be in China had all been executed according to the punishment of “nine familial exterminations.” The nine familial exterminations had been reportedly used since as early as the Shang Dynasty three thousand years ago and on and off in the following millennia, typically to punish the most egregious capital offenses like treason. In addition to executing the actual criminal, the punishment also executed: the criminal’s parents; grandparents; spouse; spouse’s parents; children and grandchildren over 10 and their spouses, if married; siblings and their spouses; uncles and aunts and their spouses; and cousins up to the second and third cousins. This stemmed from a modern reinterpretation of Confucian filial piety; the criminal’s treason was partially the result of his family having not raised him properly, so therefore they were equally guilty of treason. The actual method of execution was by the ancient practice of lingchi, which was also known as “death by a thousand cuts” or “slow slicing.” Occasionally used for China’s most serious criminals over the last two thousand years, it had been abolished in 1868 by the Guangxu Emperor in his Mingzhi Constitution. An imperial decree brought it back in December 2038, and the entire Hong family was summarily sentenced to death by lingchi. The Vietnamese spies confirmed the deaths of Hong’s entire family, but they refused to take pictures of the bodies. With all that in mind, Higa understood Hong Wuchang had no reason to return home.

Still, Higa also understood many of his crew would not accept a Chinese admiral—especially their former enemy at Hoang Sa—as their commanding officer. The Chinese defectors of Ōryu might tolerate him a little more, but they would likely still see him as one of Han’s men. As a result, Higa could not name him the commanding officer of Ōryu, but he would be given an advisory role to the current commander. Even then, many of the officers and enlisted crew still shunned him. They only interacted with him when necessary and avoided him at all other times. In passing, they referred to him as “Gosamaru,” after a 15th century Ryukyuan lord who was renowned for his honor and chivalry even when it led to his betrayal and downfall. It was a fitting nickname for an honorable commander whose country had turned its back on him.

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” That adage succinctly described all of Ryukyu’s enemies as Higa Ryunosuke’s fleet sailed from victory to victory in the western Pacific. Han and Zhao had been too arrogant, believing their own innate superiority already assured that they didn’t even bother to entertain the slight possibility that Ryukyu might have posed a serious threat. Their hubris became their undoing at Hoang Sa. In Sumatra, Jerusalem’s Holy Marine fell into the same trap, being so restricted by supremacist dogma that its leaders could not even comprehend a Ryukyuan navy that was on par with their own. Although the decentralization of the Crusader chain of command was well-known, so was High Command’s stubborn inflexibility. Around the world, the Crusaders had been dealt setback after setback. In Eastern Europe, the Livonians, Russians, and Yavdians were now threatening to undo all of the territorial gains Jerusalem made in the first month of the war. In Central Asia, the Persians had decisively crippled the Crusaders and secured their rear flank. Finally, Jerusalem had lost its one chance to slowly strangle the last remaining loyalist strongholds of the Pacific through Sumatra, and instead of launching a counterattack with the backup fleet, High Command stuck to its dogma and ceded the region altogether, abandoning the Crusaders still there. At least, that was what many Schengen analysts thought until January 6. Regardless, the Battle of Sumatra once again demonstrated Ryukyu’s strength and equal footing with all of the major powers. With Sumatra effectively back in loyalist hands, the Kaiserliche Marine felt wind in its sails, and morale returned to its crews. No longer would the loyalists roll up and wait for the rogue Tianxia to descend on Hawaii and crush them.

Now they had a chance to keep fighting, and they would take it.

Asia’s Pain...​

“When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to the evildoers.”
- Proverbs 21:15

Although Jerusalem had effectively been defeated in the Pacific, it wasn’t out of the fight just yet. The Ryukyuans and their Srivijayan reinforcements had taken back the major cities, but in the countryside, many Crusader battalions—and, crucially, their missile launchers—remained out of their reach. So while the Crusaders launched hit and run attacks on liberated settlements to terrorize locals and take their food, missiles continued raining down across Southeast Asia. They weren’t as numerous or well-aimed as before, but they were still deadly. However, the most dangerous Crusader weapon of all lay buried on Samosir Island in Lake Toba: an old ICBM launch site in the 1960s. Decommissioned in the 1990s and stripped of its nuclear arsenal, the Regency had reactivated it after taking it early in 2038, filled it with nuclear and chemical warheads, and fired the nukes at China on November 2. The chemical warheads—the same kinds that would be fired at Scandinavia on December 18—were now prepped for launch.

Seething from the effective loss of Sumatra and the destruction of the Holy Marine backup fleet, the Regency sought a way to even the score. The five highest ranking regents met in Berlin to discuss a reprisal against those they held responsible. They could not target Ryukyu directly; that would mean losing face by acknowledging it as a large enough threat to deserve such an overwhelming attack. They could not hit China directly either, as China’s anti-aircraft defenses would likely intercept the missiles before they detonated (though some chemicals would still fall over Laos, Vietnam, and Siam though). Some voices suggested hitting Scandinavia and Livonia again, while a handful of lower ranking members suggested tactically important targets in the Eimerican Federation or Africa. Ultimately, the Regency voted to target Korea and Vietnam. Korea’s cyberwarfare agencies had wreaked havoc on Jerusalem’s Internet infrastructure for the last several weeks, its agents stealing, editing, and leaking important information or planting viruses that disabled crucial computer systems like EMKS.

Due to its economic and diplomatic clout, Vietnam was effectively the leader of Srivijaya, and Saigon was the provisional capital of the Srivijaya Commonwealth. Hitting both would not only stop the cyberattacks and cripple the leader of Srivijaya but also to show that no country in the world was out of range of Jerusalem’s wrath. No matter where anyone was, they could be hit with a missile. After all, God saw everything, and He would punish the wicked no matter where they were.

On January 2, Saigon sent a message to Berlin, offering to begin peace negotiations. They sent along a preliminary list of terms agreed on by the Srivijayan member states, the Republic of Japan, Ainu Mosir, Korea (surprising many, given its hostility to the Republic of Japan and Ainu Mosir), Bhutan, and India. The demands were harsh but believed to be fair and even lenient. Drawing on the Belavezha Peace Accords that ended World War III in 1986, Srivijaya demanded the following:

• The dissolution of the current regime and the restoration of the pre-2030 Roman government and its institutions, with oversight from UN and neutral observers.
• The disarmament and reduction of Jerusalem/the Reich’s armed forces in size by at least 50% (to be decided, but unanimously agreed to be at least 50%) and to never again exceed that amount.
• Complete nuclear and chemical disarmament and a permanent renunciation of all rights to develop and field nuclear and chemical weapons.
• Appropriate financial reparations to all “victims of Jerusalem’s atrocities, both domestic and foreign.” This included reparations to Roman citizens and their families as well as to nation-states.
• A formal apology and admission of defeat by the government.
• Participation in an International Criminal Court war crimes tribunal, in which all Jerusalem political and military leaders would be tried for crimes against humanity.

Jerusalem did not respond to the offer. All it ended up doing was spurring the Regency to speed up plans to activate the Lake Toba silo so that those who wrote the treaty would be taught a lesson. Two days later, the last Crusader forces on the Malay peninsula took their lives in Kuantan; all fifteen thousand men sent to capture southern Malaya and Singapura were now dead. Jerusalem’s last major military asset east of the Indian occupation zones was now the Lake Toba silo, which so far had eluded Higa’s air patrols. The defeat at Kuantan reminded the Regency of the urgency of striking back before Lake Toba fell back into the hands of the loyalists.

On January 6, in the early morning, the people of Korea suddenly woke up to the sky literally falling. Dozens of missiles fell on the cities of Seoul, Pyongyang, Busan, Incheon, Daegu, Daejeon, and Gwangju, with the majority hitting Seoul. The results were simply catastrophic, even by Scandinavia’s standards. Napalm warheads completely incinerated the city center, reducing every single government building—including the royal palace, the chancellery, and legislature—to molten slag. No traces were left of the iconic 14th century-era Namdaemun gate, one of the national symbols of Korea.

Further out, the napalm gave way to a liberal use of every other chemical weapon in the book. Some blocks were dosed with LSDM, a hallucinogenic gas developed by the Bureau of Defense in the 1990s as an “improved” version of LSD which drove its victims murderously insane with their worst fears. The chemical agent codenamed “Neuspartikoi,” meanwhile, corroded through human flesh down to the bone, causing death within a minute. A variant called “Neuspartikoi-B” settled for straight up liquifying a person’s flesh and internal organs so it melted off their bones over the course of several agonizing minutes. Rural areas were hit with regular nerve gas in addition to Neuspartikoi-B. Some missiles, carrying Agent Orange and other formerly banned extremely toxic pesticides, targeted farmland and forests, intending to render Korea’s natural environment completely uninhabitable.

(I know I said 90% in the story, but this is for the overall province.)​

The devastation was unlike anything Korea had suffered in its history. Roughly 2.2 million people were directly killed. Ten million more would die of chemical burns and other related injuries over the next week, and twenty million more were displaced from their homes. Reports of fatalities and chemical contamination reached as far as Manchuria, where Han ordered a massive crackdown in the name of “preventing further contamination” but ultimately served as an excuse to purge opposition leaders and their suspected sympathizers in the province. The Korean government was almost totally wiped out. The monarchy lost its king, queen, heirs to the throne, and several dozen minor royals. The chancellor and his entire cabinet were all incinerated with the chancellery building. The same went for the legislature; only a handful survived due to being outside Seoul at the time.

These survivors formed an emergency government as soon as possible. Their first course of action was to formally surrender to Jerusalem, but this changed nothing aside from ending the missile strikes, as Jerusalem was in no position to actually impose an occupation. Their second course of action was…there wasn’t one, because their meager authority over the Korean people shattered the instant they declared the surrender. Korea quickly descended into chaos like Yavdi. Thousands were killed in riots for food and safety; thousands more would die over the next several weeks due to famine and the winter. Millions fled into China, where Han had them put in internment camps to “avoid destabilizing the fabric of Chinese society.” When more still poured over the border, Han mobilized his army to invade Korea and “restore order,” setting up his own government in Seoul and beginning the construction of more camps within Korea itself. Ironically, this would benefit Jerusalem in the long term more than the attack itself. Korea had been the only Tianxia-aligned nation to work closely with Schengen, as it had collaborated with Livonia on Tiger’s Defense. Without Korea, Livonia’s cyberwarfare operations had become even more difficult.

Jerusalem’s Bysandros Malecares put out a special propaganda segment which declared the “death of Korea” and the “baptism by fire” of its heathen inhabitans. He praised the Crusaders for bringing to justice the people who inflicted the damage they did on innocent Christians, even if said “damage” was merely an inconvenient interruption of Internet access for the average citizen or the humiliation of a few regents. Regardless, there was no way the Koreans would be able to continue what they did, or even continue as a nation after this. He demanded the other nations of the world surrender immediately, lest they follow Korea down the road to damnation. Naturally, no government took him seriously, if at all. The Regency had expected this, and they had already prepared the rest of Lake Toba’s warheads for launch. On January 11, Korea’s fate was granted to the cities of Saigon, Hue, Hanoi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapura, Yogyakarta, and Jakarta. Manila was also targeted, but its distance meant the Qiandao military already learned of the other attacks and was able to shoot down their warhead.

(The event only targets Saigon, but it makes sense that other Southeast Asian cities would be targeted.)​

Roughly 11.3 million people were killed in the direct attack. Another 30 million would die over the next two weeks, and fifty million people lost their homes. The governments of Nusantara, Malaya, Siam, and Vietnam were all decapitated, losing their monarchs and civilian governments. Vietnam and Malaya’s emergency governments surrendered immediately, and Nusantara followed suit a day later when thermobaric warheads targeted the hordes of refugees fleeing the ruins of Jakarta, killing almost two million. Like Korea, the four nations also descended into anarchy, which neo-equalist groups, having largely survived due to being based in the countryside, took full advantage of. In Siam, various neo-equalist factions joined forces and declared the revival of the Cold War-era Khin Thai, quickly securing the support of the northern provinces. In Malaya, neo-equalists proclaimed the United Malay Communes, to which many civilians and troops flocked to. Nusantara’s neo-equalists assassinated the rajah of Yogyakarta, in retaliation for him writing the surrender declaration, and declared the city the capital of a Nusantaran socialist republic. Vietnam’s neo-equalists came dangerously close to taking Hanoi, but at the last minute they were driven off by…the Imperial Chinese Army, which promptly placed northern Vietnam under its occupation in the name of “restoring the natural order.” Burma, Cambodia, and Laos remained somewhat stable but now completely focused on maintaining order and stamping out neo-equalists within their own countries. Qiandao, East Indonesia, and Papua got off even better and pledged to send aid to their mainland allies. Still, the Srivijaya Commonwealth had been dealt an almost fatal blow. Higa blamed himself for not catching the Lake Toba silo after the Korea attack, despite searching extensively for it. On January 14, after the second strike on Jakarta, Higa’s drones finally found and destroyed the silo. But it was too late, as the silo had already emptied its entire arsenal. The most he could do was prevent it from being rearmed and then move on to Hawaii.

The situation in Sumatra in January 2038. Drones from Yanbaru Kuina located and neutralized the Lake Toba silo after the attack on Jakarta, eliminating the last bastion of Crusader resistance in Sumatra. It was a pyrrhic victory for Higa, as millions of Southeast Asians lay dead around him and Srivijaya was on the verge of collapsing into a supernational civil war. Many Southeast Asian fleets, unable to return to ports or lacking governments to answer to, rallied around Higa and the Ryukyuan fleet, bolstering his numbers far beyond his expectations. After spending a few days helping evacuate refugees from Singapura and Jakarta to unaffected areas, Higa ordered his fleet to set out for Hawaii.​

On January 18, the Ryukyuans—aided by their new Vietnamese, Nusantaran, and Qiandao allies—departed Sumatra for good and began the long journey east. They first sailed north through the islands of Nusantara and docked in the city of Cebu, where they linked up with reinforcements from Ryukyu and even many ships from the Republic of Japan and Ainu Mosir, despite (or because of) the situation of the war in Japan. With that done, Higa gave the order to sail into the open ocean, towards Hawaii at last.

...Is Han’s Gain​

“The spirit of the Chinese nation is, by its nature, a thing that must be propagated over the seven seas and extended over the five continents. Anything that may hinder its progress must be abolished, by force if necessary.”
- Huang Zhenfu (1877-1966), an Imperial Chinese Army general, ultranationalist, and Minister of War

One of Jerusalem’s enemies significantly benefited from the attacks: Han Xianyu. The attacks perfectly played into his propaganda of Chinese civilization besieged by an enemy bent on complete biological and social extermination. And since the attacks exclusively targeted nearby or neighboring countries, he could expand his propaganda to include a pan-Asian bent. Not only was Jerusalem aiming to wipe out China as a civilization, but it was going to do the same for other Asians, and only Han Xianyu could save Asia from the enemy. With the rest of the world either seeing him as the lesser of two evils or even turning a blind eye due to being moved by his emotional “freedom from the Roman yoke” speech, Han sent his troops into Korea, Vietnam, Bhutan, and parts of India, Burma, Siam, and Laos, positioning himself as a liberator and protector of all Asians and their civilizations (under Chinese protection, of course). Korea, already having a Han-friendly administration before the war began, effectively welcomed him with open arms, though it wouldn’t have made a difference either way since said administration had been completely wiped out. The only thing that changed in Korea was the termination of its partnership with Livonia in Tiger’s Defense. Vietnam and Bhutan resisted more, because there were other internal factions already fighting each other there, and China only became the latest participant in their ongoing civil strife. In the former, Han’s forces had to deal with remnant Vietnamese government forces, nationalists who hated the idea of yet another Chinese occupation, radical ideologues on all sides of the political spectrum wanting to reshape the government in their own image, and neo-equalists seeking to overthrow all of them. In the latter, Bhutan had turned into a chaotic battlefield between India, Nepal, and unaligned Bhutanese and Nepalese factions exploiting the anarchy for their own ends. The weakened and demoralized Indian Army desperately tried to protect the Indian refugees who had fled into Bhutan from the devastated Bengal region, while the Nepalese Paulluists wanted to undo Bhutan’s secession from Nepal on January 1, 2000.

While India had numbers and firepower on its side, Nepal had morale and familiarity with local terrain, making both armies evenly matched. The Bhutanese front remained fluid, as neither side was able to keep their gains for more than a day. Caught in the crossfire, Bhutan suffered, its towns bombed and people killed by the thousands. The Chinese invasion complicated things even more. Firmly opposed to both sides—India as China’s traditional rival in Asia and Nepal as an ally of Jerusalem—Han ordered his troops to destroy both and take Bhutan for himself. Due to Indias armies being larger and initially controlling more territory, China targeted India more often than Nepal, easily routing and shattering the demoralized troops. The front lines consolidated in Nepal’s favor, and the Nepalese army made rapid progress while China focused on India. Believing victory would be assured once India was driven out and Nepal posed no serious threat, Han ignored Nepal for now. He could always destroy them later.

At sea, though, Han faced more problems. The massive armada he had sent to take Hawaii had stalled. Ever since leaving Chinese waters, it had been constantly harassed by long range aircraft from Ryukyu, Nusantara, Qiandao, and even the crumbling Republic of Japan and Ainu Mosir. In late January, the latter four even deployed small fleets to join Ryukyu. As a result, Han was forced to order his fleet to slow down. Instead of steaming directly for the Hawaiian islands, the armada would instead hop from island to island and resupply at each stop.

The Sinosphere’s four-pronged strategy fell apart. Zhao pulled his fleets back to Penglai’s coasts, with the exception of a single fleet ordered to race Han’s armada to Hawaii and take it first, probably on Jerusalem’s behalf. But like Han’s armada, it too was harassed by missiles and long range aircraft from Nusantara and Qiandao. Fusang’s fleet, advancing from the west coast of North Eimerica, had stalled due to hit and run raids from Mexican, Tawantinsuyuan, and Mitteleimerican fleets. For the first time in their long histories, these three former enemies were all working together. As a result, Fusang had to commit more fleets to both reinforce its main attack fleet and to deal with the new enemies, exposing its southern coast to naval attacks from Mexico and the UPM.

Meanwhile, Hawaii had pulled itself together, at least enough to get most of its ships gathered together in a single fleet. The internal conflicts triggered by reports of Princess Wilhelmina’s death lost their momentum once rumors of her survival in Persia arrived, giving the people hope again. Many leaders put aside their differences and rallied around Wilhelmina, pledging their support to the Länder government in Adamshaven. Adamshaven reaffirmed its loyalty to the Imperial Throne, rebuffing the Regency’s permanently empty throne in favor of Wilhelmina as the rightful Kaiserin of the Romans. There were still those who continued fighting the reunified loyalist cause, though. An attempted coup in Adamshaven by business leaders and allied politicians, attempting to variously declare an independent Hawaiian republic or Hawaii’s annexation into either China or Fusang, was thwarted by a pro-Adamshaven uprising of native Hawaiians and even ethnic Chinese Hawaiian islanders, just as had happened in Mittagsland. With Hawaii’s position and loyalty secured, the people of the islands hoped their defenses would be enough to protect the islands. All that remained was for reinforcements to arrive before the Tianxia did.

China, Fusang, Penglai, Ryukyu, Qiandao, Nusantara, Vietnam, the Republic of Japan, Ainu Mosir, Mexico, the UPM, and finally Tawantinsuyu. Twelve nations in three factions—the Tianxia, Penglai/Jerusalem, and those opposed to both of them—descended on the islands of Hawaii, at the crossroads of the Pacific, to decide the fate of the Roman loyalists.

The coming battle would have far reaching consequences for not only the entire Pacific, but the whole war itself.

Heart of Darkness​

“And this also…has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
- Heart of Darkness, on Constantinople in the late Imperial Century

“What have we done to the world, look what we've done
What about all the peace that that you pledge your only son?
What about flowering fields, is there a time?
What about all the dreams that you said were yours and mine?
Did you ever stop to notice all the children dead from war?
Did you ever stop to notice the crying Earth, the weeping shores?”
- Michael Joachim, “Earth Song” (1995)

On November 2, the astronauts of the International Space Station got front row seats to the end of the old world. The solar terminator ran just below their viewports. Pinpoints of light and plumes of smoke bloomed like flowers over dozens of cities on the night side, with dozens more appearing on the day side and the frequency only intensifying as the hours passed. They stopped counting after the hundredth strike. Over the next few days, they watched as Earth’s overall hue gradually deepened from a vibrant sky blue to a sickly and dusty dark blue-gray with hints of orange.

On the night side, the lights of cities and towns flickered out in chunks as fighting, an interruption in power, or lack of maintenance claimed their electrical infrastructure. Large empty voids appeared in the once vibrant and brilliant webs of lights of China’s heartland. The lights of India gradually dimmed until only Delhi and the Gangetic Plain remained lit, but even then Delhi frequently flickered. But as the space station passed over Africa, the astronauts saw a horrifying sight: only a handful of lights on the EAC coast remained. The rest of the continent remained dark. For the first time in 300 years, Africa once again looked like the “dark continent” feared by Eurasian explorers, a dangerous and mysterious land. Of course, the reality was much more complicated, but seeing an almost completely dark Africa brought back that feeling of not knowing what was happening there. The astronauts could only occasionally contact the Persians and Eimericans, both of whom didn’t know what was happening in Africa aside from vague news and rumors. They knew the border town of Odienne had fallen, and with it much of eastern Westafrika, but also that Mogadishu remained in Crusader hands and Timbuktu was now under siege, and in southeast Africa, the lands of the old Mutapa kingdom were slowly falling under Crusader control. But further inland, information grew scarcer until it disappeared altogether. Africa had once again become a heart of darkness—terra incognita.

The astronauts wanted to do something. There were three Abyssinian astronauts onboard, among others. Two of them were regular visitors to the station, having stayed there for multiple several-month missions. The third, a young Kaffan named Adina Sehul, was on her first mission and had only launched into space two weeks before the nukes flew. She had been the first Kaffan to go to space, a point of pride for all of Kaffa. Before, they had only been known as that one region that was at the center of an international crisis between the Reich and China which almost sparked a world war in 1900. The Kaffans had long been discriminated against within Abyssinia by the majority Amhara ethnic group. Adina had hoped her posting would spark a new conversation on Kaffan rights and lead to a reconciliation between the peoples of Abyssinia. But now she could only watch in horror as the lights of Kaffa went out with those in the rest of Abyssinia. Whenever contact was briefly reestablished with Mission Control, she always asked if anyone knew what had happened to Kaffa. The answer was always the same: nobody knew anything. She pleaded with her fellow crewmembers to figure something out. Maybe they could change the orbit to get closer to the surface while staying out of range of the satellite debris. Or maybe they could retask the scientific instruments used to peer at planets and stars to look at the ground. Or, going even further, they could abandon the station and land in Persia or the Eimerican interior, then set out on their own. All of her ideas were shot down, unfortunately. At first, it seemed cruel to deny Adina the closure she wanted. It was like Schrödinger’s Cat; Kaffa seemed both destroyed and intact at the same time, with nothing to disprove either outcome. But the next day, an older crewman, a veteran from India, tried explaining his point of view. Moving the station orbit lower would be too dangerous, as there was no strictly defined elevation where the debris started orbiting, but rather there was a probability of encountering debris. Such a probability was still nonzero at their current elevation, but they conserved enough thruster fuel for evasive actions and other emergencies. In order for the thrusters to have enough time to push the station out of the way of any incoming debris, they needed their instruments to constantly watch for them and provide advance warning. Finally, abandoning the station, a relatively safe location with months of food and supplies ready to go, was more likely than not to get them all killed on the ground. It was far safer to just ride out the storm in space than take their chances down there. He admitted he did understand Adina’s concerns. He had a family in Mumbai, which had gone completely dark. He wanted nothing more than to see if they were okay. But now wasn’t the right time. They had to focus on surviving. It wouldn’t do their loved ones any good if they ended up dead, after all. Adina, eventually, came around to the Indian’s way of thinking, though she remained down for weeks. Eventually, she accepted that nobody would be able to know anything about Kaffa for a long time, so she might as well focus on what she did know and could do.

A trained botanist raised in a family of farmers, Adina had been brought onto the station to research the effects of low gravity on the growth of plants, particularly with regards to nutritional value, which would help when creating rations for long-term space missions and possibly even a Mars mission. Using seeds from the supply module, she taught the crew how to grow crops in low gravity. Previous crews had done research with a handful of plants, but Adina went further, believing they would have to start growing crops for consumption, not just research, to supplement and ultimately replace conventional food supplies dependent on launches from Earth. But growing plants in space was far different than how her parents tended to their fields in Kaffa. She made good use of all of the soil they had and picked seeds which would be easy to grow and resilient. Radishes and potatoes suited her needs; they were not only hardy and easy to grow but also generally quick to grow as well. She next set up fans to gently blow on the growing crops, simulating wind, and programmed a timer to regularly water and illuminate them, simulating rainfall and the day-night cycle. Almost two hundred sensors taken from elsewhere in the station monitored and simulated an equal number of environmental parameters and other variables that would be expected on a regular planetside farm. Finally, she spread her new farm over several reinforced modules, so that if any were damaged or destroyed, others would survive.

Some of Adina’s radishes being grown in an artificial farm. For the foreseeable future, these radishes would form the core of astronaut meals on the International Space Station.​

Within three weeks, the first harvest was ready, and the crew gathered together to eat a hearty radish and potato salad. The radishes tasted awkward and would take some getting used to, but they were nutritious enough. As the crew chatted and ate together, Adina looked on, her worries slowly disappearing under the smiles and satisfaction of her colleagues. At that moment, her eyes wandered out one of the windows above her, looking up at Earth. They were currently passing over Africa at night, but something seemed different today. Adina gasped when she realized what it was. Where once there was only one dim speck of light in the Horn of Africa—Addis Adaba—there were now two. A second and smaller point of yellow had faintly blinked back into existence to the west of the ancient Abyssinian capital—in what was supposed to be Kaffa.

A tear floated off Adina’s cheek and lazily drifted around the module. With her hopes encouraged again, she turned back to the crew and prepared another round of salad. She had much to do up here.

---

Edit as of the morning of June 13: I spent the last 3 days doing the final edits (having pasted the text into this box on Friday and then uploading the pictures and writing captions over the weekend), and when I went to resume editing today, I found the forum had stupidly deleted the whole thing. I am very pissed this is still a thing since I lost so many updates years ago to this. Suffice it to say, I made a lot of edits in this box that weren't on my Word document, and I've forgotten a lot of them since I didn't expect this would happen. The original title was "Winter of Our Discontent," which changed to "The Hungry Winter" in the deleted final draft, which I decided to change to "Fimbulwinter" here because I don't like writing the same thing again.

Edit as of 10:46 PM on June 13: It took me the entire day to get back all of my progress and finish editing everything else.

Behold, the monster that took me 3 months to write because I got sidetracked with maps and real life. I was working on this chapter long before certain real life events happened. Again, I went overboard with the Ryukyuan segment (though I actually did the maps there last of all). I know the “Russia invades Eastern Europe” subplot I have going here no longer sounds palatable due to real life, and I’m sorry about that, but it had been decided on months ago. Though I like to think of our Russia as culturally being more based on Kievan Rus/Ukraine than the real life Russia (which evolved out of the Grand Duchy of Moscow). I may also start referring to Kiev as Kyiv in the future. That hasn’t been decided yet.

I looked up Mongolian naming conventions and found they generally don’t use Western- or Eastern-style surnames, so Saikhangiin Börte’s given name is Börte, and Saikhangiin is a patronymic (her father would be named Saikhan). I know I had Chancellor Orus Amur and Gulichi Juha use Western naming styles, but I attribute that to them being brought up in Finnish/Russian culture rather than Mongolian.

The Kalmyks—an offshoot of the Oirats—live southwest of Astrakhan in real life, and Lenin really was partially Kalmyk. But the actual name “Kalmyk” was given to them by their Muslim neighbors, so in the absence of such neighbors, they kept identifying themselves as Oirats.

I’m retconning the “Book of Asgard” holy texts from CK2 to be called as the Fylkirsbók here. The name comes from the Codex Regius (Konungsbók), which in real life was a late 13th century codex that preserved many Old Norse poems. I called it the Edda, from the Poetic and Prose Eddas, but as nobody can agree on the etymology of the word “Edda” and most of the suggestions I found pointed to an Icelandic origin, I made up another name. In the end, it can’t really be an exact copy of the Eddas since those were written from an Icelandic Christian perspective in the 13th century. Any actual codified Norse holy text from an alternate 11th century Scandinavia where Norse paganism somehow survived would be very different. In the rewrite and future chapters, I may do the same thing with the other codified pagan texts I mentioned since I came up with their titles when I had very little understanding of how exactly their religions or even polytheism worked.

In case it goes down, the music link is "Roar of Dominion (Thunder)" from Fire Emblem Three Houses. The previous chapter's music link was "Roar of Dominion (Rain)."

 

[NarcomancerPL]

This "monster" was really enjoyable to read
And don't concern yourself with real world parallel. It's not like you wanted Russians to attack to reflect our reality or did imperialist Russian aar when there is War in Ukraine.

P.S.: I think every Ukrainian reader of yours would appreciate changing the name to Kyiv and it would be more accurate if Russia here is a succesor to Kievan (Kyivan?) Rus rather than Muscovy

 

[zenphoenix]

This "monster" was really enjoyable to read
And don't concern yourself with real world parallel. It's not like you wanted Russians to attack to reflect our reality or did imperialist Russian aar when there is War in Ukraine.

P.S.: I think every Ukrainian reader of yours would appreciate changing the name to Kyiv and it would be more accurate if Russia here is a succesor to Kievan (Kyivan?) Rus rather than Muscovy

Good to know those three months weren't for nothing.

I'll definitely keep that in mind. It was just a really unfortunate coincidence that things happened in real life when they did.

Yeah, good idea. In future updates I will see about name changes, but we won't have to worry about that for a while as I won't be mentioning Kyiv for a while. In the far future, I might even go back to my Russia lore post and improve on the history I mentioned there. I've been meaning to rework a lot of countries' histories, not just Russia's, so they can feel more original and not name-swapped rehashes of what happened to them in real life.

 

[TheAnguishedOne]

Indeed, the efforts are appreciated. A good overview of just how bad things have gotten. Alas, I suspect we are far from the bottom still.

 

[TWR97]

Hell of an update you posted for us Zen, really strikes to the heart how awful the actions of the Committee have done to the world. That title alone is enough to make you see how a nuclear winter is about to be awful. Seems like a dream of spring is only gonna remain that, even if the Committee is defeated for good, there is still Han's administration to deal with, and the Nuclear Winter which is unfortunately gonna remain there till we'll get to the Stelllaris portion, assuming there even is a humanity left to tell the story. I am glad that there are still good people like Konstantinov and Börte fighting the good fight, but damn, that destruction of Scandinavia though....All those who had escaped Jerusalem's wrath, gone just like that.

Thanks for this monster of an update Zen, hell of a read, those three months were certainly worth it in the end.

 

[zenphoenix]

Indeed, the efforts are appreciated. A good overview of just how bad things have gotten. Alas, I suspect we are far from the bottom still.

Chapter 466: nervous sweating

really strikes to the heart how awful the actions of the Committee have done to the world

...so far.

a nuclear winter is about to be awful

Even if it isn't civilization-ending like many previously thought, it would still be very painful for everyone.

and the Nuclear Winter which is unfortunately gonna remain there till we'll get to the Stelllaris portion

The nuclear winter itself might last a couple decades, but some climate changes would last much longer. Definitely will be one of the biggest consequences of this war.

I am glad that there are still good people like Konstantinov and Börte fighting the good fight, but damn, that destruction of Scandinavia though....All those who had escaped Jerusalem's wrath, gone just like that.

RIP Scandinavia.

Thanks for this monster of an update Zen, hell of a read, those three months were certainly worth it in the end.

Glad to hear it. I'm currently working on 466 and I hope to give it a similar quality...although hopefully I don't take 3 months again.

 

[CaptainAlvious]

Incredible update, but a very bittersweet one too. I especially how much detail you put into the stories of the ISS astronauts and Konsatoiv's army, I can tell you’re having a lot of fun with this chapter format.

With the Eimercas soon to be ravaged by Smallpox in yet another timeline and many other countries being terrorized by the two totalitarian superpowers, it’s nice to see countries like Russia, Ryuku and Persia still carry the torch of freedom. Still tho, it will take decades for humanity to rocover from this nightmare if at all, I could see China remaining a dictatorship long after Jerusalem is defeated.

Yeah, good idea. In future updates I will see about name changes, but we won't have to worry about that for a while as I won't be mentioning Kyiv for a while. In the far future, I might even go back to my Russia lore post and improve on the history I mentioned there. I've been meaning to rework a lot of countries' histories, not just Russia's, so they can feel more original and not name-swapped rehashes of what happened to them in real life.

On that note, I actually have one name change I want to suggest and that's swapping out the term "Tarascan" for either Purépecha for the cultural group or the Nahua term Michhuahcān for the region, as Tarascan is a Spanish exonym and a pejorative one at that. Just wanted to let you know. As for lore ideas for the Purepecha, I don’t have many but I do like to think they were trade partners and allies of Fusang and Twantinsuyu before being a invaded and conquered by the Mexica here, given their rivalry with the Aztecs in OTL and cultural similarities with South American civilizations. While I understand the Purépecha won’t be relevant to your story in the foreseeable future, I hope you like my suggestion.

 

[zenphoenix]

Incredible update, but a very bittersweet one too. I especially how much detail you put into the stories of the ISS astronauts and Konsatoiv's army, I can tell you’re having a lot of fun with this chapter format.

I really like how much flexibility I have with this format now. I wouldn’t have been able to do this in the old format.

With the Eimercas soon to be ravaged by Smallpox in yet another timeline and many other countries being terrorized by the two totalitarian superpowers, it’s nice to see countries like Russia, Ryuku and Persia still carry the torch of freedom. Still tho, it will take decades for humanity to rocover from this nightmare if at all, I could see China remaining a dictatorship long after Jerusalem is defeated.

Not only that, but Han now has international opinion on his side. People are willing to overlook his anti-democratic policies and human rights abuses if it means getting China’s support in defeating what they see as the greater evil, Jerusalem. Those who see through Han’s lies are unfortunately in the minority now.

On that note, I actually have one name change I want to suggest and that's swapping out the term "Tarascan" for either Purépecha for the cultural group or the Nahua term Michhuahcān for the region, as Tarascan is a Spanish exonym and a pejorative one at that. Just wanted to let you know. As for lore ideas for the Purepecha, I don’t have many but I do like to think they were trade partners and allies of Fusang and Twantinsuyu before being a invaded and conquered by the Mexica here, given their rivalry with the Aztecs in OTL and cultural similarities with South American civilizations. While I understand the Purépecha won’t be relevant to your story in the foreseeable future, I hope you like my suggestion.

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll keep that in mind when I next mention them. Don’t think I’ll change the name in this chapter right now since I don’t like editing updates after they’re posted, but the name change should appear if they pop up again.

I could see the Purepecha as an ally of Fusang against the Triple Alliance. After the region is conquered, Fusang could have funded frequent rebellions and insurgencies there to take the Alliance’s attention away from other important fronts and border regions.

 

[zenphoenix]

By the way, here's a wikibox I just made for the Battle of Sumatra in Chapter 465. I forgot to make it when I wrote the chapter, and I can't actually put it in there now because I hit the 30 image limit and don't want to delete any of the pictures there right now.

I'm going to resume uploads next week because I want to give the chapters two weeks to be in the spotlight instead of the usual one.

 

[GhostRider124]

Wow. It has taken me at least five day's to read this as @NarcomancerPL said "Monster" with it felling like an AAR in and of itself but it was was still enjoyable. I think that these History Updates do just as much of a service as the Story Updates do in showing how low the Committee can go.

I will however be laughing out of my chair if at the end of all of this the biggest contributor to Jerusalem's defeat came from Tesla due to Theodor's attempts at cutting corners.

I was originally going to have a bunch of questions that potently were going to be as long as that update but I think that this clip sums up the state of the world nicely.

assuming there even is a humanity left to tell the story

Well if our heroes do not win I foresee a humanity that has either been enslaved by Jerusalem, turned into Fallout style mutants or maybe one of the aliens from the X-Division arc abducts those on the ISS and recreates humanity into a scion race?

When I was reading the Battle of Sumatra part of the update I saw a blue flag that had white stars in a round circle with a red chevron and was wonder what country that flag belongs to?

Wow. Ryukyu is really going for the ‘The Three Mountains’ achievement aren't they?

 

[zenphoenix]

Wow. It has taken me at least five day's to read this as @NarcomancerPL said "Monster" with it felling like an AAR in and of itself but it was was still enjoyable. I think that these History Updates do just as much of a service as the Story Updates do in showing how low the Committee can go.

I can't justify the increased story focus I've had since X-Division without continuing the chapters, as I'm pretty sure most of my viewers now and in the future are only going to read the numbered chapters. Since the story updates gives me more time in between chapters, I can afford to give them greater quality.

I will however be laughing out of my chair if at the end of all of this the biggest contributor to Jerusalem's defeat came from Tesla due to Theodor's attempts at cutting corners.

Yet another example of how dictatorships running on nepotism and cronyism will inevitably shoot themselves in the foot.

I was originally going to have a bunch of questions that potently were going to be as long as that update but I think that this clip sums up the state of the world nicely.

Yes.

I'm still down to answer your questions though

Well if our heroes do not win I foresee a humanity that has either been enslaved by Jerusalem, turned into Fallout style mutants or maybe one of the aliens from the X-Division arc abducts those on the ISS and recreates humanity into a scion race?

Or the committee flees to Mars with its remaining survivors and then from there establishes a theocratic galactic empire--wait a minute...

When I was reading the Battle of Sumatra part of the update I saw a blue flag that had white stars in a round circle with a red chevron and was wonder what country that flag belongs to?

You mean this one?

This was the first proposed flag for an independent Malaysia in real life. I couldn't use the current official Malaysian flag because our Malaya no longer has a significant Muslim presence as in real life (the star and crescent on the real flag is because Islam is Malaysia's state religion). I felt this was the most religiously and culturally neutral of all of the non-British flag designs on this page. Though that meant I really had only three options in the end, and I already used the following one for the Dominion of Indochina.

That was all the way back at the beginning of NWO.

Wow. Ryukyu is really going for the ‘The Three Mountains’ achievement aren't they?

Higa did canonically go to the DDR Jake school after all...

 

[zenphoenix]

The Next Step​

Ali Qapu Palace, Isfahan - January 20

The war room felt different ever since Wilhelmina came back from Samarkand. The generals didn’t look as tense. Their voices sounded more optimistic as well. Gebhard quietly sat by the wall, along with several other Roman exile officers. The front lines on the table map had also dramatically changed. Shayan moved large amounts of Persian counters north and east, pushing back the Crusader lines further than Wilhelmina had ever seen.

“I honestly can’t believe it,” Shayan said, “The Samarkand operation actually worked.”

“Well, if you still can’t believe it after the fact, why am I even paying you?” Gunduz said.

“They didn’t have to do it,” Wilhelmina said, “Kill their own soldiers for losing.”

“Again, Willie, you couldn’t have known.”

Wilhelmina steeled herself. “Right, right…what’s next, General Tahmasb?”

“We’ve broken through the enemy lines at Bukhara.” Shayan moved Persian counters onto Bukhara. “The enemy force is in full retreat, and we’re working on taking out any stragglers still in the city.”

“Casualties?”

“About 18 thousand enemy casualties, from our estimate.”

“I meant our own troops.”

Shayan hesitated.

“Out with it,” Gunduz said.

“Twenty-three thousand casualties,” Shayan said, “Of those, roughly ten thousand were fatalities.”

God, it’s just like the Eimerican fronts.

“I see,” Gunduz said, “I…didn’t expect casualties to get so high so quickly. That’s on me. Have those men focus on securing Bukhara and reinforcing it against counterattacks.”

“What about Bishkek and Tashkent?”

“We’ll get to them later. Our troops need time to rest. I’m sure the Turks will figure something out now that their capital’s no longer threatened.”

“And what about the rest of the Artesh?” Wilhelmina said.

“I need them.”

“For what?”

Gunduz put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you already know? Mesopotamia.”

Wait a minute…do you mean… “We’re really doing it?”

“It’s about time we strike Jerusalem’s heartland.”

“Hold on a moment,” Wilhelmina said, “I thought you weren’t onboard with my crazy idea.”

“Things have changed after Samarkand,” Gunduz said, “The Crusader presence in Turkestan is about to collapse, trapped between us and the Chinese. We won’t have to worry about a threat from there. But the bigger threat is in Mesopotamia.”

“My scouts report they’re building up troops in the area around Basra, no doubt to invade Persia,” Gebhard said.

“Which means we must attack now before those forces get too strong,” Gunduz said.

“Gebhard, what do you think?” Wilhelmina said.

“The Crusaders are struggling to fight back against Konstantinov and Börte right now,” Gebhard said, “They’ve concentrated their forces in Eastern Europe. They may be amassing troops for Persia, but it’ll take time before they reach full strength. If we attack now, we can catch them by surprise and inflict some serious damage. If we’re lucky, we might be able to secure the Gulf oil fields. That way, their fuel will be used for our vehicles, not theirs.”

“Are you sure you want to worsen the state of the planet right now?” Wilhelmina said. “Everything’s already as bad as it is, and you want to generate more emissions?”

“We don’t have a choice,” Gebhard said, “Either we use that oil, or they will. Best case scenario is we keep the oil and don’t use it, but I don’t think the rest of my men will think the same way.”

He’s right. We’re in a really horrible situation now. The irony of it all. The bad guys claim to be saving the planet, while us “good guys” are the ones doing the polluting. I’m almost certain Jerusalem has to rely on oil for its war machine—I wouldn’t be surprised by such hypocrisy—but I still feel really bad if we have to do it too, even if we have to do it to survive. What’s the point of surviving this war if we can’t live on the planet in the end? Unless we put everything we have into building spaceships taking us to another planet, which opens up another can of worms.

“…fine,” Wilhelmina said, “Just…don’t go overboard.”

“I’m well aware,” Gebhard said.

“How far do you think you can go currently?”

“My planners project we could make it as far as Baghdad,” Shayan said, “The more optimistic of them say we could even get as far as Jerusalem—the city, that is.”

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Gunduz said, “Taking the namesake of the empire would be utterly humiliating. A part of me wishes we could even get all the way to Constantinople. Like how Alp Arslan almost did a thousand years ago.”

“Or like how Marth took his home back…” Wilhelmina said.

“I have to again voice my concern as to this plan, ma’am,” Shayan said, “We have to play our cards right. That army they’re amassing is no joke. One wrong move, and we could be getting invaded instead. We could end up like Bhutan or Korea.”

“Agreed, Tahmasb,” Gunduz said, “Which is why you will be leading the invasion force, together with General Remmele. Report to the staging area tomorrow.”

Shayan pointed at himself. “What, me?”

“Yes, you, what do I pay you for?” Gunduz put her hands on the table. “You wanted us to play our cards right? Well, I’m playing my cards right the frak now!”

---

Outside, Wilhelmina ran into Izinchi, Julian, and Samir.

“Hey,” she said.

“Top o’ the morn t’ye,” Izinchi said.

“How are things with the Majlis?”

Izinchi shrugged. “The usual. Stuffy old men from the ‘60s thinking they ken more ‘bout modern issues than me.”

“She actually prefers that,” Julian said.

“Least they’re nae tryn t’ kill me! Anyways, we’ve heard back from the Malians.”

“The Malians?” Wilhelmina said.

“The University of Sankore,” Julian said, “They’re working on a vaccine for Pesah.”

The University of Sankore is Mali’s leading center of higher education. It’s been around for centuries and grew out of a late tenth-century mosque in Timbuktu. They were the ones who developed the first smallpox vaccine in 1721, when one instructor noticed a farmer who had previously gotten cowpox apparently couldn’t be infected with smallpox. Ever since then, their epidemiology department has been one of the best in the world. If anybody can develop an effective Pesah vaccine, it’s them.

“How long until it’s ready for distribution?”

“Hard t’ tell, but I reckon ‘bout…2 months working at their fastest,” Izinchi said, “Y’know, wi’ all the tests ’n regulations t’ make sure it’s safe.”

“Much harder to do since they had to evacute Timbuktu,” Julian said.

“Where’d they go?” Wilhelmina said.

“‘Nother lab down south,” Izinchi said, “Still settling in. Maybe we need more than 2 months at this rate.”

“I hope we don’t have to use it in the end,” Julian said.

“We can’t assume they won’t use Pesah,” Wilhelmina said, “They already have it ready. We know they aren’t above using other dangerous weapons.”

“I’m sure the people of Scandinavia, Korea, and Southeast Asia can attest to that.” Gunduz appeared behind them.

“I cannae get those images out of my head,” Izinchi said.

Wilhelmina couldn’t either. They had to review footage from the attacks to learn what they were up against and to gather evidence of crimes against humanity. What she had seen in those pictures and videos was something nobody should ever had to have seen. The first few chemical warheads dropped in Scandinavia seemed to have been drawn from older stockpiles from earlier in the committee’s reign, but later ones very clearly had Jerusalem’s hand in their creation. All later chemical weapons—like those dropped in Korea and Southeast Asia—were colored a deep imperial purple to inspire terror and to clearly remind victims who their killer was.

I grew up seeing imperial purple everywhere. On flags, tablecloths, chairs, my dresses, Mom’s house in general. It was her way of showing who she was without being too gaudy or pompous. But now I think of imperial purple and all I can see are clouds of it smothering children in Copenhagen or Seoul or Jakarta. The same scene every time. Melting and corroding bodies sprawled on the ground, their limbs flailing out in their last agonizing moments as they tried to escape, but the gas was all around them. Like a Roman flag being torn down from its flagpole to toss over them. Is this our legacy? My legacy?

Wilhelmina clenched her fists. “Same here. But it could be even worse if they release Pesah.”

“Which is why Sankore insists its labs are working as fast as they can,” Julian said.

“We need that vaccine today!” Izinchi said.

“Senator Ochimeca—or should I say Chancellor Ochimeca—” Izinchi winced at hearing Gunduz say that higher title. Apparently she wasn’t used to that reality yet. “Remember, vaccines usually take months to develop. They have to be put through several rounds of trials and tests to make sure they are effective and safe. And even if we did have the vaccine in our hands today, it would still take weeks to innoculate enough of the Persian people to avoid a truly disastrous epidemic.”

“To say nothing about the rest of the world,” Julian said.

“If they release Pesah now, millions will die before we can get the vaccine out to everybody,” Wilhelmina said.

“Terrifying t’ think that,” Izinchi said, “Even if we’ve th’ vaccine, people’ll still die.”

“Still suffer…” Wilhelmina’s voice trailed off. “Regardless of what I do…”

The blood on her glasses came back in focus again.

Franz…Joseph…Vasily…

“Still, we should at least try,” Julian said, “You can’t save everyone, but you can try to save as many as you can.”

Samir nodded agreeably. “A noble sentiment. We can’t simply resign ourselves.”

“Aye, we shouldn’t gie up, but A’d rest easier if we have it sooner rather than later.”

They talked some more about vaccine development, and then Izinchi and Julian had to leave for another meeting.

“Say, Willie,” Gunduz said.

“What’s up?”

“Was about to ask you that.” Gunduz pulled over a chair and sat in the middle of the hallway. “Just wanted to know if you’re doing okay.”

“Doing better,” Wilhelmina said, “Isn’t this a hallway?”

“So what?” Gunduz shrugged. “What are they going to do, ask the frakking Shahbanu to move?”

Next on Jerusalem news at 11…

“Fine, whatever.” Wilhelmina got her own chair and sat down. “Look, I told you already, I’m doing fine.”

“When we were talking about the vaccine, you kind of…trailed off,” Gunduz said.

There was no use denying it. “Sorry. Sometimes, I still think about what happened in the bunker.”

“It must have been rough, seeing Elias Anhorn gun down so much of your family like that,” Samir said.

“If you put it like that, it sounds like a CRPG protagonist’s backstory.” Wilhelmina lightly chuckled. “Maybe I am one now. Dead parents, cool sword, rightful heir to the throne, expected savior of the world…”

“You got a lot to live up to, then.” Gunduz clasped a hand on Wilhelmina’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We can do this together.”

“Thanks, Gunduz.” Wilhelmina again focused on her bloody glasses. “Still, I keep thinking. All these deaths so far. Franz and Joseph and Vasily and over a billion others who’ve died since November. What have we done to remember them? Continue killing in their name? Creating more victims of this terrible war?”

“That’s what war is,” Samir said, “As much as I hate to admit it, people die in wars.”

“The longer this war continues, the more distant my family becomes,” Wilhelmina said, “I try to limit who dies because of me, but it’s difficult. And on top of that, no matter what I do, I can’t bring back Franz or Joseph. I can’t give Ilyana her grandfather back.”

“The dead are dead,” Gunduz said, “You know we can’t change that. All we can do is mourn and move on.”

Mourn…

“I…I just realized,” Wilhelmina said, “I barely even mourned them.”

“I did bury their bodies outside the bunker,” Samir said.

“Yes, but we barely held a service,” Wilhelmina said, “At least an appropriate one.”

“I could organize a service in a couple weeks,” Gunduz said, “Give them the memorial they deserve.”

Wilhelmina’s face lit up. “Wait a minute, what if we do it for everyone else?”

“Everyone…else?” Gunduz was perplexed.

“Yeah, we could hold a service to remember all those who have died so far in this war. All one billion of them. Including Franz and Joseph and Vasily. We could make this a statement on the war itself. On the destruction Jerusalem brings upon everyone else. We can show them that their victims are people, not statistics.”

Gunduz thought for a moment. “A general memorial service…let’s see…could be a little difficult, but we could do it.”

“Really? Great!” Wilhelmina grabbed Gunduz’s hands and shook eagerly, ignoring her glaring daggers at her. “That would mean so much to me.”

“And the dead,” Samir reminded her.

“Yes, and the dead too,” Wilhelmina said.

They talked details for another couple minutes. Finally, Gunduz stood up and put the chair away.

“Alright, I have to get going,” she said, “I’ll talk about it with my cabinet. And maybe Shahrokh too. He’d love to organize the venue.”

Before Wilhelmina could respond, she disappeared down the hallway.

“Classic Gunduz,” Wilhelmina muttered.

She lacks tact sometimes, but her heart’s in the right place.

Wilhelmina remembered Samir was still there. “So…what are you doing here in the palace? Shouldn’t you be in Samarkand or something?”

“General Remmele’s request. Liberation Legion’s been recalled from the front.”

“No doubt to free you up for Mesopotamia.”

“I suppose so. The Megas Domestikos has gone all in on it. We ship out at the end of the month.”

“I wouldn’t expect any less of Gebhard,” Wilhelmina said, “And what about you?”

“Me?”

“How do you feel about my plan?”

Samir thought for a moment. “It honestly sounds very crazy. But not stupid.”

“We can’t wait in Persia forever. Eventually, we have no choice but to take the fight to Jerusalem.”

“Agreed. The people suffering under the committee must be freed, sooner or later.”

Freed…yes. Definitely. I know I have to take down Elias Anhorn and his cronies, but then…what next? I’ve thrown out ideas for what to do afterward, but I haven’t thought about them much. All I’ve done is focus on today and tomorrow, not a year from now. What else can I do, really? No use coming up with a detailed plan if I die before I get close to starting it.

Wilhelmina didn’t realize her hand had gingerly touched the rim of her glasses. When she did, she nodded. “Yes…they’ve killed too many people already. The suffering has to stop. It has to.”

“You know, you’re nothing like your uncle.” Samir crossed his arms.

“Uncle Karl? I suppose so.”

Everything he did over the last several years, I’m trying to undo. There may have been more to his story, but I’ll never know for sure. All I know is that I’m doing the opposite of what he did. He may be dead, but the committee is his legacy. I’m the one tearing down his legacy by destroying the committee. Not that I see anything wrong with that.

“I really do appreciate that, I have to say,” Samir said.

“What do you mean?”

“People like you are rare in this world and these times,” Samir said, “Especially among royals. The Emperor of China acquiesces to everything Han Xianyu does, instead of standing up for his people’s freedom. The Tsar-Khagan didn’t care about the issues facing people like me. And your uncle…he was the worst of the lot.”

I get that. No matter what his story was, he still did what he did.

“Like I said before, I promise I won’t end up like Uncle Karl,” Wilhelmina said.

“And again, I appreciate the gesture, but we can’t predict the future, ügüi?”

“Fair point.”

“We can at least look to the past and present for guidance,” Samir said, “And from what I see, you’re alright, so far. Nothing like your uncle or the Tsar-Khagan or the emperor of China. Which is definitely good in my book.”

“And what if I was like him?” Wilhelmina asked, curious. “What if I was more like my uncle?”

Samir’s face hardened, and his eyes narrowed. Wilhelmina immediately regretted asking.

“Then I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you where you stand.”

 

[CaptainAlvious]

Hearing that it will take two months to release Pesah hurts knowing that the Commitee has already released Pesah and our protagonists don’t even know. Looks like they will have to be even more dead to honor at the memorial than they billion that have already died before they can even have their counterattack into Mesopotamia.

I feel like an interaction between Wilhelmina and Wihelm Karl’s force ghost would be very interesting considering how much he’s been talked about lately.

Also, did Samir have a Sans moment at the end there? All jokes aside, that was a nice conversation, it will be good to have a Kaiserin like Wilhelmina that cares about the people, but I still think her idea of politically depowering the monarchy is a good one considering what the Committee was able to do with Wilhelm Karl as their puppet.

 

[GhostRider124]

I can't justify the increased story focus I've had since X-Division without continuing the chapters, as I'm pretty sure most of my viewers now and in the future are only going to read the numbered chapters. Since the story updates gives me more time in between chapters, I can afford to give them greater quality.

And that's sad because although I am used to reading AAR's in the history book format/Chapter updates like Ch.465 I have over the course of this story come to like the Story updates as well since they help in the worldbuilding by giving the world a more "human" feel.

You mean this one?

Yes I meant that one.

The irony of it all. The bad guys claim to be saving the planet, while us “good guys” are the ones doing the polluting.

I fell like the whole story as well as this current arc has really brought out our love for irony to the forefront.

I’m almost certain Jerusalem has to rely on oil for its war machine

I thought that Jerusalem is mainly clean energy now?

“If you put it like that, it sounds like a CRPG protagonist’s backstory.” Wilhelmina lightly chuckled. “Maybe I am one now. Dead parents, cool sword, rightful heir to the throne, expected savior of the world…”

“You got a lot to live up to, then.” Gunduz clasped a hand on Wilhelmina’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We can do this together.”

Even if she has the tact of a Bull in a China shop. It is as Wilhelmina said "her heart's in the right place".

“You know, you’re nothing like your uncle.” Samir crossed his arms.

“Uncle Karl? I suppose so.”

Everything he did over the last several years, I’m trying to undo. There may have been more to his story, but I’ll never know for sure. All I know is that I’m doing the opposite of what he did. He may be dead, but the committee is his legacy. I’m the one tearing down his legacy by destroying the committee. Not that I see anything wrong with that.

“I really do appreciate that, I have to say,” Samir said.

“What do you mean?”

“People like you are rare in this world and these times,” Samir said, “Especially among royals. The Emperor of China acquiesces to everything Han Xianyu does, instead of standing up for his people’s freedom. The Tsar-Khagan didn’t care about the issues facing people like me. And your uncle…he was the worst of the lot.”

I get that. No matter what his story was, he still did what he did.

“Like I said before, I promise I won’t end up like Uncle Karl,” Wilhelmina said.

“And again, I appreciate the gesture, but we can’t predict the future, ügüi?”

“Fair point.”

“We can at least look to the past and present for guidance,” Samir said, “And from what I see, you’re alright, so far. Nothing like your uncle or the Tsar-Khagan or the emperor of China. Which is definitely good in my book.”

“And what if I was like him?” Wilhelmina asked, curious. “What if I was more like my uncle?”

Samir’s face hardened, and his eyes narrowed. Wilhelmina immediately regretted asking.

“Then I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you where you stand.”

Well that moment with Samir got dark really fast. However if that ever became the case in were Wilhelmina pulls a Anakin Skywalker and becomes something like Darth Vader then I think it would be a good thing that we have someone like Samir on our side who would do wat needs to be done.

 

[zenphoenix]

Hearing that it will take two months to release Pesah hurts knowing that the Commitee has already released Pesah and our protagonists don’t even know. Looks like they will have to be even more dead to honor at the memorial than they billion that have already died before they can even have their counterattack into Mesopotamia.

Lots more...

I feel like an interaction between Wilhelmina and Wihelm Karl’s force ghost would be very interesting considering how much he’s been talked about lately.

That could be interesting. I haven't written anything about force ghosts yet, but I might write that interaction later on.

Also, did Samir have a Sans moment at the end there? All jokes aside, that was a nice conversation, it will be good to have a Kaiserin like Wilhelmina that cares about the people, but I still think her idea of politically depowering the monarchy is a good one considering what the Committee was able to do with Wilhelm Karl as their puppet.

It's on the right track.

And that's sad because although I am used to reading AAR's in the history book format/Chapter updates like Ch.465 I have over the course of this story come to like the Story updates as well since they help in the worldbuilding by giving the world a more "human" feel.

Storywriting has been my passion for years. As I've said before, I wanted to make this world feel real and lived in, so I cover perspectives from all sorts of people, not just the Hohenzollerns, politicians, and military leaders. Most alternate history tends to focus on politics and war because those are the most exciting things to talk about, but I think there's merit in seeing how normal people go about their day as Kim Stanley Robinson did in "The Years of Rice and Salt" (he has been one of my inspirations for the story focuses here). Unfortunately, I think I went overboard in the past with the X-Division and Fringe arcs, as the sheer size of the two arcs (in both volume and time spent) definitely turned off a lot of viewers. I noticed a lot of commenters gradually stopped commenting after I began the X-Division arc, leaving only about 2-3 regular commenters. I do feel dismayed that I don't have more people to interact with these days, but I'm not going to stop the story arcs. Maybe I'll cut back on the arc lengths in the future, but they'll continue. It's something I feel gives Hohenzollern Empire a unique identity compared to many other AARs.

I fell like the whole story as well as this current arc has really brought out our love for irony to the forefront.

Goes to show how the "good guys" aren't perfect, even though they're by far the better option compared to Jerusalem.

I thought that Jerusalem is mainly clean energy now?

In civilian sectors, yes, but military hardware is notoriously hard to make green. In real life, the US military is a huge source of carbon emissions. It's hard and expensive to make eco-friendly vehicles that meet the military's standards. Transitioning to renewable energy would also disrupt a lot of ongoing operations and could require the US to drawdown its international presence. I imagine it's the same with Jerusalem. It would be too expensive to replace existing hardware, would weaken the empire's global power projection, and, most importantly, cut into Theodor's profit margins as he is a major military contractor.

Even if she has the tact of a Bull in a China shop. It is as Wilhelmina said "her heart's in the right place".

Yep.

Well that moment with Samir got dark really fast. However if that ever became the case in were Wilhelmina pulls a Anakin Skywalker and becomes something like Darth Vader then I think it would be a good thing that we have someone like Samir on our side who would do wat needs to be done.

Yes, indeed.

 

[TheAnguishedOne]

With how things are at this point, damaging the planet in the effort to save the planet as fast as possible might just be the best path moving forward.

 

[zenphoenix]

With how things are at this point, damaging the planet in the effort to save the planet as fast as possible might just be the best path moving forward.

There's no easy way out of this predicament.

 

[zenphoenix]

Remote Control​

Basra - January 22

It felt weird. Like he was simultaneously in two bodies at the same time. Theodor thought of moving his right arm. At the same time his real right arm moved, so too did the right arm of the Panopticon user he was interfacing with. He opened his left hand, and the other man did the same. He felt both hands opening, and there was almost no distinction between the sensations. If not for the slight delay due to signal transmission speed, he would have thought he had four arms. He had four eyes too. Not only could he see out of his normal eyes, but also those of the other man. At first, it was a little weird seeing himself from another person’s perspective, but he got used to it.

Once the synchronization test was complete, Theodor moved on to remote control. It wouldn’t do any good if any Panopticon user he controlled like this could only do what he himself did. No, that wouldn’t do. The men who heroically gave their lives in Samarkand certainly weren’t exactly copying him, and they shouldn’t have. What Theodor wanted was a remote controlled army at his disposal, dispensing with all of the inefficiencies of his existing drone networks. Instead of needing to watch drones through a video screen and then manually piloting them, all he had to do with the Panopticon was think a command. But this was a last resort measure. With much mental effort, Theodor willed the other man to pick up a gun. The man did so. Next, Theodor silently ordered him to turn around and shoot a target who had just been dragged into the room: a little Arabian boy who had been written off as “irredeemable” by his instructors. Finally, he imagined shooting the boy, and half a second later, the man put a bullet through the boy’s forehead.

“That will be all, thank you.” Theodor mentally ended the connection.

The other man blinked and shook his hands, getting used to being in full control again.

“Dismissed.” Theodor shooed him away. The man saluted and hurried out of the room, while a cleanup crew—more Arabs—rushed in and hauled the body out as well, leaving behind a trail of blood, bone, and brain matter.

They’re getting sloppier. They didn’t deal with the blood. Oh well. I’ll check their ID and let their Shepherd know.

Despite the metallic tang of fresh blood hanging in the air, Theodor stayed in his chair, unable to move. He shook his head and massaged the back of his neck, feeling the small scar left where his Panopticon had been surgically inserted. When he first began implementing remote control, he noticed a flaw in the data core’s original Panopticon design. As small chips with extremely limited space for processors and transistors, the Panopticons lacked the power needed to create and maintain a connection. The energy requirements more than doubled when making both users do different things at the same time and then went up exponentially as more users were added into the network. The original design was physically incapable of remote control.

No doubt because it was also an experimental technology on their end. Still, it was much further along than our prototypes.

Theodor’s team solved the issue by drawing on the idea that the brain was a huge electric motor. By drawing in stray electricity from nerve signals and other brain processes, they could provide the energy necessary for remote control. If they wanted a larger range of control, they could simply draw on more electricity from the brains of both the initiator and those to be controlled. Naturally, that imposed another limitation, as they couldn’t take too much electricity from any one brain that it ceased functioning altogether.

Don’t think I’ll ever reach that limit. A larger control network means more brains to draw electricity from, which spreads out the mental load over more people. Still hurts for me, though. Samarkand felt like I had a horrible hangover. Have to see if I can get around that.

He poured a glass of beer and downed it in one gulp. The rush of alcohol quickly dulled the soreness in his head enough for him to push it out of his priorities.

Better. But I shouldn’t drink too much, or I’ll actually get a hangover. Maybe I’ll sleep early today.

Theodor left the test room—a cleaner still hadn’t arrived to take care of the blood—and headed back to his own room. Before he could go inside, though, someone walked up to him. It was Josh, his star pupil. The young man saluted with gusto. “Sir! Apologies for bothering you!”

“Ah, Johansen,” Theodor said, “What brings you here this evening?”

“I was wondering, sir, if you could help diagnose an issue with my Panopticon.”

Theodor raised an eyebrow. “A Panopticon issue? Well, son, I was just working on Panopticon issues. What’s the problem?”

“Permission to speak freely and off the record, sir?”

I’m going to regret this, won’t I? “Granted.”

“Sir, for the last few weeks, I’ve been seeing…things,” Josh said, “Namely, people who should be dead. But they’re not.”

“And how long has this been happening?”

“Since my squad arrived in this district, sir.”

A visual glitch? Again? Like the one in Russia? I thought I fixed that. “Johansen, I fixed your Panopticon for the same issue two months ago. Was any similar weapon used against you since then?”

Josh nodded. “On the Persian border, when attempting to capture the renegade Angelica Haus, she made use of a localized EMP to temporarily paralyze me and my men.”

Frak. Another EMP weapon. But how? We destroyed the only one of its kind with Kirova. Unless… “Did you recover the weapon? Or at least a fragment of it?”

“No, sir. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find anything that resembled a localized EMP generator.”

“Did you remember Kirova’s weapon was inside a pen?”

“Yes, we did. We looked at small out of place objects, but all we found were spent bullets.”

Nothing that sticks out. Alright, moving on. “I see. Well, we can’t get anything from bullets. How about the symptoms?” He pulled over a chair and sat down in the middle of the hallway. “Describe them.” I’m on the committee, what are they going to do about it?

Josh sat in another chair opposite him. “In Baghdad, I thought I saw someone who was dead. His name was Oskar. An old teacher from middle school. A deviant who preyed on little boys. Almost ensnared me before I put a stop to it. The party cartel refused to punish him as he deserved, as they frequently did against anyone who wasn’t a Christian German man, so after joining Argus, I took matters into my own hands.”

Oh. That was him in Constantinople. The lynching that sparked that protest with Alex and Thea. He killed that man? I remember it being all over the news that week. He may have been a deviant, and we were far more thorough than that once we kicked out the party cartel, but…that specific incident was done by a single man. The man right in front of me. What got into him?

“So you think he…is still around?”

Josh remained stoic, almost like a statue. “No, I made sure he was dead. A monster like him didn’t deserve life. There was no way he survived everything I put him through.”

He’s not even reacting. I know I gave him the Panopticon, but even still, it’s unsettling. Those eyes…. “Then how did you see him in Baghdad?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d know.”

“Maybe it was some rebel, or a civilian who looked like him.”

“I know his face, sir.” Josh leaned forward and looked Theodor in the eye. “I know it very well. I got very acquainted to it and all of its mannerisms when I was working on it back then.”

It’s like when I was patching the last glitch. This man keeps revealing there are no depths to which he will not lower himself to. A perfect soldier, but…a monster everywhere else, even by my standards. “Do you by any chance have the Panopticon footage from the moment in question?”

Josh nodded. “Yes. You can check it.”

Good. Another opportunity to test remote control. Or at least a variant of it.

Theodor took out a tablet and opened a connection between his and Josh’s Panopticon. With the initial link established, he continued the rest of the process mentally. Unknown thoughts swirled around in his head. Memories that weren’t his filtered in with his own. He remembered the loud boom of Danuta’s shotgun echoing through the shed and the loud splattering of dog blood on the wooden wall. He remembered basking in the glory of the science fair, watching his classmates struggle to even comprehend his brilliant fission reactor design while the teachers scrambled for safety gear and the Athanatoi itself stormed in. Fear and pride initially overwhelmed him. His body tensed up while he let out a chuckle and smiled.

“Is something wrong, sir?” Josh asked.

“No, nothing you should concern yourself with,” Theodor said, “Though I do recommend calming your mind.”

“I’m always calm!”

I think our definitions of calm are very different. Who said that? Oh, great, another thing I have to fix in the next build. Seriously, who’s saying that? Just…calm down, will you? I’M COMPLETELY CALM!

Theodor sighed. This was going to take a while. He focused his willpower on finding the correct memory, aided by the data stored by Josh’s Panopticon. If remote control was still experimental, then remote memory recall was merely theoretical. So far, Theodor’s team had focused on motor functions. Theodor would think of an order, and his Panopticon would translate the neuroelectrical signals into computer data. The data would then be transmitted to the receiver implant, which would then convert them back into neuroelectrical signals as if they were the receiving user’s own thoughts. That was difficult enough. Even more difficult was reading someone’s thoughts. Like with remote control, the mental strain from being in one’s own mind simultaneously with another’s was immense. The human mind wasn’t built for such intrusions and would unconsciously resist them. It seemed to be a matter of willpower. Theodor’s will had to be stronger than the other’s. Otherwise…nobody knew what would happen, but it probably wouldn’t be pretty.

He finally found the memory he was looking for. There was an equivalent Panopticon file associated with it, recorded on December 27 in Baghdad. Just as Josh said, the squad was driving through the ruins of downtown Baghdad, on one of the old Autobahn highways. The highway had been deserted for a while, leaving only empty streets covered in debris and wrecks.

There is nothing of value left here. Everybody got what they deserved. Well, I for one think we can build a better city here after we win the war. I think we should just leave it to the desert. Hold on, I’m not abandoning the infrastructure here! You have any idea how expensive it is to build a city from scratch?

“Alright, Watchtower has returned a definitive hit on our targets leaving Basra. Angelica Haus and her group of rebels are heading for the CAC border. They may have escaped our first attack, but we have the technological and moral advantage on our side. As we speak, our drones are pinpointing their exact location, and with our vehicles, we can easily overtake them. Although God is with us, be ready for a fight.”

“Got it,” Alder said.

“Copy that,” Volkard said.

“Ready to go,” Leo said.

“Understood,” Colmar said.

“Let’s give those rebel scum a traitor’s fate. As God wills it!”

As God wills it! Wait, who said that?

They drove out of the city. Theodor took in the desolate sights through Josh’s eyes, and soon he saw it. In the memory, he noticed someone standing behind a car. An old man in a white suit watched the transport as it passed, maintaining eye contact with Josh at all times before disappearing after a blink.

Weird. A glitch, or more rebels? I’m leaning towards glitch.

This must be Oskar. But when he checked the Panopticon data, he found an inconsistency. The recorded visual data found nobody standing there. His eyes physically saw nobody, but perhaps Josh imagined him there.

I did NOT imagine him! Calm down, it’s just a theory.

They passed the blackened chassis of an old school bus. Josh’s eyes fell on the driver’s seat, and Oskar silently stared back.

Impossible! You’re dead!

Oskar said nothing. His face did not appear angry, but rather disappointed.

As if judging him. I’m feeling…sad. That I let someone down. That I failed. NO! I do not fail! I am a winner, and I am on the right side of history! Stop it, that’s my line!

Before the mental argument could intensify, Theodor disconnected. Leaning back, he closed his eyes and massaged his temples, going through all of his major memories to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be.

Ow…Theodor Tesla…born in Strasburg in 1995…lost Mom and Dad to a Red Army Faction attack…built a fission reactor in the third grade when I was 8…was adopted by Uncle Willy a couple months later…graduated from Eugen Debs High School at 16 as valedictorian…majored in business at the Lothringen Institute of Technology, graduated in 2015 with full honors and a perfect record…took over the company after that. I know who I am. And now that I’m back in the safety and privacy of my own head…does that man even know who—no, what—he is?

“Interesting…” Theodor thought out loud. “Very interesting. I thought I resolved this glitch in November.”

“Do you know what’s causing it?” Josh said.

Theodor stood up and put the chair away. “Well…I’ll have to think about it. I’ll look over the data and get back to you.”

“Will this impact my performance in battle, sir?”

“Don’t worry about it. As long as it’s like that, it shouldn’t be worrying. I’ll find a fix and update your Panopticon at some point. Just…get some sleep.”

“Sir, if I may—”

“That’s an order.”

Josh immediately snapped to attention and saluted. “Yes, sir.” He turned and left.

As soon as Josh was gone, Theodor ran into his quarters and locked the door behind him. He let out a sigh of relief.

You know what? I’ll just wipe his memory of this conversation. Through conventional means. Honestly, I don’t know how to solve this issue. That is, if I wanted to solve it. Damn…whatever else will I have to do about him?