Dang. More of our heroes go down. I cant help but wonder if the bad guys truly are wining or if this is just your way of showing how costly a potential victory will be?
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Ruby does identify more as an Occitan than as French. I've had her speak in Catalan, which is linguistically similar to Occitan, whereas Angelica and Billy use French. So she doesn't have as much animosity towards Saint Wilhelmina.
Dang. More of our heroes go down. I cant help but wonder if the bad guys truly are wining or if this is just your way of showing how costly a potential victory will be?
I also wonder if this is your way of making the cast of characters smaller?
Well Samir, I guess this is it for ya. At least you fought valiantly till the end.
Zen emulating GRRM and killing off most of the characters be like
You remember how I dialed up the stakes of the Zaheer vs Tenzin fight by threatening to kill off most of the supporting cast?
Well, I’m going even further.
Counterattack, Part 10
Mesopotamia
Leyla’s car sped through the desert, kicking up clouds of dust behind her. She had long since outsped her Persian pursuers as they tried to return her to her post. She couldn’t stay there anymore, not after she learned what she did. She couldn’t directly tell Gulichi or the others—it would break their morale and get them killed faster. So the only other thing she could do was get reinforcements. There was another army in the vicinity of the citadel she had spotted through one of her drones. It was about half an hour away from both her and the citadel. She had spotted a few tanks and helicopters within the army’s formation, as well as mobile artillery and a lot of cavalry. It would be enough to break the Crusaders’ siege, but they hadn’t been contacted, and they seemed unaware of the battle. They could save Gulichi and the others, but they weren’t. Leyla knew why, which was why she took it upon herself to bring them into the fight.
Who thought this was a good idea? Who wanted this to happen? Who caused this? Who stood to gain? I have to reach that army and tell them to hurry.
Suddenly bullets pinged off the car and shattered the windows. Leyla ducked and hastily swerved, causing the car to crash into a tree. She cursed. Damnit, are they really that desperate now?
Then she noticed the Crusaders advancing on her car. Godsdamnit. As if things couldn’t get worse…
Leyla picked up a grenade and prepared to pull the pin. She had heard horror stories of the Crusaders’ Herem Doctrine being executed against the hapless peoples of Scandinavia, Livonia, and Russia. Rumors spreading out of the intelligence services suggested they were extending it to the Persian front next, and captured military personnel would not be treated any different. They could have killed her seconds ago, but they had settled for disabling her car. It would have been quite easy to kill her right now, but they were likely moving in for capture. Her only option was to take down as many of them as she could. You’ll never take me alive, Crusader scum. Her hand tightened around the pin as she worked up the willpower to pull it. I’m sorry, Gulichi. I wish I could have saved you and the others at the citadel. Maybe we’ll meet again, in Tengri’s Vyriy.
Shots rang out.
Mitteleimerican warship Guatavita, Muscogean peninsula, North Eimerica
An aide cautiously approached Atoc Sopa Atoc’s cabin. His entire body had been cloaked in a hazmat suit, with air coming from a tank strapped to his back. Once Atoc realized the nature of the weapon deployed against the Eimerican forces here, they had taken appropriate containment measures—quarantines, protective gear, and aggressive treatment plans. But that was barely enough to stay ahead of Pesah. Of the crew of the Guatavita, three quarters had been infected, and most of those had died so far. There was no longer any room to store the bodies, so they were burned on a pyre on the aft deck to prevent futher infections. The surviving infected were all terminal and would likely follow them within the next few weeks. There was only one uninfected medic left, and he had been operating on only a couple hours of sleep for the last month. Their supplies of medicine were running low, and a triage had been implemented. Atoc’s health was highest priority, so most of the medicine had to be saved for him. The aide could only imagine how bad it was for the other ships. They had pulled back to a safe distance away from the shore, out of range of Crusader artillery or drone strikes, but after that, communications with the rest of the fleet had broken down. Whenever the aide was on deck, he saw no signs of life on the other ships. Either they were all quarantining, or they had all died and their ships were now derelict. Before, each ship had its own pyre operating 24/7, but one by one their flames had gone out, until the one on the Guatavita was the last one.
The aide reached the door to the admiral’s cabin and nervously knocked. Every time his gloved hand touched the door, he shuddered and recoiled, fearing the virus could infect him through the hazmat suit. There were rumors that the virus had been genetically engineered specifically to kill Eimericans. Being a Nahua from Manahuac in the UPM, he was at the highest risk. “Sir, here is the medication you requested.”
There was no response. The aide knocked again. “Sir?”
When nobody responded again, he knocked harder. Again, nothing. He checked his suit to make sure he could be heard. There were no problems. “Admiral! Are you okay?!”
He tackled the door. It took several tries before it gave way, but eventually the wood splintered, and he stumbled inside the admiral’s quarters. It was then that he noticed the admiral sprawled on the ground, his face covered in smallpox lesions. The aide immediately ran back out.
“Get the medic! It’s the admiral! He’s not breathing!”
The Pacific
Higa laid on the driftwood as chaos surrounded him. The flaming wreckage of the Chinese destroyer nearby provided heat as it fell apart and slid into the ocean. Above him, he saw Ryukyuan and allied aircraft dogfighting against their Chinese and Fusang enemies. Explosions blossomed across the darkening sky like sakura trees in spring. Underneath them, tracer fire, missiles, and flak explosions rose up from various ships. The Ryukyuans were under his feet, the Chinese were above his head, Fusang was to his right, and the other Eimerican and Asian allies were to his left. He could just make out the outlines of their ships against the horizon, illuminated by the setting sun. Every so often, he saw a ship explode, its sunlit outline disintegrating into a fireball and then swallowed up by the sea. Looking above him, his vision was flipped upside down, so the thick smoke wafting up from the distant Xi Wangmu and Dong Wanggong looked like the trail of a rocket. Pinpricks of light shot up into the blocky outlines and exploded, blowing pieces of deck and loose aircraft down the sky and then up into the water. The inferno was like a blowtorch, with roaring red and white flames belching out more thick smoke. The Ryukyuan assault continued as another air wing circled around for a follow-up attack. A dozen missiles streaked away and spread out, forming a wall of parallel lines almost like sheet music. A line of fireballs rippled across the length of Dong Wanggong, and it finally succumbed, its outline disappearing into one giant explosion. A minute later, Fusang’s Yingzhou crumbled to a Ryukyuan barrage. As the sun continued to dip below the horizon, Higa’s main source of light increasingly came from the fires and explosions.
All he could do was watch in awe as everything fell into its rightful place, or rather order disintegrated altogether from his point of view. A Fusang aerial counterattack approached the injured Sakishima and its escort, destroying a Tawantinsuyuan cruiser before they were picked off by CIWS from a nearby UPM ship and missiles from a Mexican one. Cruise missiles launched from a Chinese destroyer targeted an Ainu formation with less advanced CIWS, resulting in two Ainu ships being instantly obliterated. A torpedo struck a Japanese supply ship and ignited its fuel tanks, sending a pillar of fire surging into the sky as the ship was consumed by the inferno. In a way, it was…beautiful. Chaotically beautiful, the incoherency of war. Ships exploding, aircraft circling and diving and shooting at each other like hawks in the air, the rhythmic sound of missiles roaring and machine guns spraying their bullets, the throbbing of his leg wounds…it all meshed together into a disturbing melody. Higa didn’t relish war at all, but his mind couldn’t help but find a pattern in the chaos. And as his strength left his limbs and every fiber of his being urged him to close his eyes and rest, his eyes and ears remained glued to the destruction around him. His mind no longer wondered when rescue would come; it probably wouldn’t. He just wanted to see how the battle ended.
What’s our legacy going to be? Did we make it in the end? Did we change things here, at these islands in the middle of the Pacific? Successfully defeated three major powers? Us, a bunch of small tropical islands? Would be a funny thing to note in the history books down the road. I probably won’t be around to see it. I wonder how they’d talk about me. Would they talk about what I did before? Being online, entertaining people, having fun? Higa, the entertainer? Or would they talk about Higa, the soldier? The admiral who won at Hoang Sa, liberated Sumatra, faced down Liu at Guam, and so on. Did I do good? Did I end up making a difference in this giant mess of a war? Everyone’s doing their part elsewhere. The Yavdians, Russians, Livonians, Persians, and the others had their time to shine. Me? I just had some old rusty buckets. I sailed around this lake playing hero. But to play the cynic for a moment, would saving Hawaii change anything? I know it would save the loyalists here, but it wouldn’t matter if Hawaii survived or not, would it? Did I do anything worthwhile? Did I…do good?
He felt the driftwood sinking, and seawater washed over him.
The mall, Isfahan
Alex’s mouth moved on its own. “Angelica, stop! I want him alive!”
Angelica looked at him, confused. “Hein, are you kidding me?! You want to spare this monstre?”
“He killed Mom,” Alexandra said, “He killed your parents!”
“I know,” Alex said.
“Then why don’t you want to kill him?” Alexandra raised her bat to bash in Josh’s head. “Isn’t that what we all wanted?!”
“Angelica, stop choking him,” Alex said.
“Why should I?!” Angelica said. “After everything he did to my team and my town!”
“Because I don't want us to end up like him!” Thea doesn’t want me to end up like him…or Theodor.
The two women stared at him. It seemed they didn’t get what he was trying to say. It was hard to put into words what Alex really meant. Seeing Josh’s memories allowed him to get an understanding of how Josh ended up the way he did, but it was an understanding conveyed through experiences, not words. Translating it was difficult.
“Look,” he finally said, “I…I know he’s a monster. I know what he’s done is unforgivable. I personally won’t forgive him. But what happens if we kill him?”
“We get closure,” Alexandra said.
“Justice,” Angelica said.
“It’s his idea of justice,” Alex corrected, “Justice dispensed by the strong against the weak. We’d only become vultures, just like him. We might feel satisfied in the moment, but how will it affect us in the future, when we have a life on our conscience, no matter how terrible it was? It’s not going to bring back everyone we lost. And how will it punish Josh? He’ll be dead. Free of everything in this life.”
“Maybe he doesn’t deserve life, after he took it from so many people,” Angelica said.
“Or maybe that’s an easy way out for him,” Alex said, “If he dies, he no longer has to answer for his crimes. He no longer has to be held accountable. To be made to look back on his past and see everything he’s done. He won’t be around anymore. He’ll die knowing he escaped it all, and he won’t regret anything.”
“I don’t regret anything!” Josh received a pistol-whipping from Angelica.
“Josh must be held accountable,” Alex said, “The civilized way. The Reich was a nation of laws—of the rule of law. As Roman citizens, we believed in the ideals of our home, that everyone would be treated fairly under the law. We can’t go around dispensing mob justice outside the law. Then we’d be no better than Jerusalem.”
“Yeah, well, I killed a lot of Crusaders already, and I’m not about to stop now,” Angelica said, “Maybe it makes sense for you two scientists, but doing the whole ‘no killing or else we’d be no better than the enemy’ routine at this point would make me a hypocrite.”
“Angelica, just hear me out,” Alex said, “You’re a law enforcement agent. Or at least you used to be. You joined the Athanatoi because you wanted to defend the law and bring criminals to justice.”
“It was because of this girl’s mom.” Angelica pointed at Alexandra. “I did it out of obligation to old Agent Hansen.”
“It’s okay if you don’t agree with me,” Alex said, “But please, Angelica, you have to understand where I’m coming from. Josh is who he is because of his past. He became a monster because the people around him were hateful and angry, so he became hateful and angry. He then spread that hatred and anger to those in his own life. I’ve seen what he did to Oskar. To his wife. He perpetuated the cycle. And guess what? We’re perpetuating it as well. We hate him. We’re angry at him. We inflicted violence on him. Is it going to go away if we kill him? Will we return to who we used to be? Or will we find a new outlet for our hate and rage and violence once the floodgates have opened? I don’t want to know the answer to that question, and neither does Thea. She wouldn’t want us to win if it meant losing ourselves. I say we bring him to justice. The real way. So we can all move on with our lives, not remain shackled to the demons of our past.”
Angelica and Alexandra quietly stared at Alex for several seconds. Then Alexandra put down the bat.
“Alexandra?” Angelica said. “What are you doing?”
“I think I understand Alex,” Alexandra said, “If we kill him now, he’s never going to answer for how Mom died.”
“He killed your mother, and now you want him to live?!” Angelica said. “Why does he deserve to live when so many of his victims were never given the chance?”
“Life can also be a punishment,” Alexandra said, “Being forced to reckon with your past, experiencing the consequences of your actions, and not being allowed to tap out and cease to be…maybe that’s as bad of a punishment as death.”
“Angelica, you’re outnumbered,” Alex said, “Please…”
With a frustrated sigh, Angelica stepped off of Josh’s neck. She threw up her hands. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not doing this to be better than Jerusalem. I still think I should kill him. But if Alexandra agrees with you, then fine. Let’s see how this turns out. And if it all goes south—”
At that moment, Gustav burst into the food court. Everyone’s eyes widened.
“There was another one?” Alex said.
“I thought we got them all!” Alexandra said.
They looked at Angelica. “Hey! How was I supposed to know?!” she said.
Angelica pointed her pistol at Gustav and Alexandra picked up her bat again, even though neither of them would act fast enough. Gustav’s hands curled around the trigger.
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This is a short one because I reorganized the different storylines a couple weeks ago
Higa’s predicament was inspired by that of Ensign George H. Gay Jr., whose plane was shot down at the Battle of Midway. Floating in the ocean for hours before he was rescued, he watched the battle unfold around him, witnessing the destruction of three out of four Japanese aircraft carriers. Though the whole ordeal might not end the same way for Higa...
Vyriy is the Slavic afterlife, which in Turkestan has been syncretized with Tengri and the sky. The Ghaznavids were Zunist, but they retained elements of Turkic paganism which were mixed with Slavic paganism during Mongol rule.
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Welp, we probably now know how this is gonna go, time to truly say goodbye to our protags o7.
Welp, this world really is going to Nav with how many world leaders, commanders, and key soldiers end up in life threatening or certain death situations. In all seriousness, I’m curious to see which characters will end up being saved and which ones will be killed off and how you will do it, because having everyone either living or dying with no in between might be overdoing it.
Recalling our brainstorming of ways to expand Eimerican lore on page 379, in particular the lore regarding the conflict between Pueblo and Navajo, I found that the word Pueblo is Spanish in origin and I can't find a native name they would have referred to themselves by, so my idea is finding a Chinese word replace the term "Pueblo". So far, I found the words Zhèn, Rénmen, and Cūnzhuāng on Google translate, what word do you think would fit the Pueblo the best?
Recalling our brainstorming of ways to expand Eimerican lore on page 379, in particular the lore regarding the conflict between Pueblo and Navajo, I found that the word Pueblo is Spanish in origin and I can't find a native name they would have referred to themselves by, so my idea is finding a Chinese word replace the term "Pueblo". So far, I found the words Zhèn, Rénmen, and Cūnzhuāng on Google translate, what word do you think would fit the Pueblo the best?
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o7
I did try to find a suitable name while working on the world map, but I really couldn't find any suitable native name, only the names of the groups that are typically considered Puebloan. One idea is to call them the Kiva people, after the kivas that were central to most or all of the Puebloan cultures. That could easily be sinicized one way or another. Another is to give them a Chinese name that refers to their cliff dwellings, perhaps their most well known attribute of the era. After a little fudging on my part, Google Translate gives me Yazhen (崖鎮), or "cliff town." I could have gone with "cliff village" since the name Pueblo comes from the Spanish word for village, but that's Yacun (崖村), and that might be harder for people to recognize as a sinicized name.
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I say that, and then just a few minutes ago I went and reworked most of Fusang's placenames to use Middle Chinese instead of modern Mandarin. I used Middle Chinese because I can't find any resources that would reliably give me pronunciations of Chinese characters in Old Mandarin or Jurchen/Manchu and it's about the right time frame. I still had to take some liberties with writing the pronunciations without Wiktionary's phonetic symbols
I'm going to have to update one of the maps I made for Chapter 467 to account for this.
I kept the names of Jinshan, Hongmu, Caimei, Yanjia, Zhumasi, and Caodian the same because I either heavily referenced them before or they switched over to Mandarin because they were important cities and their populations adopted standard Mandarin. And then there's Caodian which like its OTL counterpart is a relatively popular resort town, so naturally it would have a modern Mandarin name. I made up the name Zhumasi as my own sinicization of "Chumash" several years ago, so as a rule of thumb it stays since I doubt I'd find any actual Chinese characters to represent it.
I also worked with northern Fusang:
Same deal here, Hongzhou keeps its name because I referenced it a lot before and it's a major city so its name got standardized, while everything else that is not based on a native name gets a Middle Chinese name. Funny enough, Yukhan (Juneau) can pass for Chinese despite using a completely unchanged native name.
As a bonus, I also spent the last week switching most of Penglai's Chinese placenames to their Cantonese equivalents even though I use modern Cantonese and realistically the names would be based on older Yue dialects:
As a note, the world map was made to be accurate for the 2020s in general, not anything after 2030.
I renamed Aojing (based on OTL's Aozhou, which is based on the English "Australia"; yeah, I'll probably retcon the Ming colony name as well) to Peng Gong, or "Peng Harbor" to reference both Penglai and the capital's location in a harbor, then I fudged the pronunciation a bit to get Fung Gong because Peng is a little too on the nose. It took me a bit to remember the name Lokhanda Negara as the capital of the former Daksina Jamina, and I couldn't justify putting any other important Indian settlements on the map since that part of the continent is pretty empty. However, I did add Japanese placenames right down the middle of Penglai, to represent all of the Japanese who got deported there during the colonial era. Chung Shek/Hajimari is where most Japanese first arrived in Penglai. Kinheigen was a major mining town that attracted many voluntary Japanese immigrants during industrialization—I guess it would have jumpstarted the Penglai labor movement and been the center of major labor activity well into the Cold War. Horaiyama is what the Japanese would call Uluru, even though the town named that isn't near it (it's the closest major settlement though). I really like the backstory I came up for how Tsuruhime got its name. I'll go over it later since I'm still fleshing out the exact details.
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I suppose I should also find a Middle Chinese version of Yazhen. After digging through Wiktionary for how to pronounce the phonetic symbols used, I came up with Ngaikien. i think I’ll use that. Ironically, it doesn’t sound that Chinese, but that’s Middle Chinese for you.
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Sup, I have been waiting for this. I just want you guys to know that in TV Tropes, there is finally a Complete Monster in the Hohenzollern Empire YMMV Page!
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Those are some sad final thoughts from Higa, a fear that enters countless minds.
As for the main event, I have a hunch no one is expecting who Gustav aimed for.
As for the main event, I have a hunch no one is expecting who Gustav aimed for.
Huh, I haven’t read the TvTropes page in a while. I should probably see what else’s been added.
Gustav hasn’t shot anyone…yet.
I feel for Higa in this universe given how shitty the Roman's entertainment system ended up. Knowing how many of his friends were probably purged or forced to comply with Jerusalem's laws it makes this all the more tragic as he fights for his country and for whatever sanity is still left on the world. Truly a bleak and heart breaking scenario.
Yep, he's probably thinking of all of his friends from his online days, knowing they're most likely dead. Now he's going to follow them to the grave, and he fears he didn't do enough to avenge them.
The Puebloans' name has been added to the map. Also adjusted the nation names because something about the names of Fusang, Oceti Sakowin, and Tsalagehi Ayeli being at 60 degree angles didn't sit well with me.
I also got carried away with adding more placenames to Penglai. It started as me trying to add a single town to Daksina Jamina that was settled by Vietnamese pearl divers and named after the local turtles (Cang Rua) and then spiraled out of control over the next hour and a half as I researched notable features of OTL Australian cities as inspirations for new names, translated those names into Sanskrit/Japanese/Mandarin->Cantonese in a way that sounded like a plausible placename, and then figured out where to put them on the map.
But hey, at least there are a bunch more Chinese and Indian settlements now, and one more Japanese one in Daksina Jamina for good measure.
It's almost midnight now, and I think that's enough for a while
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Good job on those name changes in the Eimericas and Penglai. One more name change I’m suggesting is to change Mississippi into “Misi-ziibi” since Mississippi comes from French and looks a little out of place next to the other names. For a while I was also thinking you could also name the area the “Chahta“ Federal Territory, but I thought against it because I don’t think that would fly well with minorities living in the area after the Eimerican Wars. I guess you could give it a Nahua name as well given the Mexica used to control the region and exported their culture there.
Also, forgive me for asking, but since you're doing an infographic for the Eimericas, what ideas do you have for Neurhomanian placenames? Based off my research, I think using Hunsrik for German place names would be a good idea even though it developed in the 19th century with Portuguese influences, simlar to how you used Middle Chinese and Cantonese for Fusang and Penglai respectively.
By the way, just a heads up, I noticed there’s one unnamed northern Leanpe city near the Kanatan border.
Also, forgive me for asking, but since you're doing an infographic for the Eimericas, what ideas do you have for Neurhomanian placenames? Based off my research, I think using Hunsrik for German place names would be a good idea even though it developed in the 19th century with Portuguese influences, simlar to how you used Middle Chinese and Cantonese for Fusang and Penglai respectively.
By the way, just a heads up, I noticed there’s one unnamed northern Leanpe city near the Kanatan border.
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