Oh dear. One falls, a half dozen new problems pop up. Some are more immediate than others but there's still quite a bit to address.
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Gentlemen, synchronize your death watches, cause the clowns up in the Committee (bar Heinreich) are about to lead Jerusalem to the ground. The fallout is gonna be awful for everybody.
I don’t know, like @Orror SANESS just said, the fact that Jerusalem now has semi competent leadership that immediately isn’t tearing itself apart while Persia is now led by a power hungry idiot that’s trying to get rid of the Roman loyalists (hence the NPC mode) is scary in its own right. In sort, Jerusalem ironically now has more competent and cohesive leadership than Persia despite suffering a major defeat, while Persia is caught up in political intrigue and power squabbles thanks to Mozaffar. At least without Theodor, Jerusalem hopefully won’t be getting new tech and weapons of mass destruction anytime soon.
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There are two ways I could respond to this:
1. There’s a good chance that fallout could be literal.
or
2. “Synchronize your death watches” could also be written as “verify your clocks.”
Semi competent you say?
Unfortunately, Jerusalem already has plenty of tech and WMDs ready to go.
This feels like what both OTL and TTL's Mongolia was like before Genghis Khan united it.
I feel really bad for Shirin but I guess the silver lining is her becoming friends with the potential future rulers of the Reich.
I am unsure as to how I feel about this. On one hand this could strengthen the Loyalist position but on the other hand this could cause Mozaffar to become pro-Chinese.
Why do I feel like Mozaffar fits the definition of Zahhak better than Jerusalem?
Also a part of me wants to play Devils Activate since at least in the story updates most of our heroes are former Roman citizens we really don't know how big their contribution is in the grand scheme of things until we get the gameplay update. But even then I fell like Mozaffar is being very disingenuous.
I would not be wanting to set up Triumvirates if I were you boys. Look at how well those went before throughout Rome's history.
Now I really want to watch a lets play about the TNO Holy Russian Empire but I don't want to because of potential spoilers.I just want to say about the ending: it’s your fault for telling me about TNO.
I know this is a Reddit link, but if you just want to look at what happens if you pick Taboritsky without spoilers for other nations, then this might help. There’s also TV tropes as well if you don’t have HOI4 and the mod and if you don’t want to watch a let’s play.Now I really want to watch a lets play about the TNO Holy Russian Empire but I don't want to because of potential spoilers.
And the steppes in CK2 before Yavdi and Saray.
True.
That's a recipe for a succession crisis.
We'll have to see what he does next, in that case.
FYI, I think you mean devils' advocate.
And yeah, most of the protagonists are regular soldiers or civilians, not the usual politicians or military commanders who show up in the news and official records. Especially in wartime, when attention particularly focuses on military leaders.
something something vultures
Spoilers about TNO or my work? If the latter, it's not going to be a close adaptation because the story is going in another direction, just with some TNO references.Now I really want to watch a lets play about the TNO Holy Russian Empire but I don't want to because of potential spoilers.
As informative as that is, that's only a fraction of Taboritsky's content, though. There are other flavor events, like the cathedral factory I referenced before. I recommend looking at the localization files on TNO's Github, if it's still there. Even if the version is outdated, Taboritsky's content has been complete for some time. The only downside is you'll just be reading text, not seeing things happen in the game.
Things have just gotten… much… more… interesting. The economy isn’t going to always be in perpetual edge of collapse in Jerusalem now. Will there be a push for Africa and Europa as the Persian front is failing and the Eimerican front being stabilized?
Jerusalem would rather try to stabilize the Persian front at the moment.
Nah, it’s more like he’s a Zahhak overthrowing another Zahhak. Despite being a horrible person, him paralleling Jerusalem and the Reich with Zahhak and Jamshid is actually pretty on point as I said before. But as Zen has said, the bs part is Mozaffar presenting himself as the revolutionary hero Kāva, basically justifying using Perisan and Roman soldiers as canon fodder and equating the loyalists with Jerusalem.
Also Zen, with how much you based this arc on real life events, I still find it funny kinda prophetic that you pretty much predicted Elon Musk‘s Twitter buyout over a year before it actually happened with Theodor buying Dikastirio. Hell, I see that a comment below that update predicted the start of WW4 in your story.
As I already mentioned Education for Death recently, I feel like you could reference Don’t Be a Sucker too, since it seems like Persia is about to fall into the same nationalistic trap that the Reich and China fell into before.
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Chapter 467: History of the End, Part 4 - Darkest Before Dawn
(Roar of Dominion (Inferno) - Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes)
“All great events hang by a hair. One of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give them a chance of success, whilst the less able one sometimes loses everything by neglecting a single one of those chances.”
- Prince Nikephoros
In March 2039, it seemed like the free world was on its last legs. In the New World, smallpox spread like wildfire on a scale not seen since the initial smallpox epidemics of the 13th century. The Pacific was on the verge of becoming the Sinosphere’s pond, with the last vestiges of Roman and non-Chinese control about to be wiped out. The collapse of the Republic of Japan and Ainu Mosir united the Japanese islands and Ainu homeland under the dictatorial rule of Sakamoto Shinzo. Korea and northern Vietnam remained under Chinese military occupation, while the rest of Srivijaya burned as neo-equalist insurgents pressed their advantage against a weakening supernational authority. The dictatorships of China and Penglai continued on their current course, stifling all attempts at liberalization with brute force, the expansion of the surveillance state, and weaponized public apathy and cynicism. The Indian subcontinent—there was no longer any organized Indian state—remained as it was. Crusaders and warlords made gains in Scandinavia, Livonia, Yavdi, and Russia. Han Xianyu’s influence and approval continued to spread around the world as fast as Pesah. Jerusalem remained a monstrous juggernaut that crushed everything in its path. The last defenders of the free world had been backed into a corner. Ryukyu’s fleets headed into a confrontation against a combined Tianxia fleet that massively outnumbered and outgunned it. Persia had painstakingly fought for all of its meager gains in Mesopotamia and Central Asia, but all that was now threatened by Jerusalem’s Operation Gaugamela, an invasion of the Persian homeland designed to wipe out the Persian government in a single quick and overwhelming attack much in the same way Russia was overwhelmed a week into the war. April arrived, and with it millions held their breath. The armies and navies of humanity moved into their final positions, ready for the decisive showdowns that would decide the course of the war.
In the northern hemisphere, spring was supposed to begin in March. Springtime was supposed to bring brighter days, blooming flowers, warming temperatures, and a renewal of life after a cold and dark winter. But with things as dire as they were right now, nobody noticed the changing of the seasons. The days remained dark. Few flowers, if any, bloomed. A not insignificant number of those that did bloom were stunted and deformed by radiation. Snow and ice still blanketed much of Eurasia and reached as far south as the Amazon. Not many birds migrated, having sensed very little change in temperature. It seemed life remained as dead as it had been for the last four months. Fields remained quiet and inactive, due to farmers being dead or fighting and the soil being too frozen or irradiated to sustain crops. The effects of a drop in global rainfall started to be felt. Farms which had survived the war with their personnel, equipment, and fields intact still found themselves lacking rain. The issue was the worst in tropical areas—particularly Africa and South Eimerica—which saw the largest drops in precipitation. The Amazon, already struggling with an unprecedented cold snap, now contended with a dry spell wreaking havoc on its ecosystem. National governments were forced to acknowledge—and plan for—the impending agricultural crisis.
The weather remained uncooperative and unpredictable. Overcast and hazy skies dominated the northern hemisphere, keeping out the sun’s light and heat even without clouds at times. Snowstorms—some depositing radioactive snow over large areas—battered Russia, Yavdi, Taurica, China, Kanata, and northern Persia. In the southern hemisphere, where the seasons were reversed, Tawantinsuyu and southern Africa experienced record heat waves during January and February. Dead bodies—both human and animal—rotted and cooked in the searing heat, attracting vultures, flies, rats, and other scavengers. Few people were alive or had the time to properly dispose of them, so most remained where they were. The scavengers, as well as unsafe human contact, spread dozens of diseases throughout the southern hemisphere. The effects were particularly terrible in Tawantinsuyu, which was already dealing with its Pesah epidemic. The decay of these bodies also created a warming effect in the atmosphere over the southern hemisphere, and scientists nervously watched for anything that might herald a runaway greenhouse effect. The south could be an omen for things to come in the north, where far more dead bodies lay frozen. New Berlin, which had the misfortune of being founded almost exactly on the equator, was caught in the crossfire between northern and southern hemisphere climate patterns, being subjected to both extreme cold and heat. Authorities offered no solution other than to uselessly pray.
Despite everything, there were glimmers of hope.
Sunset Exchange, Reprise
“In times of great need, we must all stand together as one, or else we shall fall separately as many.”
- Kondiaronk (1649-1701), Wendat orator, politician, ally of Gnupa af Steinvikholm in the Kanatan War of Independence, and a major inspiration for later pan-Eimericanism
Despite the Eimerican federal government’s increasingly strict quarantine orders, the Pesah epidemic continued to spread. Jerusalem’s specially engineered virus proved incredibly potent and contagious, easily breaking through attempts at quarantine and treatment. Most peculiar about Pesah was that it operated against basic principles of immunology, proving particularly susceptible to certain ethnic groups and not others. Infection rates were highest among native Eimericans of any kind. from the Quechua of Tawantinsuyu to the Tongva of southern Fusang, but the descendants of Old World settlers—the Fusangren, Kanatans, and Neurhomanians—were by no means spared. The federal government’s quarantine orders were rendered effectively useless due to political grandstanding and opposition from Fusang as well as military action from Jerusalem. By March, at least a thousand smallpox cases had been reported in each member state, with a vast majority of them being fatalities. Just as with its infectiousness, Pesah’s symptoms varied in intensity depending on the ethnicity of the victim. Neurhomanians had the mildest symptoms and lowest hospitalization and death rates. Symptoms commonly found among Fusangren and Kanatans remained mild, typically consisting of a rash, cough, and fever, with about 30% of cases resulting in hospitalization and 20% causing death. The Nahua of central Mexico, many of whom had substantial European ancestry, had more intense rashes, fevers, and internal organ complications; half of all victims were hospitalized, and a third died. For all other Eimerican ethnic groups, their symptoms were extremely severe; 80% of all victims were sent to intensive care, and 75% died.
Epidemiologists struggled to understand why Eimericans, of all people, were particularly susceptible. That was not how disease immunity worked. Diseases were not supposed to discriminate on the basis of race. Centuries of research indicated no significant difference in adaptive immunity—long-lived immune responses to specific antigens that stay after infection and provide resistance to future infections—existed between any human populations, much less Eimerican populations. Contrary to the popular belief that Eimericans had none of the same immunities as non-Eimericans did, all humans were equally susceptible to infectious diseases. Furthermore, the symptoms of Pesah progressed far faster than those of conventional smallpox. For the first 1-2 weeks after exposure to conventional smallpox, a host would not be contagious or show symptoms. After that, for the next ten days, the host would become highly contagious, see a rapid progression of symptoms, and then would either die or recover. In a way, this rapid progression and short window of contagiousness would have worked against creating an epidemic, even after factoring in modern transportation. Historically, fatality rates did not exceed 30% of the population. And yet within several weeks of the first cases, deaths were being reported in every Eimerican member state. Victims were reporting symptoms as early as 1-2 days after estimated time of infection, and the fatality rate was 75%.
A number of causes was proposed. Ultraviolet radiation coming through the weakened ozone layer weakened many Eimericans’ immune systems, especially those living near nuked cities. Lingering nuclear radiation in nuked areas also increased susceptibility, typically working in tandem with ultraviolet exposure. Crop failures led to food shortages and famine, further weakening immune systems; Eimericans in smaller nations which relied in agricultural imports became incredibly susceptible if they did not starve to death first. Other diseases like dysentery, typhoid, pneumonia, and cocoliztli similarly devasted Eimerican populations. Continued attacks from Crusaders—both direct attacks from infantry and long range missile strikes and bombing runs—destroyed infrastructure, killed thousands, and forced survivors to flee to other cities, where they frequently spread diseases to other communities. The Crusaders also engaged in biological warfare outside of the initial deployment of Pesah. Crusader aircraft and ground units were documented spraying Pesah-infused gas and contaminating water sources, food supplies, and other locations with Pesah. And on top of that was the most obvious cause: Malian researchers discovered Pesah itself was genetically modified to be particularly deadly to those with genes commonly found in native Eimericans, and the virus further mutated on top of that. Through the combined effects of warfare, displacement, famine, Pesah, and other non-Pesah diseases, civilian casualty rates across the Federation surged to existential levels.
For example, take Mexico. After weeks of Pesah circulating and spreading among the general population through a combination of biological attacks, refugee migrations from other affected countries, and regular infection, it was estimated that at least half of all Mexicans had been exposed to Pesah. The bulk of these infections most likely happened in late January, when Jerusalem virus-bombed Tenochtitlan, infecting a sizeable amount of the capital’s population. When news of Pesah was made public, mass panic gripped the capital. As municipal, altepetl, and national authorities and infrastructure had already been severely crippled by the nuking of the capital in November, there was nothing stopping the thousands of those who were still in Tenochtitlan from fleeing for the surrounding cities, from there spreading the disease to every major population center in Mexico. The result was a demographic catastrophe that no national or federal government could have even anticipated. Federal quarantine orders proved useless within Mexico, as by February the disease had already entrenched itself in all corners of the country. Refugee migrations from neighboring countries—particularly Mayapan and the UPM—brought with them new outbreaks of Pesah, among other diseases. Most victims’ immune systems were further weakened by a lack of nutrition as a result of famine. The nuclear winter’s reduction of rainfall and puncturing of the ozone layer brought a harsh ultraviolet-laden drought to Mexico that winter, intensifying the epidemic. Mass die-offs began in earnest in March. In the city of Cholollan, Mexica temple-pyramids were surrounded by bonfires burning corpses 24/7. In Nochistlan, military engineers struggled to dig mass graves large enough to accommodate the newly dead. The Mexican military entirely sealed off Huaxyacac, leaving its entire population to die, but the containment was ultimately in vain when the troops enforcing the quarantine themselves contracted Pesah from rats and other infected animals leaving the city.
Due to the heavy use of river transportation, Pesah spread quickly along rivers, allowing it to devastate settlements deep into North Eimerica far from initial infection centers.
Made even worse was the fact that doctors frequently misdiagnosed cases of Pesah due to the dozens of other highly dangerous diseases circulating through Mexico. An epidemic of cocoliztli, a virus native to Mexico, complicated relief efforts. Naturally occurring cocoliztli was almost as fast-acting and lethal as Pesah. Carried primarily through rats, this hemorrhagic virus thrived through a combination of drought and unsanitary living conditions. Symptoms included high fever, severe headache, vertigo, black tongue, dark urine, dysentery, severe abdominal pain, large nodules on the face and neck, neurological disorders, and bleeding from bodily orifices. Cocoliztli initially was reported among the troops blockading Huaxyacac, but it soon spread to Mayapan, the UPM, Hasiinay, and the Southern Federal Territory. Thousands would die.
Fusang immediately shut its national borders and then called out Unity’s hypocrisy in still enforcing quarantine orders. Other member states similarly shut their borders and declared martial law as mass panic spread and intensified. It was futile. In every affected country, social order gradually crumbled. Many historians drew parallels to the confusion and chaos of the devastating epidemic of 1253, when smallpox first spread to the New World as part of the Sunset Exchange, but not even that epidemic caused such depopulation and social breakdown as 2039’s epidemic—the Mexica Empire survived 1253 not only intact but still able to project military power across half of North Eimerica and across the Atlantic.
The federal military was not spared, either. Pesah devastated the Eimericans’ armies, from the rank and file soldiers to the officer corps and generals. Among the dead was the legendary UPM general Atoc Sopa Atoc, who was in charge of the Muscogean front. Without his presence, that front soon collapsed, despite some rare victories there. Other fronts also crumbled. The Eimericans’ counterattacks across the two continents stalled. Tawantinsuyu lost much of its southern and eastern territories. However, in North Eimerica, Jerusalem’s forces were just as affected by Pesah as the Eimericans were. Vaccines for regular smallpox distributed to Crusaders proved ineffective for Pesah. Casualty rates weren’t as high as among Eimerican populations, but they were high enough to break unit cohesion. Intact Eimerican federal forces launched a new wave of counterattacks, which successfully clawed back some crucial territory from the enemy. Nevantin, the capital of Hasiinay, was liberated, and the Crusaders were driven back in several key engagements.
If it was any consolation to the dead and dying, Jerusalem’s invading armies had it just as bad as the Eimericans.
Roar of the Malian Lion
“You think of us Malians as buffalo, waiting to be slaughtered, but you are mistaken. You think you can take our lands, trample on our traditions, and enslave our people? You will try to break us, but you will fail. We will endure everything you throw at us and break you in the end. Why? Because we are lions, and you will hear us roar.”
- Mansa Birama the Lion, defender of Mali against the Mexica during the Thirteenth Century Crisis
Crusader High Command expected Africa to be a pushover. Officially, it was considered a land of savages who needed the light of Christian civilization. Imperial Homeland Africa had been expanded south of the Sahara precisely for this reason. It was the Regency’s mandate that this “special administrative region” be eventually expanded over the entire continent. But the implementation of this policy was significantly hampered by self-sabotage and native resistance. Jerusalem’s official narrative was that the savages of Africa were incapable of civilization and organized resistance, so therefore the Crusaders assigned to the African front received little training, equipment, or even logistical data, as High Command either believed in or was forced to believe in a swift and easy victory. This left the invaders ill prepared to handle the significant organized resistance, not only from loyalist Länder Imperial Guard units and the Malian, Abyssinian, and East African supernational government but also from civilian militias. Crusader forces were scattered across the vast continent, and the single “front” on High Command’s maps was in reality multiple independent fronts assigned to over a dozen commanders, each with no way or contacting or coordinating with others. The Crusaders invading northern Mali had no way of knowing what the Crusaders defending Westafrika were up to, and neither were aware there was another Crusader army invading East Africa, and even that army wasn’t aware of the chemical attacks being launched against Abyssinian cities. For that matter, the Crusaders fighting in Abyssinia weren’t notified themselves, and thousands of them were killed in such attacks. Many of Jerusalem’s gains made in the early weeks of the war stalled, both due to local nuclear winter-affected weather conditions and coordinated African resistance.
On the other hand, Africa’s various factions—far more numerous than the number of Crusader fronts—united under a single banner. Despite the failure of the recent pan-African conference, mutual cooperation between the nations, the supernational government, and the Länder continued. The loyalist Länder provided secure communication and transportation lines between Mali and Abyssinia, allowing them to send troops to reinforce each other. The Crusaders of Westafrika were surprised when Abyssinian tanks reinforced Malian armies, while those in Mogadishu were surprised to see Malian militias reinforce the East African defenders. The situation was incomprehensible to High Command. These savages were not only working together, but they were actually winning. On February 16, the Westafrikan town of Zwedru fell to Mali, and dozens of others fell shortly afterward. By March, half of the province was occupied by Malian or Roman loyalist forces. On the other side of the continent, East African supernational forces went on the offensive, pushing into the eastern Sahel from Ethiopia proper. Far from being a swift and easy victory, Jerusalem’s campaigns in Africa went horribly wrong. Crusader High Command did not remember the lessons of the Siam Wars. They had seized major Malian, Abyssinian, and East African cities, but in turning the campaign into a war of annihilation and subjugation, they had made enemies of the entire continent. Jerusalem could only achieve victory through complete genocide, while all the Africans had to do was outlast Jerusalem in a war of attrition.
Mali increasingly took leadership roles in the anti-Jerusalem resistance. Its decentralized military and government structure allowed it to survive the early months of the war most intact. The southern Malian city of Eko, far from the front lines and the most intact out of all of Mali’s cities, became a prime destination for both refugees and political and military leaders looking for a place to hold conferences. There, thousands of refugees fleeing conflict elsewhere in Africa established new neighborhoods almost overnight, with the help of aid agencies and local community organizations. Politicians continued pan-African talks in downtown Eko. In Eko’s universities and other research labs, scientists from all over the continent joined the University of Sankore’s continued work on a Pesah vaccine. Even if the leaders couldn’t yet agree to how a union of African peoples would be organized, the common people had already joined together in solidarity. In Eko, it didn’t matter if one came from Mali, Abyssinia, East Africa, or the Länder. All were Africans, sharing a common destiny.
Major national and supernational militaries also brought their leaders to Eko to discuss unifying their command structures. Even though things were starting to turn in its favor, Africa had to present a united front against Jerusalem, or else the enemy could come roaring back with the force of the Red Sea crashing down on top of Pharaoh’s army. The Malians proposed a new strategy for fighting Jerusalem: they would stall out the Crusaders until the summer began, at which point the searing heat would make sub-Saharan Africa unbearable to the mostly European Crusaders. Mali’s military was the first to consider the effects of nuclear winter—though more specifically, nuclear summer—on its troops as well as the enemy’s. Banking on at least some part of the nuclear summer hypothesis coming true, Malian strategists hoped the climate in the Sahara would get hot enough that it would become impossible to cross on foot. That way, the Sahara would become a natural wall, and the only way to get past it would be by sea or air. Although they were onboard with the plan, the Abyssinians were concerned about the nuclear summer being much worse than expected, as Ethiopia proper was already in the midst of an unprecedented drought that would only intensify if the hypothesis was confirmed. Furthermore, the East Africans wanted the Malians to address the Crusaders already present south of the Sahara, in Mogadishu and along the Indian Ocean coast. The various Länder governments promised the aid of their remaining Imperial Guard units to reinforce the East Africans and the Malian militias already sent to the coast, but more materiel and manpower was needed. The Malians, hoping the climate could handle some of their work, withdrew several militias from northern Mali to reinforce East Africa.
Most military and political analysts expected Abyssinia to lead the emerging African alliance. It was the oldest independent nation in Africa, existing in its current state long before Mali had centralized and unified. It had the largest population of the three post-1945 nations. Its industry and military were the largest of the three. Abyssinian companies and their products were household names across Africa and even in Maritime Southeast Asia—a legacy of its modest colonial empire there. The original pan-African movements of the 19th and 20th centuries had begun in Abyssinia as well. With all that lined up, it was easy to assume Abyssinia would take charge and rally the rest of Africa behind it. But it didn’t. Perhaps Abyssinia had been devastated too much by the war, demographically and industrially in addition to militarily. Or maybe its supernational obligations presented a conflict of interest. Or maybe the rest of Africa was still scarred by the crimes Abyssinia’s fascist regime committed during World War II. In the end, it was Mali which took on the mantle of leadership.
It came as no surprise to many Africans. After all, Eko was a Malian city, and most of those working on the Pesah vaccine were Malians. The University of Sankore, long a center of learning in Africa, led the world in epidemiological and immunological research. Malian strategists and commanders were at the heart of Africa’s most important plans and operations. And as the continent grew more and more interconnected, Mali began exporting more military hardware and troops than it imported. Malian weapons were distributed to Abyssinian, East African, and Roman loyalist civilians, who were then trained by Malian officers and organized into Malian-style militias. Malian money breathed new life into the Abyssinian economy and funded new fortifications of the East African coast. Left with no other choice, Malian oil powered African tanks, aircraft, and ships. Mali was at the heart of the alliance.
Not since the early modern era, when Nsorala still existed, did Mali have such widespread influence. Once the Reich had founded Neurhomania and expanded into the Indian Ocean, it no longer needed to rely on the medieval trade routes to Timbuktu as much, and Mali was seemingly destined to decline. But it had persisted in the centuries since. That was the legacy left by Mansa Birama I. Birama I ascended to the throne as the second emperor from the Habe clan, and he spent his early years establishing institutions that would form the heart of Mali for centuries to come. In those years, he promulgated the Kouroukan Fouga—the Malian constitution—and established the Gbara—the legislature—as a way of consolidating imperial rule and unifying the kingdoms, tribes, and clans of West Africa. But his crowning achievement came when a Mexica invasion fleet, sent to reinforce Ocuil Acatl’s initial armada, landed on the coasts of Mauretania. Ocuil Acatl had planned to land troops in Hibernia, Scandinavia, and Mauretania as a way of covering his flanks, establishing supply chains for the main invasion in Hibernia, and splitting the Reich’s forces to make it easier to fight. But the Mauretanian invasion did not succeed like the other two. Realizing the threat Ocuil Acatl posed, Birama immediately offered a truce with the Reich, pausing their constant wars over Mauretania and North Africa. He personally led an army out to fight the Mexica, famously declaring that the Malians of both his empire and Mauretania were lions who would never yield to their enemies. The joint Roman-Malian counterattack wiped out the Mexica army. Once Mauretania had been secured, Birama then led his army into Britannia, where he and his Malians participated in the battles that ultimately halted the enemy’s advance towards London. As thanks for his support, Kaiser Siegfried I allowed many of those Malian soldiers to settle in Mauretania and Hispania. Although the Reich and Mali very quickly went back to fighting each other, those soldiers who had fought under Birama were allowed to stay in the Reich and receive citizenship, in honor of their contributions to stopping the Mexica.
Today, as another foreign invader stood ready to conquer Africa, the spirit of Birama I—the spirit of the lions of old—lived on in the people of Mali. And it was time for Jerusalem to hear them roar.
The Ultimate True Last Commonwealth War, The Final Season, Final Part, Final Chapter, Second Half, We Swear It’s Totally For Real This Time, Das Finale, You Can (Not) End This 3.0 + 1.0, Re;
“My fellow Livonians, we are the last defenders of our homes. We’ve got no choice but to fight. And look, our Russian friends bleed with us! How can we betray them now? Follow me! Ugniaukštis! Mes niekada nepamiršime!”
- Boris Bradziunas
For almost nine hundred years between 1066 and 1918, nearly constant war engulfed the Baltics. Scandinavia, Lithuania, Russia, and the Reich all fought each other for supremacy in this corner of Europe. The names may have changed—the Norse Fylkirate to Scandinavia, Lithuania to the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth to Livonia, and Russia to the Soviet Commune and back to Russia—but the battlefield remained. Usually, it would be the Lithuanians, using Norse manpower, fighting against Russia, while the Reich always sought to preserve the balance of power and prevent any of the other three from getting powerful enough to challenge its hegemony. The Commonwealth Wars from the 17th to 19th centuries, growing out of the chaos of the Fifty Years’ War, saw the bloodiest battles as the Commonwealth’s highly trained armies finally managed to stand on equal footing with those of the Reich and Russia. The Last Commonwealth War of 1836, and the resulting strengthening of the Concert of Eurasia, was supposed to close out that dark chapter and bring lasting peace to the Baltics. Yet the Baltics remained battlefields in the following four World Wars. Jerusalem’s current campaign against Livonia made the name “Last Commonwealth War” increasingly ironic and incorrect. Bysandros Malecares’ anti-Livonian rhetoric invoked the Commonwealth Wars of old, portraying the current Crusader campaign as the “True Last Commonwealth War.” While each of the previous wars had a relatively simple reason for why they happened—the Commonwealth and Russia wanted land from each other—this one refused all attempts at classification, by design. Was this a war to finish a deequalization process the party cartel had never followed through with? To repay all of the death and destruction Lithuania had visited upon the Reich, with interest? To finally bring Lithuania to heel and convert its pagans, after a thousand years of resisting Christianization? Or was it simply to exterminate more barbarians and give the land to worthy Christians? Malecares didn’t know, and he didn’t care.
Livonia had fought well and fought smart so far. Four hundred years of fighting the Reich had left the country and its people with plenty of experience fighting their far larger western neighbor. With Lev Konstantinov’s help, Chancellor Boris Bradziunas had managed to keep General Engelbert von Haynau’s Crusaders at bay, narrowly saving Vilnius multiple times. The Livonians had long known they would be outnumbered and outgunned by Jerusalem, just as Lithuania always was in the old wars. Instead, they focused on improving the quality of their troops, investing in new technologies and tactics, and exploiting every single advantage they could get. The culmination of that philosophy was Tiger’s Defense, Livonia’s cyberdefense network. While the average Livonian would see the war as just any other, with soldiers killing each other to secure territory, the real battles took place online. Livonian cyberwarfare operatives engaged in online operations against their Jerusalemite counterparts all over the Internet, not only defending crucial pieces of Livonian internet and online-adjacent infrastructure but also reinforcing the cyberdefenses of other Schengen and allied nations. Livonian firewalls protected Schengen government and military servers from Jerusalemite viruses and malware, while Livonian viruses, planted either by spies or through social engineering of unwitting Jerusalemites, interfered with conventional military operations. Other malware remained dormant, serving as backdoors for other Livonian operatives to listen in on encrypted communications and relay their findings to the conventional Commonwealth Land Force; in some cases, these operatives even manipulated such data, subtly throwing off the Crusaders with disinformation.
Jerusalem had long been aware of Tiger’s Defense and its capabilities. Crusader High Command held it as the main reason why there was still a European front and Livonia remained the only nation in Europe that hadn’t surrendered yet. Livonia was tying up troops that could be better put to use enforcing occupations in Scandinavia, Russia, and Yavdi or reinforcing the front lines in Mali, East Africa, and Persia. And the casualty rates in Livonia were unacceptable. Older generals drew comparisons to the high death rates of Roman soldiers in the Commonwealth Wars and the Lithuanian front of World War I. The Commonwealth Land Force would have long been wiped out like the bug it was against Jerusalem’s boot if not for Tiger’s Defense leveling the playing field. Not only had it held back the Crusader tide, but it was starting to turn things back in Livonia’s favor. Jerusalem was fighting a losing war online. Even though Jerusalem initially had the upper hand when it came to cyberwarfare, Tiger’s Defense quickly closed the gap and by the end of February came dangerously close to breaching Jerusalem’s own firewalls. It was clear the Livonian government knew how close they were to victory online. Bradziunas himself began making propaganda speeches directed at Jerusalemite citizens, urging them to question their leaders and their narratives. Fearing a loss of control over the official narratives, Malecares petitioned the committee to ask High Command to move against Tiger’s Defense. Both the committee and High Command agreed to a direct assault on the network’s physical infrastructure, believing the destruction of Livonia’s cyberattack and defense capabilities would also destroy those of every other Schengen and allied country relying on the same software and agents.
In February, Jerusalem activated its remaining Shepherds of the Future in Livonia as spies, directing them to find any information on where the main headquarters and servers of Tiger’s Defense were located. By monitoring the commutes of military personnel and comparing it with unsecured Internet traffic, they eventually narrowed down the possible location of the base to seven military installations outside Vilnius. That was good enough for High Command. On February 27, a barrage of high-yield thermobaric missiles fell on and destroyed all seven locations, reducing them to rubble. They didn’t need to confirm the exact location of Tiger’s Defense to know that they did. The next day, most Livonian cyberwarfare operations suddenly ceased. The rest operated on a significantly reduced scale, likely out of backup bases. But without the main servers and leadership, their hands were now tied and without guidance. The threat of Livonia breaking through Jerusalem’s networks evaporated, and Malecares sighed with relief, knowing his job and reputation had been saved.
On February 28, von Haynau launched a massive conventional offensive across Livonia, using a combination of ground forces, airpower, and chemical terror bombing to overwhelm the Land Force. Without Tiger’s Defense to spy on and confuse the enemy, Bradziunas’ troops were forced to fight the Crusaders on even footing. And by even footing, that meant being forced to fight an enemy that had an overwhelming advantage in numbers and raw firepower, without any fancy cyberwarfare tools to counter it. The result was predictable. Riga fell that evening, followed by Tallinn. On March 1, von Haynau’s army advanced into downtown Vilnius for the third time, but this time, there was no Konstantinov to drive them back. The shattered local militias and Land Force were forced to evacuate with Bradziunas. Von Haynau himself entered the royal palace, cast down its Livonian flag, and raised the Jerusalem cross standard in its place. The next day, Crusaders captured the Livonian royal family as they tried to flee to Kaunas. Kaunas itself would hold out until March 26, and Bradziunas, hiding somewhere in the Lithuanian forests with a battalion of loyal troops, refused to surrender, but it wouldn’t change a thing. Livonia had fallen.
Not content with waiting for orders from Berlin, von Haynau acted on his own to secure Jerusalem’s control. He was aware of what was happening with Jerusalem’s occupation in Scandinavia and had no desire to see a repeat of it in notoriously restless Livonia, with its history of resisting the Reich. Unlike with isolated Denmark, further instability and insurgency in Livonia could also spill over into neighboring Russia and possibly even Jerusalem’s Eastern District. In addition, the insecure von Haynau was still seething from all of the times Konstantinov and Bradziunas had defeated him in Vilnius. As a result, he ordered the Herem Doctrine implemented across all occupied areas. For the capital itself, he had a special fate planned: its complete and total razing, even more than what had been done to Delhi.
The razing of Vilnius began with the Crusaders seizing every route into and out of the city, to prevent anybody from escaping. For the next 63 days, von Haynau kept the city under ceaseless bombardment by missiles, air strikes, and artillery. The barrage was directed against the city itself, not the people, although their deaths were a welcome addition. The Crusaders rotated their guns and changed the targets of their missiles and air strikes to target different neighborhoods every hour. When a neighborhood was granted an hourlong reprieve from the bombardment, special groups of combat engineers entered to burn and demolish any remaining buildings. Vilnius’ drinking water supply was deliberately targeted. The city was the only European capital whose water supply came from deep water springs free of pollution and harmful minerals, allowing residents to safely drink unfiltered high quality water. Jerusalem put a permanent end to that by contaminating all fresh water springs with chemical weapons and nuclear waste, ensuring nobody could drink from them ever again. Other springs across Livonia were similarly targeted, as a way of rendering Livonia dependent on water imports from Jerusalem. Von Haynau was reported to have said, “When we are done, Vilnius will be reduced to nothing more than a train station between Königsberg and Kyiv.”
By April 2039, over 90% of Vilnius’ buildings had been completely destroyed. Material losses were estimated at 85% of normal buildings of all kinds, 94% of all historical buildings, 99% of the Polish district, 25 churches and Romuva temples, 163 elementary schools, 82 high schools, the Queen-Empress Giedre I Military Academy, the University of the Commonwealth, and most of the city’s historical monuments. Millions lost their homes and all of their belongings. It was impossible to know exactly how much property and cultural relics was lost, but it was abundantly clear almost all of it was lost. The Józef Andrzej Załuski Library, established in 1747 and the oldest public library in the Baltics, was reduced to ashes. Out of over 400,000 items in the library’s collection, fewer than 2,000 survived. In the final weeks of the razing, every public library in Vilnius, including almost their entire collections of millions of priceless manuscripts and relics, ceased to exist. Some books were preserved when librarians sacrificed their lives to throw them out of windows while everything burned. The Livonian Art Museum, Commonwealth Art Gallery, and Vilnius Picture Gallery were all destroyed, wiping out centuries of Lithuanian artistic legacy.
Unlike acts of cultural vandalism under the Tabula Rasa plan in Jerusalem, which specifically sought out specific cultures and associated areas to destroy, the wanton destruction of Baltic cultures was part of the overall razing of Vilnius. Or rather, the destruction of Vilnius was part of the eradication of Baltic pagan culture, in line with how Christianity spread through Europe a thousand years ago. In the eleventh century, the various Christian powers of Central and Eastern Europe had been in the process of Christianizing the Baltics, but their efforts were put to a stop by both the Pagan Resurgence and the rise of a Reich which was more interested in conquering Western Europe and the Middle East. The modern Crusaders intended to finish what their medieval namesakes started.
As God intended, the people of the Baltics would accept Christ into their hearts, after a thousand year delay, or they would be condemned to the fires of hell.
Modern Einherjar
“So what is Scandinavia?
Scandinavia is high mountains and deep fjords. It is wide open spaces and rocky coastlines. It is islands and archipelagos. It is lush farmland and rolling moors.
The sea laps Scandinavia’s shores on all sides.
Scandinavia is midnight sun and polar night. It is harsh winters and mild winters. It is hot summers and cold summers.
Scandinavia is a long and diversely populated country.
But above all, Scandinavia is its people.”
- Fylkja Aleta II
Of course, Jerusalem didn’t ignore Lithuania’s ally in the Commonwealth Wars. Scandinavia might have had its cities and farmland scoured and razed with chemical weapons, its government might have surrendered, and Denmark might have been directly occupied by the Crusaders, but some pockets of resistance remained in the Swedish interior. Despite the government of Fylkir Knud IV declaring the end of hostilities and ordering all Scandinavian troops to stand down, the general population largely ignored the surrender. Although the Crusaders had not been able to cross into Sweden and Norway from Denmark, rumors of their atrocities did spread north of the Skagerrak. The Herem Doctrine and its unspeakable barbarities lived rent-free in the minds of thousands of Scandinavian survivors. Nobody wanted it to be extended to the rest of Scandinavia. Unlike with Denmark, no help would come for the Scandinavian people at this point. The military had been wiped out, and what remained had been disarmed and demobilized by Knud. The Fylkir’s government had even gone as far as to criminalize any talk of the war that would “cause panic and mass disorder.” No help would come from the government. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was also nowhere to run or hide. The nuclear winter had frozen everything north of nuked Trondheim in an inhospitable blizzard straight out of the myths of Jotunheim. Oslo, Lödöse, and Stockholm had all been firebombed and scoured with chemical weapons as much as Copenhagen was. That left only one option. If nobody was going to rescue them, and there was nowhere to flee to…then the people of Scandinavia would fight.
Resistance groups in Denmark struck first. The organizations responsible generally were religious and political ones, both stemming from factions within the Ragnaroker Party. The larger Ragnaroker movement had been around in Scandinavian society since the end of World War I, but it only gained prominence in the 21st century and particularly after the Sentinel scandal of 2015. By 2035, Ragnarokers controlled all branches of the Scandinavian government. Thankfully, in those days, the leading faction within the larger Ragnaroker movement, a moderate one, focused on environmentalism. But after the war began and environmentalism became associated with Jerusalem and its committee, more radical factions came to power. The current interim chancellor, Snorrison, was part of a faction which wanted peace with Jerusalem at any cost. Major Ragnaroker factions based in Denmark went the other way, calling for all-out resistance against Jerusalem, which they considered Ragnarok incarnate. Their interpretation of the movement merged Scandinavian politics with the Norse religion, just as the old interwar movement once did. Some drew parallels with Mexicanism in the Eimericas. Like the Mexicanists from earlier in the century, these radical Ragnarokers were intensely fanatical. They took the Norse raven symbol for their own and called themselves einherjar—warriors in the old myths who had died in battle and entered Valhalla, where they trained daily until the day they would return to the battlefield in Ragnarok. These real life einherjar trained every day to fight in what they saw as Ragnarok, and they fully expected to die in battle. It didn’t matter that the death in battle was supposed to come first. The einherjar fought Jerusalem all the same, mentally sidestepping all of the religious inconsistencies. Hundreds of the most devoted einherjar strapped improvised explosives to their bodies, broke into Crusader military bases, and then blew themselves up, shouting “Odin á yðr alla!” (“Odin owns you all!”) like medieval berserkers once did. Soon, that would become the motto of the einherjar, and eventually it would spread to all Ragnarokers, and then to the general public. Scandinavia’s post-1918 pacifism finally evaporated. It would not come back.
In response to the mounting casualties from Ragnaroker suicide bombings, High Command expanded the Herem Doctrine. Boys were no longer exempt from the purges—all Scandinavian males were to be shot on sight. The Crusaders intensified their war against both the culture and geography of Scandinavia. It baffled many Ragnarokers who hoped for a direct engagement with the enemy. They didn’t know that Jerusalem had not only declared war on the humans of Scandinavia, but also the culture, the land, and the environment—the very concept of Scandinavia, even. Construction vehicles like bulldozers and drills were deployed in Copenhagen and other major Danish cities, but instead of construction, they brought destruction. What remained of those cities was systematically eradicated—demolished with hammers and dynamite and drills, then paved over. Parks, skyscrapers, temples, and homes disappeared, replaced with a wide expanse of flat and featureless concrete. Lakes and coastal waters were scoured with chemical weapons and radioactive isotopes with the intent of making them completely uninhabitable for centuries. Forests were burned down with napalm, their soil salted with more chemicals and radiation to make farming impossible. The air itself wasn’t spared. Wherever possible, the Crusaders sprayed more of their chemical weapons—as well as traditional industrial pollutants like methane gas—into the sky, planning to deny the Scandinavians even fresh air. Tens of thousands of Scandinavians died, while the Crusaders simply put on gas masks and other protective gear. But the Ragnarokers persisted. Far from ending the insurgencies, the Herem Doctrine only radicalized thousands more, and the Ragnarokers’ ranks swelled. Suicide bombings against Crusader bases became more frequent and deadly. High Command realized something else had to be done to eliminate the Ragnaroker threat.
The committee decided that the best way to stop the threat was to destroy the remains of the Scandinavian government, now based in the central Swedish town of Tingvalla, from from the scoured coasts and devastated population centers. Although Fylkir Knud maintained his country’s surrender with Jerusalem and had criminalized criticism of that decision, hundreds of Scandinavians under his direct rule still disobeyed him and joined the Ragnarokers. It was time to eliminate the serpent of terrorism at its source. In one swift but overwhelming engagement on March 16, the Holy Marine smashed what remained of the Scandinavian Navy in the Øresund, sinking 44 out of 58 ships.
On March 18, Crusaders landed in southern Norway and Sweden. On March 19, the ruins of Oslo, Lödöse, and Malmö fell, giving Jerusalem a foothold. On March 20, Knud denied that the previous day’s events had happened, declared that saying anything contrary to his official narrative would amount to treason and be punished with the death penalty, and announced plans to continue the upcoming annual Disting holiday as usual. On March 21, the people of Tingvalla ignored the Fylkir's orders and armed themselves anyways. They were trained by Scandinavian Army veterans and even a few Roman exiles with military or law enforcement backgrounds. Their weapons came from the town's armory. They spent the next ten days fortifying the town and evacuating civilians.
Jerusalem's army arrived in the early morning of April 2. Advancing up the western shore of Lake Vänern, the Crusaders intended to attack Tingvalla from the west. Due to other fronts demanding more manpower and materiel, the force Jerusalem sent consisted almost entirely of ground-based infantry and armor, with their only air support being drones—High Command did not deem Tingvalla an important enough target to warrant a larger army. Using a simple but sophisticated network of bell towers and signal flares to relay information, the townspeople became aware of the army long before it arrived, and they prepared accordingly. They used the extra time to evacuate as many civilians as they could further to the north, while those who remained were withdrawn to the city center, an island in the Klarälven River delta. They could not hope to match the firepower of the Crusaders, even in their weakened state. But they did have one advantage: the city's physical geography, which they knew well.
When the Crusaders arrived in Tingvalla, they found that the Klarälven River separated the city's western and eastern halves, as well as the city center. They could easily secure the west, but to get to the other two, they would have to cross the river at least once. The logical way to do that was to take one of the many bridges across the river, and the townspeople knew that. The instant the first battalions of Crusaders began crossing foot bridges connecting to the city center, the townspeople blew up all of the bridges, save for one, Sigurd Bridge, they had heavily fortified. Without amphibious craft of their own, the Crusaders were trapped in the west, with only one route forward into the city center, across Sigurd Bridge.
As they advanced across Sigurd Bridge, the townspeople attacked with everything they had. Abandoned cars strategically placed on the bridge exploded. Farmers in tractors attacked APCs from behind, pushing them into the water. The townspeople themselves fought with various weapons, from the guns in the armory to baseball bats and kitchen knives. Although they took substantial casualties, their main goal was to stall until they could get all of the enemy's tanks onto the bridge. Once that was done, they blew the bridge, neutralizing the enemy's armor and a significant number of its infantry. The end result was the annihilation of the enemy force, with low casualties on Tingvalla's side. The surviving Crusaders, left with no other way of crossing the river, were forced to retreat.
(That is not a typo in the belligerents section.)
High Command was predictably incensed by the defeat at Tingvalla. It had not expected such resistance from a non-Ragnaroker faction, even with such a weakened army. The commanding officer was immediately shot upon his return to occupied Denmark, and new plans for subjugating Tingvalla were drawn up. This time, Berlin would not make the same mistake as before. No troops were sent. Instead, on April 10, long range bombers and missile launchers temporarily reassigned from the razing of Vilnius rained napalm and nerve gas down on Tingvalla, utterly eradicating what was left of the town. With the threat seemingly dealt with, Jerusalem turned its attention back to the other fronts, particularly the Persian front. The committee was satisfied with the destruction of Tingvalla, believing the rest of Scandinavia would fall into lawlessness as a result.
What the committee and High Command didn’t know, however, was that Tingvalla had been completely evacuated before the missiles hit. Having anticipated such a reprisal, the townspeople and refugees packed up everything and simply left, dragging a reluctant and confused Knud IV with them. As a result, there were only a handful of fatalities, among them the stubborn Chancellor Snorrison. On the road once again, the experiences of Roman exiles and ex-rebels who had participated in the initial anti-committee insurgencies within the former Roman heartland were instrumental in maintaining order and helping the refugees and townspeople adjust to nomadic life. Their goal was to cross into Norway and reach Trondheim. There, the Scandinavian Navy had reclaimed its bases and restored some semblance of order to the city. It was now using the harbor to evacuate refugees to Iceland, which had so far escaped the war unscathed. The refugees hoped they could finally put the war behind them and make it to one of the last places of refuge on the planet. While Jerusalem was no longer pursuing them and didn’t know of their plans, there was another equally dangerous enemy lurking: nature itself. With southern Sweden in Jerusalem’s hands, they would have to cross the unforgiving Scandinavian Mountains to get into Norway. The mountains would be cold and icy, even in April, but there was no other choice. They steeled their minds and put aside all doubt. Then they struck out for the mountains.
Why didn’t they leave sooner? Why did the people of Tingvalla not simply leave at the first sign of trouble? It would have saved lives and left all of the bridges of Tingvalla intact. If Jerusalem was still going to raze the city from the air and the townspeople would still flee in the end, why bother fighting? Perhaps it was not about strategy. Maybe it was about sending a message to Jerusalem. Scandinavia’s military may have been destroyed. The land may have been poisoned. The cities may have been in ruins. Yet the people still fought on. In Denmark, Ragnaroker cells struck terror into the hearts of Crusaders, and some even snuck across the border and launched attacks on Jerusalemite cities like Bremern, Lübeck, and Kiel. In Tingvalla, the townspeople had come together, against the orders of the incompetent Fylkir, and took up arms. The people of Scandinavia would never break before Jerusalem. Even though the rest of Scandinavia lay destroyed and trampled under Jerusalem’s boot, as long as the people still resisted Jerusalem—still believed in the values and ideals of Scandinavia—then Jerusalem could never achieve total victory.
Because Scandinavia was more than just a place. It was also its people.
We Choose Death
“A conquering army on the border will not be stopped by eloquence.”
- Otto von Bismarck
Yavdi couldn’t catch a break. The country had fallen into full-blown anarchy and civil war on a scale never before seen in its long history. Jerusalem’s Crusaders controlled the western cities, the Imperial Chinese Army controlled the eastern ones, and warlords fought over everything else. As in India, the situation was one of pure chaos.
Dozens of factions carved out their own little fiefs—derogatorily referred to as “khanates,” although they were nothing like the ones of old—across the steppes and constantly warred in a never-ending struggle for supremacy. The khans, generally former Army generals, never referred to themselves as such, but that was ultimately what they were. The Urals, with their mines and rich resources, saw the fiercest fighting, as each khan sought to claim mines and industrial centers for themselves. The people living under their rule were forcibly conscripted into their armies and thrown into battle. Once the khans burned through their professional troops from the old army they once served, they increasingly relied on conscript levies. The more forceful khans simply forced Yavdians to fight by pointing guns at them or their families. Those who were relatively nicer instead offered military protection for their towns in exchange for swearing fealty to the khan—feudalism in all but name. Ideology as a motivation fell away in all but the most zealous khanates. The rest forgot why they were fighting. Fascism, equalism, Paulluism, religion…it didn’t matter. What mattered was the destruction of the enemy, whoever that was.
Some of the khans, not satisfied with the constant clashes in the rural steppes, set their sights on the cities. But such tempting prizes came with higher risk. Fighting Jerusalem and China and their garrisons, even if they didn’t have the manpower and firepower seen on the major fronts, was different from bashing up other khans. At least 17 different western khans met their end attempting to take Yagoshikha, a major hub of Yavdian industry, from its Crusader occupiers. Over thirty eastern khans were killed trying to capture Crusader-controlled Kyzyl Char for its railroad hub, aluminum factories, and hydroelectric dam. One particularly short-sighted khan ended up destroying the dam in an attempt to use the resulting flood to drown the Crusader garrison, but all it did was wipe out half the city, kill several thousand Yavdians, and permanently cut electrical power to the entire region. The ensuing Crusader reprisal wiped out that khan and his army.
One khan, Otso Bielke, realized fighting the other khans was a distraction and fighting Jerusalem or China was suicide. So he set his sights on a target somewhere in between: the remnant Yavdian government in Astrakhan. Bielke had been an irrelevant commander in the old army, a career officer specializing in logistics who was excited to finally get real experience when the war began. Then the war turned against Yavdi. The chain of command disintegrated as higher ranking generals died. Then came Jerusalem’s decapitation strike against the civilian government, which took out the Tsar-Khagan and chancellor, among others. Bielke had long been of the opinion that the government had taken too long to respond to the Jerusalemite threat, instead spending its time arguing about budgets and regulations and codes of conduct. Its destruction was more proof it was out of touch with the realities of this war. So when he saw that surviving politicians had rebuilt the government—complete with a State Great Khural and a new chancellor and cabinet—he feared a return to that weakness and indecisiveness. He believed what Yavdi needed to overthrow the Jerusalemite and Chinese yoke was a strong leader not shackled by laws and regulations, a leader who was willing to do whatever it took to destroy the invaders. Otso Bielke would be that leader. He would be Yavdi’s savior.
From his power base in Orenburg, Bielke set out west, carving a bloody swathe through lesser khanates in his path and absorbing their armies into his own. Unlike the other khans, he retained the level-headedness and pragmatism that defined his pre-war career, still seeing himself as a military commander instead of a feudal lord. He used his background in logistics to maintain supply lines even with few population centers under his control, in a dark mirror of Börte’s strategies. Bielke’s army was organized with a strict chain of command that put himself at the top. His troops swore loyalty to him and him alone and retained the organization, hierarchy, and discipline of the old Yavdian Army. A cult of personality developed around him. His troops supported him not because he paid them and gave them shelter and equipment, but because they came to genuinely believe in his cause. It was impossible for the other khans to convert Bielke’s soldiers away from him. The same could not be said of their own neo-feudal levies. As Bielke approached Astrakhan, his strength grew.
In comparison, Astrakhan could not muster an army to match the powerful warlord. The provisional government’s effective zone of control only extended so far around the city, limiting the resources and manpower that could be drawn on. The Yavdian Army units that remained loyal to Astrakhan were those who were left over after the others mutinied or deserted to the khans for whatever reason. They were constantly on the verge of running out of food, fuel, and ammunition, but they more than made up for it with a loyalty and devotion to the provisional government and the ideals it stood for that matched that of Bielke’s troops. They knew they were the last hope of a free Yavdi. Failure was not an option.
As Bielke continued his westward march, absorbing more khanates into his domain, Astrakhan sent diplomats out to get allies, knowing it did not have the numbers or industrial base to stand up to him in a fair fight. Some went to other khans, hoping to at least get them to stay neutral—most did, out of fear of being executed by Bielke. Most went to neighboring nations—Persia, Turkestan, Afghanistan, even China—to request military or economic aid. Turkestan and Afghanistan organized several airlifts to deliver military equipment and food, but most were shot down or intercepted by Bielke or one of the other khans. Persia was unable to send any help due to a combination of its own military problems and dirty politics in the Majlis. The Chinese government did not reply at all. The last defenders of Yavdi would have to stand alone.
On March 31, Otso Bielke’s army reached the outskirts of Astrakhan. Bielke issued an ultimatum to the government: surrender within 12 hours, or die. For a brief moment, all of the disparate political and military factions within Astrakhan put aside their differences to present a united front against the warlord. A response came within two hours:
“Ügüi!” “Ei!” “Nyet!”
The actual response issued by the chancellor was “We choose death,” but the general public latched on to the simpler “No!” and held it to be as valid as the actual response. It didn’t matter in the end. Both sides got their battle.
An hour later, Bielke struck with everything he had. The defenders of Astrakhan fought hard and fought bravely. Even the civilian population joined in. Every combat-aged member of the State Great Khural and cabinet, as did the chancellor took up arms, as did almost every able-bodied adult. But even with all this support, they were outnumbered and outgunned. Still, they fought on, defiantly shouting either “No!” or “We choose death!” at their enemies. For every Astrakhan defender killed, Bielke lost at least three of his own. Yet he could replenish his losses, while the loss of even one professional soldier on Astrakhan’s side was irreplaceable. Not a single Astrakhan soldier surrendered or defected to Bielke. True to their word, they would rather die. And they all died in the end. In the morning of April 1, Bielke raised his banner over Astrakhan City Hall. Over half of the Yavdian government lay dead, with guns still in their hands. Another 40% were captured in the battle for the sole purpose of executing them via firing squad at noon, for the crime of treason against the Yavdian nation. The rest—low level bureaucrats and municipal leaders—escaped the city and scattered to the winds, but they would never again muster the numbers or political capital to build a new government. It was over.
Otso Bielke wasted no time claiming his victory. Not even giving time for his firing squads’ guns to cool down, he announced the end of the corrupt Yavdi of old. No longer would the Yavdian people be held back by pointless bickering and discussion while the world burned. Bielke would be the Johtaja—the leader—of a new Yavdi, one where the people and all functions of state would be aligned behind him towards the same goal: the destruction of the foreign invaders and the preservation of the Yavdian state. Astrakhan would become the first capital of the reborn Yavdian state, from which he would liberate the other major settlements from both the other khans and the invaders. As cameras rolled, Bielke thrust his fist into the sky. “If my cause is not righteous, may Ukko strike me down here and now!” he proclaimed. When nothing happened, his men also thrust their bayonets skywards and bellowed their support. To them, this showed the new Johtaja had the approval of the gods, and nobody could stand in their way. In a way, Bielke’s ideology had echoes of Jerusalem’s Reinstaat doctrine, which emphasized purity of the state and total alignment of all things in service of the state. It was ironic how a state built on opposition to Jerusalem was in some way inspired by Jerusalem itself.
The fall of Astrakhan and the rise of Otso Bielke—as if from almost nothing—shocked observers who had predicted the current anarchic status quo would maintain itself. Now one of the khans had succeeded in taking several important Yavdian settlements, building a remarkably stable regime. Although Bielke soon left Astrakhan and its surviving population to their own devices, leaving to fight the remaining khans instead of staying and ruling, he had drastically changed the balance of power on the steppes. With his army marching east, the government of Turkestan was concerned it was next. Persia, still dealing with its other issues, was helpless to help defend the provisional government against Bielke. Jerusalem’s Regency didn’t bat an eye, still considering Bielke and his army beneath them. Han Xianyu ignored Bielke, betting on the Urals as a natural barrier to the Johtaja’s expansion. None of them directly addressed the Johtaja in any way, only watching as Bielke swept aside more and more khans and expanded his dominion. If not stopped, Bielke could become a serious threat to the CAC. But none of the CAC member states were in any position to lift a finger against him.
Just as many had feared, Bielke’s taking of Astrakhan threatened all of the gains Saikhangiin Börte made in Taurica. Astrakhan’s fall meant supply lines were now severed, and reinforcements would never come. The Yavdian troops in Taurica had adopted Konstantinov’s self-sufficiency doctrine, but it was still a heavy blow to morale and logistics. As the most prominent member of the old provisional government, Bielke branded Börte herself as a traitor to the Yavdian state, calling on his supporters to find her and kill her on sight. As Börte and several divisions split off from the main Taurica liberation army to reinforce the Persians in Mesopotamia, she found herself attacked from the rear by troops loyal to Bielke. Despite her pleas for unity and understanding, there was no reasoning with this enemy, much like with the Crusaders. They saw her as a mortal enemy and put everything they had behind destroying her. It didn’t matter that Börte was the one responsible for liberating half of Taurica and keeping Jerusalem on the run there. It didn’t matter that killing Börte would cause her army to crumble and allow Jerusalem to retake Taurica. What mattered was she was Bielke’s enemy and therefore their own. Bielke likewise sent other troops after Börte’s armies in Taurica proper. Without their leader to rally them, many Yavdian loyalist troops stationed in eastern Taurica either surrendered or were annihilated. Those further west struggled to maintain their occupations with the Johtaja pressing from the east and Jerusalem mounting counterattacks in the west. Taurica hung by a thread. The hard-fought gains Börte had made over the last several weeks were now on the verge of being wiped out by the ambitions of a single power-hungry man.
Yavdian exiles in other countries—primarily Turkestan and Persia—overwhelmingly rejected Otso Bielke as their leader. Their sympathies still aligned with the provisional government and Börte, they denounced the so-called Johtaja as just another warlord cloaked in the symbolism of old authoritarians like the medieval khans or the modern equalists and Paulluists. And even though Astrakhan may have fallen and provisional government executed, their cause would remain as long as Börte survived and the exiles remained loyal. In defiance, they adopted the war cries of the old Astrakhan, shouting “No!” and “We choose death!” at protests against Bielke, calling on their governments to do something about the Johtaja. March 31 became a day of infamy for Yavdians around the world, who remembered it as the day the last embers of the old Yavdian government were snuffed out by a new jackboot.
Those Yavdians would rather choose death than to submit to that jackboot.
Battle at the Roof of the World
“Just as Hannibal crossed the Alps, we too must cross the Himalayas. But today is different. Today, we have thousands of lives counting on us. We must cross those mountains, we must enter Nepal, and we must defeat Nepal, so we can give them a chance at survival. Either we win, or India dies with us.”
- General Ranjit Ahluwalia, speaking to his troops
Whatever was happening in India was known by hundreds of names. A civil war, a genocide, an anarchy, a scouring. None accurately captured what really went down across the subcontinent, as millions of survivors died to starvation, disease, banditry, war, and thousands of other reasons words could never capture. Lurid tales of atrocities filled newspapers elsewhere, telling of the neon red Ganges, the razing of Delhi, the constantly raging inferno that was once Indore, and other simply indescribable stories so outlandish they sounded like propaganda. But not even Jerusalem’s propaganda could be this imaginative and cruel. In the end, so many of these horror stories spread around that the general public simply shut down and stopped processing them, unable to handle their sheer number. They became little more than words on paper to be read by a desensitized public. No help came for India.
Banda Ahluwalia certainly would have liked some help. Upon returning from the Himalayan foothills, he immediately assumed command of what remained of the Indian Army—though it was less of an army and more of a few scraps of soldiers scattered across the subcontinent. A few scraps that were being picked off, one by one. In the eastern regions, on the border with Burma, thousands of demoralized Indian troops attempted to either surrender or flee into Burma, only to be slaughtered by a Crusader army only a fraction as numerous. Although Banda’s personal troops successfully took the Crusader supply hub at Gilgit, his ultimate goal of taking the far better defended Simla remained out of reach, and freeing the biohazardous ruins of Delhi became nothing more than a pipe dream.
Ranjit fared slightly better. His six divisions remained intact as they ascended into the Himalayas, crossing into western Nepal. A sane general would have stuck to the lowlands and went past the ruins of Lucknow, Varanasi, and Patna before ascending into the Himalayas and hitting Kathmandu from the south. But Ranjit knew the Nepalese were expecting him to take that route, and in any case, the poisoned lowlands were full of insane mobs, opportunistic looters and bandits, the occasional human Crusader patrol, and Crusader drones left on autopilot and released “into the wild” to kill as many Indians as they could. So instead, Ranjit entered the Himalayas from the western border. That border was relatively unpatrolled, as Kathmandu had believed the Indian threat had been completely eliminated after February 5 and as a result deployed troops north and east to fight the Chinese and Bhutanese resistance forces. Hoping to gain allies, Ranjit reached out to both factions. It was almost anathema to suggest an alliance with China, but he had no other choice but to hold his nose and accept Chinese military aid. For Bhutan, promised to restore the rights and autonomy the Bhutanese once had, though he remained silent on outright independence.
Like many of his generation, Ranjit had taken an interest in the Nepalese reunification movement. Most of the old Rasa talking points about reversing the “stain of Samarkand” had rightfully been cast out of the mainstream, but the question of Nepal remained politically relevant into World War IV. While post-World War II India had recognized the independence of Afghanistan and Turkestan and renounced all claims to its former Central Asian territories, Nepal only received a recognition of independence. Reunification talks sporadically happened throughout the 20th century, but China—which maintained a heavy grip on Nepalese politics and the economy between Nepal’s independence in 1918 and China’s democratic thaw in 1989—refused to let them get anywhere. Bhutan breaking away in 2000 complicated matters more, since the Bhutanese government officially had no position on reunification other than not being lumped in with Nepal. Changing demographics in the 2020s and 2030s—an increasing Indian population and younger Nepalese increasingly favoring the better functioning economy and government of India over the dysfunctional one in Kathmandu—as well as the establishment of free trade agreements between the two nations forced the matter, and the Paulluists seized power with both Chinese and Jerusalemite backing. Though they were all ideologically opposed to each other, the Paulluists, Han Xianyu, and the emerging committee all shared an interest in keeping the country separate from India, against the wishes of the people. So it was weird when Ranjit learned the Imperial Chinese Army was willing to provide him with logistical support. Once he thought about it more, it made a little sense. China didn’t care for Nepal at all, only that it existed as a buffer with India. As an ally of Jerusalem, China wouldn’t mind if it was destroyed by a rump Indian state, led by Ranjit, that would likely become dependent on Nanjing.
Fortunately, Ranjit’s trek through the Himalayas wasn’t as bad as he feared. The spring had come, and although the nuclear winter remained in full force, the temperature was somewhat bearable, and the snow had started to melt. Still, he stuck to valleys and solid ground instead of muddy cliffs and mountain slopes that could give way at any moment. The few Nepalese Army patrols he came across in western Nepal were quickly eliminated. Indian Army casualties remained at a minimum. Many Nepalese civilians along his path were sympathetic to his plight, whether they were genuinely in favor of reunification or simply hated the Paulluists more. By the end of March, Ranjit and his troops had reached central Nepal. On the 27th, the Indian Army approached Kathmandu from the west.
With everything riding on victory, Ranjit knew he couldn’t keep his hands clean. He might not have had any weapons of mass destruction like Jerusalem did, but he had another asset the Nepalese didn’t have: the thousands of Indian refugees following in his wake, kept alive and mobile by the promise of safety and warm shelter in Kathmandu. Picking several hundred willing volunteers from their ranks, he first organized them into a refugee caravan arriving from India, through Kathmandu’s southern districts. The Nepalese government didn’t take too fondly to Indian refugees, so they would deploy troops to either arrest or shoot them. That would weaken their defenses elsewhere, particularly in western Kathmandu. The Nepalese had not prioritized that side’s defenses, believing western Nepal remained secure and impenetrable to all invading armies. The Paulluist leadership, however, did not know that a significant number of settlements, populations, and local leaders in the west had already abandoned them, giving Ranjit a clear path to Kathmandu. While the refugee caravan distracted the Nepalese Army, Ranjit’s main army assaulted western Kathmandu, easily securing several districts before the enemy realized what had happened. The “refugees” then took out guns and attacked the troops sent to apprehend them before retreating to the west. By the time the Nepalese were in a position to mount a counterattack, Ranjit and the Indians had overrun all of the west and a good chunk of the south and north. But it was here that the real battle began. Nepal recalled almost all of its troops from other fronts from Bhutan and the Chinese border to come to Kathmandu’s aid. This spurred all of Bhutan to rise up in rebellion, the people taking advantage of Nepal’s withdrawal to overthrow whatever was left of the occupation forces. At the same time, two Imperial Chinese Army divisions crossed the border via helicopter, while Chinese jets easily wiped out Nepalese artillery and aircraft. The Paulluists and their supporters held out for seven days, but eventually the combined onslaught of Ranjit’s Indian Army, the Bhutanese rebels, and the Chinese reinforcements overwhelmed them. On April 3, the Indian flag was raised over the former royal palace. The next day, the surviving Paulluist leadership surrendered and were hauled off to China as prisoners of war. After 19 years in power, the Paulluist regime finally fell.
Ranjit next turned his attention to governing. Restoring the old king was not an option right now due to both the military situation and the fact that nobody could find him or his family, if they were even still alive. So Ranjit set himself up as regent for both the king of Nepal and the Samrat Chakravartin, until suitable candidates could be found for both thrones. Being the regent for two separate monarchies immediately started allegations he had annexed Nepal into India, which wasn’t far off from what had happened, but Ranjit stayed silent on the matter, always stating he would hold a referendum once the war ended. As for the Bhutanese question, Ranjit’s direct control ended not far outside Kathmandu, so he was content with restoring Bhutan’s prewar government and assuring them he would hold another referendum eventually. For now, he wanted to keep the Bhutanese happy and on his side. The Paulluists might be gone, but there was still another enemy lurking in the shadows.
On April 4, as soon as the last Paulluist stragglers surrendered, Ranjit moved against the Imperial Chinese Army. Despite their better equipment and air support, the Chinese only had two divisions in Kathmandu compared to Ranjit’s six. He attacked swiftly and fiercely, putting five divisions into a single overwhelming strike that would be over before the Chinese had a chance to scramble their aircraft. One division was immediately shattered and routed, while the other was encircled by a combined Indian-Bhutanese army. Simultaneously, Ranjit’s sixth division seized the airport China was using to base its aircraft, preventing them from launching. With all of the cards in his favor, Ranjit forced the remaining Chinese troops to retreat back over the border to China, seizing all of the equipment and aircraft they left behind. Han’s ambitions of simultaneously eliminating a Jerusalem-aligned Nepal and propping up a rump Indian puppet regime evaporated. He was utterly humiliated when he learned the army he had so idolized had been defeated by a mob of refugees and a few scraps that had no right calling themselves the Indian Army. All news of Nepal was scrubbed from news outlets and censored online.
Ranjit declared that April 4 would be remembered as the day India was reborn, like gods and heroes of old used to be. After two months of chaos and death, India had reestablished itself in a new home, a new Shambhala, from which they would take back the old homeland. They would bow to no foreign masters, be they Jerusalem, China, or even the old Reich. India’s future would be decided by its people, and no others. The road ahead of them would be difficult, and there was much they had to do. The Nepalese and Bhutanese people still didn’t have an answer for their fate. The Indian refugees still needed places to stay in Kathmandu. And China would probably return to avenge Han’s humiliation. But Ranjit knew they would figure something out. Eventually.
There were other matters to attend to first.
Decisive and Legendary Showdown of Thirteen Nations
“If the Tianxia want a fight, we’ll give them a fight worthy of the history books. Battle stations!”
- Higa Ryunosuke
On the other side of the world, far from the battlefields of Eurasia, thirteen nations converged on a lonely island chain in the middle of the wide blue Pacific. Their clash would decide who would become the next hegemon of the ocean. Han Xianyu sent Liu Shaokang and his strongest and most elite armada, believing the old Roman order, symbolized by Hawaii, would give way to a Chinese pond. Fusang sent Zhang Jianzhou to back up Liu, and although Zhang personally was not that devoted to the Sinocentrism of his superiors, he carried out his orders regardless. Penglai sent a fleet of its own, and although Zhao had effectively given up on projecting naval power beyond Maritime Southeast Asia, he still sent a sizeable fleet if only to spite his mainland rival. Their target were the remnants of the loyalist Reich in the Pacific: the Länder of Hawaii, defended by the Kaiserliche Marine’s last major battle fleet. Coming to Hawaii’s rescue were nine nations from across the Pacific: Tawantinsuyu, the UPM, Mexico, northern Japan, Ainu Mosir, Vietnam, Qiandao, Nusantara, and most importantly, Ryukyu. All had flocked to the banner of Higa Ryunosuke, who had taken on an almost legendary reputation to those fearful of Chinese and Jerusalemite domination.
The order of battle for the coming engagement was as follows:
Central Fleet - Assigned to fleet vs fleet combat operations
- First Carrier Group (Fleet Admiral Liu Shaokang)
- 2 Xi Wangmu-class aircraft carriers
- KCM Xi Wangmu (Liu’s flagship; upon arriving from Guam, he transferred his flag here from Dong Wanggong)
- 65 AIDC T-7 Xianhe jet fighters
- 25 Changhe Z-21 helicopters
- 10 multi-purpose Zhuque unmanned aerial drones
- KCM Yu Shi
- 65 AIDC T-7 Xianhe jet fighters
- 25 Changhe Z-21 helicopters
- 10 multi-purpose Zhuque unmanned aerial drones
- 3 Dongtian-class destroyers
- KCM Dongtian
- KCM Kuocang
- KCM Wangwu
- Second Destroyer Squadron
- Huanghe-class light cruiser KCM Huanghe
- 4 Dongtian-class destroyers
- KCM Weiyu
- KCM Xicheng
- KCM Xixuan
- KCM Qingcheng
- 2 supply ships
- Second Carrier Group (Admiral Cao Buhui)
- 2 Xi Wangmu-class carriers
- KCM Dong Wanggong
- 36 AIDC T-7 Xianhe jet fighters
- 14 Changhe Z-21 helicopters
- 2 multi-purpose Zhuque unmanned aerial drones
- KCM Doumu
- 65 AIDC T-7 Xianhe jet fighters
- 25 Changhe Z-21 helicopters
- 10 multi-purpose Zhuque unmanned aerial drones
- Support group
- Sixth Cruiser Division
- 2 Changjiang-class heavy cruisers
- KCM Changjiang
- KCM Heilongjiang
- Thirteenth Destroyer Squadron
- Huanghe-class light cruiser Chishui
- 4 Dongtian-class destroyers
- KCM Chicheng
- KCM Luofu
- KCM Gouqu
- KCM Linwu
- 2 supply ships
- 3 Longmen-class nuclear submarines
- KCM Longmen
- KCM Liyu
- KCM Yuquan
Reorganized East Fleet - Oversees amphibious operations
- Third Carrier Group (Admiral Wu Guisan)
- 2 Xi Wangmu-class carriers
- KCM Huxian
- 65 AIDC T-7 Xianhe jet fighters
- 25 Changhe Z-21 helicopters
- 10 multi-purpose Zhuque unmanned aerial drones
- KCM Kunlunshan
- 65 AIDC T-7 Xianhe jet fighters
- 25 Changhe Z-21 helicopters
- 10 multi-purpose Zhuque unmanned aerial drones
- Support group
- 2 Sanguo-class guided missile battlecruisers
- KCM Cao Cao
- KCM Guan Yu
- Twenty-Fifth Destroyer Squadron
- Huanghe-class light cruiser Ruoshui
- 5 Kunlun-class destroyers
- KCM Kunlun
- KCM Buzhou
- KCM Yushan
- KCM Yushan (note: not the same as the above Yushan, as the yu is pronounced and written differently in Chinese)
- KCM Huoyan
- 4 supply ships, doubling as troop transports and refueling stations
- 6000 soldiers carried (2 Imperial Chinese Army marine divisions)
- 4 Longmen-class nuclear submarines
- KCM Wang Xiang
- KCM Taigong
- KCM Jinyu
- KCM Yu Fu
Fusang Dahai Fleet - Provides escort for Reorganized East Fleet and related amphibious operations
- First Battle Group (Admiral Zhang Jianzhou)
- 2 Qingqiu-class aircraft carriers
- KFM Yingzhou (flagship)
- 50 Taifung jet fighters
- 10 Diné helicopters
- KFM Qingqiu
- 50 Taifung jet fighters
- 10 Diné helicopters
- Sixth Cruiser Division
- 4 Ankuang-class light cruisers
- KFM Ankuang
- KFM Beijinjiang
- KFM Nanjinjiang
- KFM Wimahl
- Eighth Destroyer Division
- 4 Xu Fu-class destroyers
- KFM Xu Fu
- KFM Danzhou
- KFM Anqi Sheng
- KFM Hui Shen
- 3 Wanyan-class light cruisers
- KFM Taizu
- KFM Shizong
- KFM Aizong
- 6 supply ships
Penglai Ninth Fleet (Admiral Leung Araluen)
- First Battle Group
- 2 Fungloisan-class aircraft carriers
- MRP Daiyu
- 50 Daifung jet fighters
- 10 Seungging Z-8 helicopters
- MRP Yuanjiao
- 50 Daifung jet fighters
- 10 Seungging Z-8 helicopters
- Second Cruiser Division
- 4 Mougik-class heavy cruisers
- MRP Taaigik
- MRP Bunjil
- MRP Baiame
- MRP Mougik
- Screening force
- 4 Daihoi-class light cruisers
- MRP Buhthoi
- MRP Bingnamhoi
- MRP Daihoi
- MRP Saihoi
- 8 Leoi Duhng Ban-class destroyers
- MRP Hoh Sin Gu
- MRP Chou Gwok Kau
- MRP Lei Tiet Gwaai
- MRP Laam Choi Wo
- MRP Leoi Duhng Ban
- MRP Hon Seung Ji
- MRP Jeung Gwo Lou
- MRP Jung Lei Kyun
- 2 supply ships
Three Mountains Defense Force Main Battle Fleet
- First Carrier Group (Fleet Admiral Higa Ryunosuke)
- Sanzan-class aircraft carrier Sanzan (flagship)
- 70 R-3 Habu jet fighters
- 20 Yunaguni-uma helicopters
- 10 multi-purpose Amami-No-Kuro-Usagi (ANKU) unmanned aerial drones
- 2 Shuri-class carriers
- SZI Noguchigera
- 65 R-3 Habu jet fighters
- 30 K-2 Yunaguni-uma helicopters
- 5 multi-purpose ANKU unmanned aerial drones
- SZI Yanbaru Kuina
- 65 R-3 Habu jet fighters
- 30 K-2 Yunaguni-uma helicopters
- 5 multi-purpose ANKU unmanned aerial drones
- First Battleship Division
- 3 Shuri-class (formerly Guangzhou-class) battleships
- SZI Sakishima
- SZI Amami
- SZI Hokuzan
- Screening force
- 4 Uchina-class heavy cruisers
- SZI Kumijima
- SZI Iheya
- SZI Izena
- SZI Aguni
- 2 Sachishima-class light cruisers
- SZI Miyako
- SZI Iigunkubajima
- 8 Yakushima-class destroyers
- SZI Yakushima
- SZI Tanegashima
- SZI Kuchinoerabujima
- SZI Mageshima
- SZI Kuroshima
- SZI Iōjima
- SZI Takeshima
- SZI Denshima
- 3 Dunan-class submarines
- SZI Yunaguni
- SZI Junishima
- SZI Dunan
- 7 Yeema-class submarines
- SZI Ishigachi
- SZI Teedun
- SZI Panari
- SZI Besïma
- SZI Ffusïma
- SZI Kayama
- SZI Kumoo
- 8 supply ships
- 250 Ryukyuan Marines transported
- Second Carrier Group (Admiral Hong Wuchang)
- Xi Wangmu-class aircraft carrier Ōryu
- 65 R-2 Komaduri jet fighters
- 25 K-2 Yunaguni-uma helicopters
- 10 multi-purpose ANKU unmanned aerial drones
- Helmut Kohl-class carrier Prince Horst von Hohenzollern
- 55 R-2 Komaduri jet fighters
- 15 K-2 Yunaguni-uma helicopters
- 30 multi-purpose ANKU unmanned aerial drones
- Third Battleship Division
- 3 Shuri-class battleships
- SZI Nanzan
- SZI Chūzan
- Screening force
- 4 Uchina-class heavy cruisers
- SZI Iishima
- SZI Iōturishima
- SZI Tugaifigai
- SZI Zamami
- 2 Sachishima-class light cruisers
- SZI Satichima
- SZI Sakïzïma
- 4 Yakushima-class destroyers
- SZI Kuchinoshima
- SZI Nakanoshima
- SZI Gajajima
- SZI Kogajajima
- 3 Ufuagari-class destroyers
- SZI Makinami
- SZI Shikinami
- SZI Ayanami
- 9 Dunan-class submarines
- SZI Jinmin-iwa
- SZI Irizachi
- SZI Kubura
- SZI Hika
- SZI Dannuhama
- SZI Sunai
- SZI Gunkan-iwa
- SZI Sanninudai
- SZI Tatigami-iwa
- SZI Agarizachi
- 8 supply ships
- 200 Ryukyuan Marines transported
- Western Pacific Special Escort Group (Rear Admiral Truong Thanh Vu)
- 2 Roman Kyrillos-class light cruisers
- QM Karakoa (Qiandao)
- NM Lancang (Nusantara)
- 6 Roman Cordemann-class destroyers
- KVM Trưng Trắc (Vietnam)
- KVM Trưng Nhị (Vietnam)
- NM Jayanasa (Nusantara)
- QM Lakandula (Qiandao)
- AM Repun Kamuy (Ainu Mosir)
- MRJ Tōdō Takatora (Republic of Japan)
- 5 Ryukyuan Dunan-class submarines
- MRJ Sagami (Republic of Japan)
- MRJ Yoneshiro (Republic of Japan)
- MRJ Arakawa (Republic of Japan)
- AM Ishikari (Ainu Mosir)
- AM Shiribeshi-Toshibetsu (Ainu Mosir)
- 5 supply, logistics, ECM command ships (Republic of Japan, Ainu Mosir)
- Eastern Pacific Special Escort Group (Rear Admiral Huascar Pascac (UPM))
- 3 Roman Kyrillos-class light cruisers
- VPM Aquiminzaque (UPM)
- MM Tehuantepec (Mexico)
- KTM Yupanqui (Tawantinsuyu)
- 2 Indian Deva-class heavy cruisers
- VPM Iguaque (UPM)
- KTM Mata ki te Rangi (Tawantinsuyu)
- 2 Indian Asura-class destroyers
- KTM Titacaca (Tawantinsuyu)
- MM Texcoco (Mexico)
- 8 supply, logistics, ECM command ships (UPM)
- Kaiserliche Marine Pacific Fleet (Admiral Adrian Stephanos)
- Ruprecht von Spee-class aircraft carrier Saint Gunhilda
- 50 M-22 jet fighters
- 4 Alexios Komnenos-class guided missile heavy cruisers (reinforcements from Mittagsland)
- SMS Robert Guiscard
- SMS Sikelgaita
- SMS Julie d’Aubigny
- SMS Augustin Komnenos
- 3 Stettin-class destroyers
- SMS Ludwigshafen
- SMS Harz
- SMS Schwarzwald
- 30 M-36 jet fighters based out of Adamshaven
After Guam, Liu’s primary strategic goal shifted to the elimination of the loyalist Roman government and the occupation of the Hawaiian islands by Chinese forces. He did not want to directly engage the Ryukyuans. A second battle with Higa would exhaust ships and manpower he had to conserve for the invasion. In any case, once the islands fell, the Ryukyuans and their allies would be denied safe harbor to refuel and resupply—they would run out of fuel before they could return to Ryukyu, making them easy targets. Personally, Liu did not see any strategic value in coming all the way out to the middle of the Pacific to destroy a rump government with little remaining power projection and authority. The Sinosphere already controlled most of the ocean. The most pressing threats were in the western Pacific, where Ryukyuan, Vietnamese, and Qiandao aircraft constantly harassed Chinese coastal targets. Still, he reasoned that seizing Hawaii would have the indirect effect of destroying Higa’s fleet, and eliminating Higa would be a massive victory for China.
Next came the plan of attack. Although he had arrived in the region first, the Eimericans had arrived soon afterward to reinforce the Roman naval garrison. Despite the small numbers in the combined Roman and Eimerican fleet, Liu judged a direct assault on Adamshaven would be too risky. The old Reich had deployed multiple short-range missile systems around the islands with perfect coverage, and any Chinese ships getting too close to the beaches of Adamshaven would be instantly blasted out of the water. Instead, Liu targeted Niihau, the westernmost Hawaiian island. Home to only a few dozen civilians and a small garrison, he believed Niihau would be an easy target. From there, he could deploy missile launchers and use the island’s airstrip to base aircraft. The missiles and aircraft would then attack targets across the islands. This would split the Romans’ attention between Niihau and the main fleet, which would assault Adamshaven. Once the city fell, he expected the other islands to fall in line. Liu predicted that Roman morale was approaching a breaking point, and one final decisive blow would cause the entire loyalist cause in Hawaii to fall apart. Then he could pick off the Ryukyuans at his leisure. Knowing he was going up against Higa again, Liu’s battle plan for Hawaii—dubbed Operation Shengdongjixi—was overly complex, calling for the precise coordination of his three carrier groups, each of which could be split in half if needed, across five potential targets: Niihau, Adamshaven, the main Ryukyuan fleet, the Eimericans, and the Penglai fleet. His plan was predicated on reliable intelligence indicating that the aging SMS Saint Gunhilda, which had been significantly damaged in an engagement with the Imperial Fusang Navy shortly before the war started, was the only Roman carrier available, and most of its escorts had been sunk in that previous engagement. He noted the positions of the Asian and Eimerican reinforcements. While the Vietnamese, Qiandao, Nusantaran, Japanese, and Ainu ships had been integrated into the Ryukyuan one, the Eimericans were approaching from the east and would have to get through Zhang Jianzhou first. With that in mind, if he could keep the Ryukyuans, Romans, and Eimericans separate until his marines took Adamshaven, he could win.
Anticipating Higa’s anticipation, Liu decided to disguise his true plan by dispersing his forces, so that his full strength was concealed from the Ryukyuans. The First and Second Carrier Groups split off from each other, the former staying by Niihau and the latter moving towards Oahu. The Third Carrier Group would move south to secure their flank. Zhang’s First Battle Fleet was instructed to split in half—one carrier per half—and approach Oahu from the west, one going around Hawaii Island from the north and the other from the south. Liu refused to use the standard Chinese naval doctrine of covering as much surface area as possible, instead keeping each carrier group close to each other and spacing out the groups themselves. Each was sufficiently far away enough from the others to give off the appearance of acting alone, but in reality all three groups were still within range of the other two’s aircraft. Should any group engage the Ryukyuans, the other two could come to their aid.
However, Higa had expected him to do that, and his own intelligence had confirmed his suspicions. As much as Liu wanted to distance himself from modern Chinese naval doctrine, he had reached back and embraced older doctrines instead. Higa had studied the use of such tactics by the World War II admiral Hong Liao and knew exactly how to counter it—by breaking the enemy’s formation. Liu was expecting a direct attack, but Higa instead opted for a psychological approach. He had studied every major officer named in the decrypted communications he had been spying on. It turned out he knew a good number of the admirals through various officer exchange programs from early in his career. Higa remembered the Second Carrier Group’s Cao Buhui as a procrastinator overly concerned with self-preservation—he would not engage an enemy if he was not forced to, and if he could, he would pretend they weren’t there. The Third Carrier Group’s Admiral Wu Guisan, on the other hand, was a gloryhound eager to erase the shame of his Siam veteran father drinking himself to death by becoming the one to take down the feared Higa Ryunosuke. Liu had overlooked these flaws in favor of other skills, but Higa could exploit them. In addition, the Penglai fleet was still in the mix. Liu no doubt would be expecting another divide-and-conquer strategy like at Hoang Sa, but Higa would not employ that, at least not in the same way. Finally, there was Zhang and the Fusang fleet. Higa best described Zhang’s opinions on this whole campaign as indifferent—the man was only doing his job, despite his personal disagreements with Hongzhou and Han Xianyu. Even if it wasn’t a negative trait, he could still exploit it.
Higa would need every available resource to take on Liu. Not only would he have to field every carrier he had but also every other non-capital ship. He had to put all of his cards on the table and roll the dice. Even though some of the damage from Guam had not yet been repaired, all of his ships were in good enough condition by his standards, and their crews remained highly motivated and disciplined. Partially depleted air groups were replenished with new planes from Ryukyu, flown by pilots with combat experience from patrols over the Chinese coast. Higa had other cards to play as well. Fleet Command in Nafa was ready to play one such card upon his request, able to be deployed within hours. The Kaiserliche Luftwaffe base in Adamshaven had another card already delivered to him via drone, which he was currently fitting on an underwater drone. Finally, Ōryu's and Prince Horst's cyberwarfare divisions were ready to go, should he opt for an electronic approach.
Next, Higa looked at logistics. He knew that the Chinese would have little time to make repairs and resupply after Guam. Dong Wanggong’s air wing was likely operating at half strength after repeated engagements with Ryukyuan aircraft at Guam and brief skirmishes between there and Hawaii. The logical thing to do would be to transfer some aircraft and pilots over from Doumu, the other carrier assigned to the Second Carrier Group, but he predicted Liu wouldn’t do that. It would violate Chinese carrier doctrine, which stressed that carriers and their associated air groups must train as a single unit, as opposed to Roman and Ryukyuan doctrine which allowed air groups to transfer between carriers as needed. However, Liu did disregard doctrine by ordering a transfer of aircraft from Doumu, but Cao’s procrastination and a convenient “loss of signal” resulted in very few aircraft actually being transferred, and Dong Wanggong’s airpower and force projection were not meaningfully increased. That meant the Tianxia Combined Fleet was not operating at full strength, despite all of the Central Fleet reinforcements. Furthermore, fatigue had set in; most of the Combined Fleet had been on constant operations since November 2038, with little respite from fleet engagements and island assaults. Nevertheless, Liu believed his men could push through the fatigue for one final decisive battle that would destroy the Ryukyuans. Higa thought otherwise. Observing the defense systems of Ōryu, he noticed several design flaws in the Xi Wangmu-class. The carriers’ anti-aircraft defenses heavily relied on guided missiles and had blindspots at the rear of the carriers. Their early warning system was prone to glitches and hard to use, even by Chinese technicians familiar with it. Ōryu’s system had been replaced with a more reliable Aegis one. Furthermore, they lacked EMP shielding, and Higa knew Liu did not have the time to install such shielding. Liu knew this and ordered all carriers to hide their locations, even in encrypted communications—he was aware that Chinese codes had been broken, but there was no time to roll out a new cipher—and engage at a distance, so that Higa could not deploy EMPs. Higa thus made pinpointing the carriers’ precise locaton as his highest priority.
The Chinese formation prior to the battle was also less than ideal. Cao’s procrastination led to the Second Group being late getting into position. Wu’s eagerness got the Third Group into position too soon and resulted in the admiral getting bored. Higa exploited this by “leaking” the supposed location of the carrier Noguchigera on an open channel. Against Liu’s orders, Wu immediately had the Third Group abandon their positions and pursue the Ryukyuans, who were actually somewhere else. The same thing was done with the Penglai fleet. Higa played on Zhang’s indifference by instructing the Eimericans to reveal their positions from a day ago. As expected, Zhang diverted his fleet to southeast of Hawaii Island to intercept the Eimericans, but by then the Eimericans had moved to the west. At 1500 on March 31, a Ryukyuan patrol spotted the Third Group closing in from the northwest. Within half an hour, five air squadrons from Õryu, Prince Horst, and Adamshaven Base were in the air. At 1600, the air squadrons engaged the Third Group’s anti-aircraft defenses and fired their missiles, focusing their fire on the slow battlecruisers Cao Cao and Guan Yu. The first ship to be sunk in the Battle of Hawaii was the light cruiser Ruoshui, taken down by a cruise missile launched from the Ryukyuan destroyer Kuchinoshima. A sustained missile barrage took down two more Chinese destroyers, while the Ryukyuan/Roman air assault targeted the cruisers, distracting them from returning fire with their own missiles.
At 1640, Liu was informed the Chinese Third Group had engaged the Ryukyuan Second Group. He cursed the reckless Wu for starting the battle before he was ready. The original plan was to attack the next morning on April 1, but now he would have to move things up to the late afternoon of today. He commenced the attack on Niihau, consisting of the First Group overseeing an amphibious assault on the island’s beaches while a missile barrage and close air support from 30 of Yu Shi’s T-7 Xianhe jet fighters easily destroyed the sole Roman airbase and naval garrison. The accelerated timetable led to flimsy improvisations on the part of the commanders and pilots, who had not been expecting to fly at this time. Sorties from Roman jets out of Adamshaven Base quickly dealt with the Chinese aircraft, while long-range radar in Kauai traced back the flight paths of the enemy planes to deduce where they had launched from. Higa sent one drone from Sanzan to that location, but he found nothing there. Meanwhile, Chinese marines on Niihau ran into significant resistance from the locals. Although there were only 82 of them, they had known of the Combined Fleet’s approach for some time now and had spent the last several weeks planting mines and improvised explosives all over possible landing spots. The Chinese suffered heavy casualties before Ryukyuan marines arrived to finish off whoever remained. At 1800, Liu called off the attack and moved his First Group away from Niihau, intending on reinforcing the Second Group at Oahu. To the south, Hong’s Second Group continued fighting Wu’s Third Group. Ryukyuan submarines sunk the remaining three Chinese destroyers in the group, which left the two carriers Huxian and Kunlunshan completely exposed. The former succumbed to a cruise missile barrage targeting the blindspots in its CIWS. One Ryukyuan R-3 Habu fighter, critically damaged by pursuing enemy T-7s, flew directly down the length of Kunlunshan and rammed the bridge, killing Wu and his command staff. The decapitated and sinking carrier was left alone, no longer deemed a threat. The Third Group’s submarines attempted unsuccessful attacks on the nearby Ryukyuan heavy cruisers, but they were spotted and destroyed. At 1830, Higa declared the Third Group destroyed.
At 1845, Liu ordered Cao and the Second Group to intercept the Ryukyuans. Cao reluctantly turned his ships around, but at that moment, one of his drones signaled that it had spotted a Ryukyuan naval force to the east. Cao sent the drone out again to get more details. At 1920, the drone transmitted the coordinates to the Roman carrier Saint Gunhilda, which was being escorted by both its diminished original group and the Eimericans. Liu ordered Cao to attack immediately with his nearly full strength air squadrons. But at 1950, after some “deliberation,” Cao decided to pass the order on to Zhang. Although Zhang had fewer aircraft than Cao, he dutifully obliged. Two waves of 20 Taifung jet fighters were launched, but all 40 aircraft were picked off by Saint Gunhilda’s Aegis system and air squadrons. The Eimerican ECM command ships then launched a counterattack through the Fusang ships’ computers, exploiting backdoors discovered through reverse engineering Ōryu’s computer networks. The entire fleet lost their CIWS, radar, and communications for several minutes. In those several minutes, the Mexican light cruiser Tehauntepec sunk the Fusang destroyers Danzhou and Hui Shen. The Tawantinsuyuan destroyer Titicaca took out the cruisers Ankuang and Nanjinjiang. The Roman cruiser Augustin Komnenos and Mitteleimerican cruiser Iguaque destroyed all three Fusang light cruisers. Zhang was forced to retreat to the east. Higa sighed with relief. Had Cao actually launched the attack instead of passing the buck, the Roman fleet could have been overwhelmed. By 2000, the sun had largely set, and with visibility worsening, Liu decided to play it safe and withdrew the First and Second Groups to the north. Expecting Higa to press the attack even at night, he kept up regular air patrols just in case. Higa knew Liu would be doing that, though, and withdrew his own forces. That way, Liu would exhaust his already fatigued men even further with pointless air patrols, while Higa’s own could rest. Furthermore, he could use the lull in hostilities to set up tomorrow’s strategy. Under the cover of night, an underwater drone deployed a certain device, to be carried north to the Chinese formation by ocean currents. Higa next sent a message to Fleet Command. An hour later, a rocket launched from Miyagijima Space Center, one of Ryukyu’s two spaceports.
In the early morning of April 1, Higa began operations by…doing nothing. Liu was confused. He had stayed up the entire night expecting a Ryukyuan attack that never arrived, and even after the sun had risen, Higa had not acted. Suspecting a trap, Liu ordered Yu Shi and its escorts to search the area Ryukyuan ships were last spotted in. The Penglai Ninth Fleet likewise advanced from the south, wanting to beat the Chinese to Higa. Higa had counted on them to take the bait. At 0700, the two fleets arrived at the coordinates, but the only thing they found was empty water. At 0710, as Yu Shi awaited further orders from Liu, the device Higa deployed drifted underneath the Penglai carrier Daiyu and began broadcasting falsified Ryukyuan communications on a frequency Higa knew was being listened in on. The messages detailed imaginary orders, movements, and mundane activities on various ships as if the Ryukyuan fleet was operating out of the area where the Penglai fleet was. The captain of Yu Shi acted on his own and scrambled all of his air squadrons to attack. Once his aircraft established visual contact with the Penglai fleet, Higa moved on to the next stage in his plan. He directed the transponder drone to attach to the bottom of Daiyu’s hull and explode, giving the impression that the Chinese had attacked. The Penglairen returned fire, and Yu Shi’s group responded in kind. By 0800, the two fleets had destroyed each other, and Ryukyuan submarines sunk whatever was still floating.
With Penglai’s fleet wiped out and Liu down another carrier, Higa decided it was time to strike at the Chinese Second Group. Cao’s cautiousness had led him to group his ships closely together, making them easy targets for the asset launched from Miyagijima. Having reached low Earth orbit, the Ryukyuan rocket deployed a special military satellite codenamed Amamikyu, after the Ryukyuan creator goddess. Amamikyu’s extremely low orbit, designed to avoid the high-velocity space debris circling the planet higher up, was unstable, and at the end of the day it would burn up in the atmosphere, but by then it would have fulfilled its purpose. As it flew over the Pacific Ocean, its targeting systems locked on to a buoy, disguised as wreckage from the battle with Zhang, that Higa had sent towards the Second Group. Once Higa gave the order, Amamikyu deployed its primary weapon: a kinetic orbital strike cannon with four independently-aimed turrets. The Roman Strategic Defense Initiative orbital weapons platforms used a mix of directed energy plasma weapons and railguns firing tungsten rods. In developing Amamikyu’s systems, the Three Mountains Defense Force had decided against using railguns due to the need for moving parts to generate the needed current for acceleration. Instead, Amamikyu used coilguns, which used several coiled electromagnets arranged in series to accelerate the projectile without moving parts. Once Amamikyu’s four coilguns identified their targets, they fired 6 meter long, 0.3 meter diameter tungsten rods at 8 kilometers per second. As the rods entered the atmosphere, their velocity went down to 3.4 km/s (Mach 10) due to air resistance. At 0815, ten minutes after Higa gave the order, the first four rods slammed into Yu Shi and the destroyers around it with a yield almost equivalent to that of a small tactical nuke. Cao did not have any time to react as the rods were too fast and small to show up on radar and moved faster than the speed of sound. Even if he did know the attack was coming, there was little he could have done—the rods’ destructive power came from their kinetic energy, not any explosives. No amount of armor could stop a rod from piercing clean through each deck of Yu Shi, filling each compartment it impacted with superheated plasma, vaporized metal, and molten shrapnel. Those in compartments further away weren’t spared, as the pressure wave generated by the impact was strong enough to tear through reinforced metal. One second the carrier was there, and the next it had been reduced to a quickly sinking field of metal debris. The rest of the the Second Group suffered the same fate. After two minutes of reloading, another salvo fell on the fleet, for a total of eight rods. Cao and his entire command staff were killed. The second strike took out the carrier Doumu and any escorts that survived the first strike. Dong Wanggong, which had eluded Higa at Guam, had been held back by Liu and wasn’t targeted. It was the only survivor.
Comparing Amamikyu’s deployment to the use of SVI in the opening stages of the war, Higa realized the Roman orbital weapons platform had been poorly maintained and used by Jerusalem, as the tungsten rods dropped in November 2038 barely caused the same amount of damage as his own orbital weapons platform had just done. It was a miracle that such a malfunctioning system had managed to completely destroy China’s second strike capabilities and continue to hinder attempts to rebuild it even five months later. Perhaps it was a legacy of SVI still operating on largely 1980s technology, while Amamikyu was constructed entirely within Ryukyu over the last decade, building on the fifty years of innovation since SVI launched. Once the war was over, Ryukyu planned to launch more such orbital weapons platforms as part of what was dubbed the Ten-Gushiku Network, which would be Ryukyu’s own version of SVI as an alternative to building a conventional nuclear arsenal and a way of neutralizing any potential nuclear attack against the Ryukyu Islands.
Cao’s death left Liu and Zhang as the only remaining enemy commanders. The Central Fleet, Dong Wanggong, and the remnants of the Fusang First Battle Group were all that stood in Higa’s way. Higa next directed Amamikyu to use its cameras to locate the Chinese and Fusang flagships, but Liu, having deduced what was happening, had prudently grouped his remaining ships underneath thick clouds, preventing Amamikyu from locating and targeting them. Still, Higa had a good idea of where to search within those clouds and launched several air squadrons. Over 150 aircraft were launched from Sanzan, Noguchigera, Yanbaru Kuina, Ōryu, and Prince Horst in just ten minutes. Higa committed as many aircraft as he could, as he judged he had to maintain momentum and overwhelm Liu with constant aerial attacks and prevent him from consolidating his forces and launching a counterattack. Chinese tactics, much like Roman ones, preferred only attacking once everything was in place for full spectrum dominance. Furthermore, the Eimerican and Roman fleets were further to the north than the Ryukyuan one, and Higa predicted Liu would focus on eliminating a weaker target first, thus leaving his carriers more undefended than usual.
Despite having trained in unfavorable conditions like thick cloud cover, the Ryukyuans had difficulty locating their targets. Xi Wangmu, Dong Wanggong, and Yingzhou continued to elude Higa, but his aircraft located the Fusang carrier Qingqiu at 1020. At 1050, after some regrouping, the Ryukyuan attack on Qingqiu commenced, with support from Roman aircraft launched from Saint Gunhilda. Qingqiu’s air squadron and escorts fiercely resisted. The Chinese T-7, long known in military circles as one of the most agile fighters in the world, was roughly equal in specs to the indigenously built Ryukyuan R-3, and the pilots on both sides were equally experienced, but the Chinese concentrated their fire on the Roman M-36 fighters, whose pilots were not used to flying in cloudy weather. The Ryukyuans were put on the defensive trying to defend their Roman allies, allowing ship-based anti-aircraft guns to slowly pick them off. 15 R-3s, 28 M-36s, and 32 T-7s were shot down before Higa called off the attack. However, he used the data gathered from the engagement to give Amamikyu coordinates for Qingqiu’s location. At 1130, the weapons platform used its remaining 8 tungsten rods to obliterate Qingqiu and its escorts. Higa would have preferred to conserve Amamikyu’s ammunition for the flagships, but Amamikyu’s electromagnetic coils had overheated, and by the time they cooled down, the satellite would be below the horizon and burning up in the atmosphere.
Red denotes the areas targeted by Amamikyu.
Despite Higa only succeeding in sinking one carrier at the cost of losing his most powerful weapon and a good number of his pilots, his attack had achieved a crucial objective. Just as he had hoped, the strike had kept the remaining Chinese and Fusang fleets off balance and unable to counterattack. In addition, the Chinese CAPs had overextended themselves to reinforce Qingqiu and its air group, and following the destruction of Qingqiu, they and the remaining Fusang aircraft were now far out of position relative to the Central Fleet. They had also expended much of their fuel and ammunition trying to defend Qingqiu. Understanding Higa’s plan, Liu changed strategies. He knew the outlying aircraft were low on fuel, but recalling them would expose his carriers’ locations. Instead, he ordered all aircraft to take an extended route, where they would take an extended detour in the wrong direction before circling back towards the nearest carrier once they had left the Ryukyuans’ range. This would waste more precious fuel, but it would not only hide his carriers’ location but also waste the Ryukyuans’ fuel if they tried to pursue.
Without Amamikyu, Higa had no choice but to continue the search. By chance, at 1310 one R-3 squadron spotted the wake of the Chinese destroyer Qingcheng, which had strayed from the main Central Fleet formation to depth charge the Japanese submarine Arakawa after it had sunk the Fusang cruiser Taizu. Hong suggested that Higa press the advantage now that they had a general idea of where the Central Fleet was. Still unsure of the Central Fleet’s exact location, Higa ordered his battleships to bombard the general area with their main guns for an entire hour. At 1400, a broadsides salvo from Amami sunk Qingcheng. Other volleys did not hit any of the remaining three enemy carriers, but the powerful rounds still managed to sink the escorts Kuocang, Luofu, Gouqu, Linwu, Wimahl, and Taizong and severely damaged Dongtian, Wangwu, Weiyu, and Anqi Sheng. Higa wouldn’t be able to confirm this, but he knew a good number of his hits landed from how some Chinese captains were clearly panicking over the radio, even if their words were encrypted. Hong found it a little difficult to process how they had quickly gone from using Amamikyu, an orbital coilgun that would no doubt herald the future of warfare, to Amami, an obsolete battleship whose glory days were from a war that ended almost a century ago. But it seemed Higa had no trouble using either of them.
As soon as the first battleship shells fell on the Central Fleet, Liu ordered the carriers and most of their escorts pulled out of the line of fire. The only ships that were sunk were those that either were destroyed in the opening salvos or took too long to get out of the area. Withdrawing to a safe distance still under cloud cover—to avoid the nonzero possibility of Amamikyu still being operational—Liu launched several squadrons for a counterattack at 1530. The first attack wave, consisting of T-7s from Dong Wanggong and Yingzhou, followed a retreating squadron of Ryukyuan R-3s and attacked the first carrier they encountered, Yanbaru Kuina. Their missiles and bombs blew a hole in Yanbaru Kuina’s flight deck, forced an emergency shutdown of its main nuclear reactor, and destroyed multiple anti-aircraft guns. The carrier’s command staff were forced to relocate to the heavy cruiser Kumijima. Damage control teams temporarily repaired the flight deck and the reactor enough to resume air operations and regain some mobility, but Higa ordered it to be pulled back.
At 1615, Liu had his second wave of T-7s target the five battleships to deal a heavy blow to Ryukyuan morale. Chūzan’s rudder was destroyed, along with its radar systems and one main gun. Sakishima suffered significant damage to its rear secondary guns and CIWS, and before it could be damaged more, Higa withdrew it to the safety provided by the intact CIWS of the Mitteleimerican heavy cruiser Iguaque and the Tawantinsuyuan heavy cruiser Mata ki te Rangi. The Ainu destroyer Repun Kamuy was torpedoed, then lost much of its front deck to a missile strike from the Fusang cruiser Nanjinjiang—its main gun and primary missile launchers were destroyed. An enemy missile made it through Hokuzan’s flak screen and impacted on the battleship’s middle, tearing off its secondary guns, missile launchers, and radar systems. Its engine was knocked out of commission, and a torpedo from the Chinese submarine Taigong tore a hole in its hull, causing it to list to starboard. An attempted Ryukyuan counterattack resulted in heavy casualties due to poor organization and hasty preparation. Liu had managed to turn Higa’s strategy—pressing an attack to keep the enemy reeling and unable to counterattack—against him. While Higa struggled to come up with a new strategy, two Chinese air squadrons descended on Sanzan itself and fired twenty missiles at the flagship. Sanzan’s CIWS destroyed 19 of the incoming missiles, but the last one destroyed the bridge, killing some of the command staff and injuring Higa himself. A concurrent missile strike on Sanzan’s rear took out the carrier’s reactor, leaving it without propulsion for a whole hour. Before rumors could spread, Higa grabbed a radio and broadcast his survival to the rest of the fleet to keep morale up. Then he went down to the flight deck and personally helped his signalmen hoist a large Ryukyuan flag from the foremast. Many Ryukyuan sailors, both on Sanzan and the surrounding vessels, hailed the action as an inspiration that preserved fleetwide morale. Cries of “Sanzan banzai! Ryukyu banzai!” echoed across the SZI and allied fleets, taken up even by those who didn’t speak Ryukyuan Japanese. Their shouts were heard even by sailors on some Chinese ships. Noguchigera and Saint Gunhilda quickly capitalized on the momentum by launching their aircraft in a counterattack, and their motivated pilots drove back the Chinese and Fusang planes, shooting down 16 of them in the process.
Higa spent the next hour overseeing repairs and planning his next move. Although Sanzan’s deck crews urged him to join his surviving command staff in the secondary bridge on the carrier’s lower floors, he refused to go while the flight deck still needed repairs. As he helped out, he observed patterns in the Chinese air attacks. He noticed all of the Chinese aircraft flew in from the northwest at lower than expected speeds for T-7s. He deduced Liu’s aircraft were conserving fuel for a longer flight route as a way to disguise the location of his carriers. Keeping in mind the maximum range of a T-7 and matching that against the known locations of his own and allied fleets—the Romans and Eimericans to the east of the Ryukyuans and Srivijayans—he concluded Xi Wangmu and Dong Wanggong were hiding in the west, while Yingzhou was in the south At about 1830, he ordered Hong to launch all of his planes in the specified areas. Before Sanzan could follow Ōryu, one final Chinese air attack pushed into the heart of the SZI and fired another salvo at it. This one tore a large hole in the side of the carrier, causing it to list to port, and devastated a large portion of the flight deck, undoing much of the work they accomplished. But more importantly, Higa himself went missing in the attack. Crews searched all over Sanzan for the admiral, but he was nowhere to be found. To prevent mass panic, Admiral Hong Wuchang of Ōryu assumed command of the fleet and ordered Higa’s planned attacks to continue. Ōryu pulled up alongside Sanzan to stabilize it and send over deck crews for assistance. As repairs were made on Sanzan and the other carriers prepared to launch their aircraft, Hong took the time to contemplate on the battle. This stage of the battle was marked by two peculiar events. One was Hong starting up a conversation with Zhang over a universal radio frequency, hoping to check in and see how an old colleague was doing. For those listening in, it sounded as if the two were old friends catching up on events in each other’s lives. They had been friends for years before the war, but both knew that only one of them would survive this battle. The call ended with the two old men saying their final goodbyes to each other, then resuming the battle. By then, recon drones had visual contact on all three enemy carriers.
By sunset at 1845, almost every Ryukyuan fighter—with an appropriate complement of Roman fighters—was in the air and en route to their targets. They split into three groups, with the intention of hitting each enemy carrier with equal firepower. However, a miscommunication led to two groups both targeting Dong Wanggong. Fortunately, one group recognized the error just as they were about to fire; instead, they broke off and headed south to attack Yinglong instead. Coming under an onslaught from almost 140 Ryukyuan and Roman aircraft—less than a third of the total number of Ryukyuan aircraft fielded in this single offensive—Dong Wanggong sustained multiple direct hits, which caused heavy damage and started multiple fires. One missile hit the bridge, killing the captain and most of the ship’s command staff. Dozens of other missiles rained down on the escorts around Dong Wanggong. Minutes later, another 140 Ryukyuan and Roman aircraft descended on Yinglong and the remans of Fusang Dahai Fleet. It took just one hit to kill Yingzhou: one missile struck a flight deck elevator and pierced into the upper hangar, where its explosion set off the armed and fueld aircraft around it. Soon, the middle of the carrier had gone up in flames, creating a thick plume of smoke that could be seen for miles. A Ryukyuan torpedo exploded underwater at the carrier’s rear, destroying its rudder and propellers. Simultaneously, the aircraft sent to Dong Wanggong landed several more hits against the carrier. One missile hit an exposed ammo storage depot, and the last surviving carrier of Guam was torn apart in a giant explosion. By 1900, Yingzhou was ablaze along its entire length. Its fires burned fast and hot, and deck crews were unable to extinguish them. The carrier was ultimately abandoned. Having been mortally wounded, Zhang chose to go down with his ship.
Watching from the bridge of Xi Wangmu, Liu began to grasp the enormity of what had happened. Witnesses on the bridge later recalled he had effectively gone into a state of shock, staring at the distant smoke from the remains of Yingzhou and the approaching Ryukyuan planes in a trance-like daze. Although he was urged to transfer his flag to a nearby cruiser as over 200 Ryukyuan and Roman aircraft closed in on Xi Wangmu, Liu refused, insisting “It’s not time yet.” Just when it seemed like he had finally taken out Higa himself, that blasted Ryukyuan had seemingly got the last laugh by taking out Dong Wanggong, Yingzhou, and Zhang. Liu was familiar with Higa and his tactics, and he knew what the man was capable of, but such a quick turning of the tables was nearly unthinkable even to Liu. After arguing with his staff for several minutes, Liu was finally persuaded to evacuate, only showing his agreement with a slight nod and tears in his eyes. At 1916, Liu transferred his flag to the light cruiser Huanghe. There, he ordered Xi Wangmu to launch all of its reserve aircraft, with no exceptions, as soon as possible. Deck crews hurried to fulfill Liu’s order. Fuel tanks and hoses were randomly scattered across the ship as crews sped through each plane’s service, and ammunition was stacked around the hangars without proper storage. A single spark or stray missile could end very badly for Xi Wangmu. Still, Liu didn’t care. He believed that he had to attack now to regain the advantage, then overwhelm the Ryukyuans with everything he had. With Sanzan crippled, the battleships damaged, and Higa missing, he believed he could still turn things back around.
At 1943, Liu’s next counterattack reached Sanzan and Ōryu. Repair efforts on the former had been so effective that the Chinese pilots initially assumed it was a different carrier. As the sun went down, the reduced visibility prevented them from noticing the distinct design of the indigenous Sanzan-class. Still, they commenced the attack. Sanzan and Ōryu’s CAPs immediately struck back, aided by the carriers’ CIWS. Sanzan developed a 23 degree list to port, while Ōryu suffered damage to its rear deck and stern. An attack on Sakishima failed to further damage the wounded battleship, but several missiles took out Mata ki te Rangi. A missile barrage from Xicheng destroyed the Ainu ships Ishikari and Shiribeshi-Toshibetsu. A torpedo from the submarine Yuquan sunk a Japanese supply ship. Concurrently, the Ryukyuan attack squadrons targeted Xi Wangmu. Despite the flagship being defended by a strong CAP, the Ryukyuans pushed through with sheer numbers and raw determination. Four missiles hit Xi Wangmu across its flight deck, starboard hull, and superstructure, leaving it ablaze and unable to land more aircraft. One missile struck the carrier on the bow, crippling it so badly that the front of the flight deck literally flipped over onto itself. A Roman attack squadron concentrated on Xi Wangmu’s remaining escort ships, sinking several destroyers. After futile attempts at controlling the blazes, the remaining crew on Xi Wangmu abandoned ship. At 2000, Xi Wangmu exploded when the fires reached unsecured ammunition and fuel lying around the hangars.
As night fell, the battle wound down. Having lost all of his carriers, Liu was in no position to keep fighting. However, Hong and the Ryukyuans likewise had taken heavy casualties and needed to reconsolidate their forces. The battle had effectively ended with Xi Wangmu’s demise, but both sides continued launching small air strikes against the other throughout the night. Chinese air squadrons, now without any carriers to land on, launched suicide runs against the Ryukyuans in an attempt to take out as many Ryukyuans as they could before their fuel and ammo ran out. With the Central Fleet’s chain of command almost nonexistent now, none of these suicide attacks sunk any Ryukyuan or allied ships. By 2100, the last Chinese planes ran out of fuel, and their pilots either bailed out into the ocean or died in final suicide runs against their targets. Hong ordered all Ryukyuan aircraft pulled back, considering the remaining Chinese ships not worth their time.
Emergency repairs on Sanzan were encouraging. Ōryu had lost its propulsion and needed its own repairs, so Sakishima and Saint Gunhilda took over towing and support. With the help of the latter’s deck crews, Sanzan’s list was halted, and the holes in its hull were patched up. Once propulsion was restored, Hong set it and its escorts on a course for Adamshaven. As Sanzan departed the battlefield, Hong noticed that the Ryukyuan flag Higa had hoisted was still flying. All Ryukyuan and allied ships half-masted their colors and all sailors on deck took off their hats in salute. Among them was Higa himself, who had been recovered from the water by the submarine Agarizachi. Higa had been seriously injured by the missile strike in which he had gone missing, but he had survived by climbing onto nearby debris. Floating in the ocean, he stayed still and did not draw attention to himself to avoid Chinese strafing attacks. He had witnessed the final stages of the battle and the destruction of Dong Wanggong and Yingzhou. Once he had been recovered, he refused medical treatment other than the most necessary ones so that he could return to commanding the fleet, but by then the battle was over.
At the end of the battle, Huanghe and the ships of the Second Destroyer Squadron were the only survivors of the Central Fleet. The Fusang and Penglai fleets were completely destroyed. The Ryukyuans lost 7 destroyers, 5 cruisers, and 4 submarines. Sanzan and Ōryu were significantly damaged, as were all five battleships. Total Ryukyuan aircraft losses came out to 243. All Eimerican, Japanese, and Ainu vessels were sunk. The Romans lost the heavy cruiser Robert Guiscard. Despite the heavy losses Ryukyu and its allies suffered, they had clearly emerged victories. Hong made the decision to not pursue Liu and the Second Destroyer Squadron, instead withdrawing to Hawaii. For the next several weeks, Fleet Command and Ryukyuan politicians would criticize Hong for not finishing off Liu and the remaining Chinese ships. Some suspected Hong still harbored sympathies for the enemy and that his defection was not genuine. Others argued on his behalf, saying pressing the attack would only exhaust pilots and deck crew more than they already did, jeopardizing repair efforts and future operations for little strategic gain other than killing Liu. Furthermore, the entire allied fleet was running out of fuel and ammunition.
On April 2, Liu electronically submitted a detailed after-action report to the Imperial Chinese Navy Admiralty, outlining the decisions he made and the strategies he used. He wrote candidly in his report, taking much of the blame for how the battle turned against him in the final hours. It was clear the mental shock of seeing Yingzhou’s destruction was still fresh in his mind. He had several major complaints against both the Admiralty and the Chinese government itself: that the Navy refused to let him deploy all of his submarines as he should have, resulting in most of them being sunk at Guam and being unavailable later on at Hawaii; that he did not get any backup from land-based long range missile launchers or anti-satellite countermeasures against Amamikyu like what had been done with SVI; and that Han Xianyu himself had underestimated the threat Higa posed due to ideological blindness, which resulted in him holding back the resources Liu could use. The report was classified, and access was limited to only Han and select high-ranking admirals. The Chinese public and the rest of the military command structure were not informed about the true extent of the defeat. State media announced a great victory, showing falsified footage of burning ships, captured prisoners, and jubilant Chinese marines cheering on various tropical beaches with tattered Roman flags lying in the sand. Only Han and the highest ranking admirals were aware of the total casualty rate—not even the Imperial Chinese Army or the emperor himself knew.
On the return of the Second Destroyer Squadron to mainland China, the wounded were immediately transferred to naval hospitals as “special patients,” placed in isolation wards and allowed no contact with other patients and their own families. The remaining officers and men were reassigned to other fleets in Southeast Asia, where the majority would be killed in high risk engagements with Vietnamese, Qiandao, Nusantaran, and Penglai fleets over the next few weeks. The ships themselves met similar fates. The most damaged were scuttled and sold off for scrap, while those that could still fight were sent on suicide missions in the South China Sea. All Central Fleet command staff were relieved of duty. Liu was stripped of his rank and forced into house arrest, where the Jinyiwei would keep an eye on him and prevent him from telling anyone the truth. His mental state continued to deteriorate in isolation, and as the war continued, he became increasingly paranoid and stressed, frequently ranting that Higa was personally stalking him.
As a result of the defeat, the Admiralty implemented new procedures for refueling and rearming aircraft, and new carriers of the Xi Wangmu-class would have their vulnerabilities and blindspots covered. Deck crews would be given new firefighting equipment and training. Fuel and ammunition would be stored better to prevent another humiliating explosion like the one that took out the pride of the Imperial Chinese Navy. Replacement pilots were pushed through accelerated training in order to replace the losses of the Central Fleet. Although China could draw on a large manpower pool, the speed at which the war moved and the fact that most of that manpower went to the Army required corners to be cut in training, leading to a noted decline in the competence of the new pilots. These pilots were assigned to carriers on the front lines as part of a new strategy emphasizing numerical superiority first and foremost. The few veterans who survived Hawaii were likewise reassigned to other front lines without time to rest, leading to declining performance and an inability to pass on expertise to new recruits. As a result, the overall performance of Chinese naval air groups deteriorated on many fronts. Following the forced retirement of its rising star Liu, the Navy lost favor with Han and his inner circle. Much of its budget was reassigned to the Army, where Han had seen more success. As the admirals attempted to reclaim the favor and prestige Liu had once enjoyed, they became beholden to the whims of Han’s yes-men, who ordered them to draw up crazy plans like an impossible invasion of Arabia. Even though Sumatra was now firmly in Srivijayan/Ryukyuan hands and the Indian Ocean was effectively off-limits to China, those admirals had no choice but to go ahead with planning such a ridiculous operation.
Three Ryukyuan pilots were captured by Chinese forces during the battle. Liu handed them over to the custody of Captain Yang Wanbing of the Huanghe, with the expectation that they be treated according to international law. However, after the battle ended, Yang knew such a disaster would be covered up by both the Admiralty and Nanjing. He and his crew could be counted on to remain silent, in various ways, but the Ryukyuan prisoners could not. Even if they were thrown into camps for the duration of the war and kept away from each other and other prisoners, there was a chance rumors contradicting the official narrative could get out. He could not risk it. On April 3, Yang took matters into his own hands. The first two pilots were interrogated by Yang for any information they had on the SZI, then killed by being tied to water-filled fuel canisters and thrown overboard to drown. The third pilot, knowing he would meet the same fate, grabbed a soldier’s sidearm, shot Yang, shouted “RYUKYU BANZAI!”, and then shot himself. His body was thrown overboard. Fortunately, Yang’s death gave Liu a convenient way out of the mess, allowing him to pin all of the blame on him and take none of it for himself. Not that it did him any good once he got home. On the other hand, two Chinese sailors from Dong Wanggong were rescued from a lifeboat the same day by Sakishima. Another 35 crewmembers from Xi Wangmu and 23 from Yingzhou were rescued by Augustin Komnenos the next day after being spotted by a Ryukyuan drone. All were transferred to Adamshaven Base and given medical treatment in a military hospital. Some were questioned. A handful provided relevant intelligence.
The Battle of Hawaii, concurrently with many other battles taking place around the world at the end of March and the beginning of April, was called a turning point in the war. It was the free world’s most important naval victory against China. While Hoang Sa put Ryukyu on the map, Sumatra destroyed Jerusalem’s presence east of India, and Guam kept Ryukyu relevant in the larger war, Hawaii dealt a massive blow to Chinese, Fusang, and Penglai naval capabilities. It kept the Roman loyalists in Hawaii independent and intact, allowing them to contribute to the Roman government in exile based in Isfahan. It destroyed four of China’s most advanced carriers, forcing its military-industrial complex to divert funding and manpower to build replacement ones. Thousands of pilots and crewmembers were killed, and their hastily trained replacements weren’t as experienced or proficient as those they replaced. Fusang lost a competent veteran commander in Zhang and two carriers, weakening its military and political clout relative to the rest of the Eimerican Federation it was trying to oppose. A week after news of Hawaii reached Hawaii, Eimerican member states unanimously voted to send federal troops into Fusang to force its compliance with supernational standards. Penglai’s naval defenses were crippled by the loss of yet another carrier group. All three nations would no longer be able to project power in the Pacific as they once did. Fusang turned back to the newly opened Eimerican land front, Penglai was forced to focus on defending its own waters, and China turned its attention elsewhere. Some speculated that the heavy losses of the Chinese carriers, veteran pilots, mechanics, and technicians permanently weakened the Imperial Chinese Navy. Combined with the loss of political favor in Nanjing and a reduced budget, the Navy’s operations were drastically scaled down in future engagements.
Hawaii also reaffirmed the worth of alliances and collaboration between various powers. Although Ryukyu took the spotlight due to being at the center of the battle, ships from nine other nations fought alongside the SZI. Effective communication, intelligence, and trust were crucial towards the success of this 10-nation alliance. By comparison, Liu and Zhang operated almost independently of each other, and Penglai was opposed to both the Chinese/Fusang alliance and Ryukyu’s group. Meritocracy also played a key role: while the Chinese government punished and purged admirals, including Liu himself, who had not met impossible expectations dictated by ideology and politics, Higa did no such thing, recognizing and promoting commanders, even defectors from China, based solely on merit and their willingness to join him. In addition, Amamikyu’s deployment showed the increasing importance of space-based warfare. Orbital weapons were now viable on the tactical level, not just as nuclear deterrents and first strikes. It was funny, though, that their debut as tactical weapons also featured the successful deployment of obsolete battleships—Ryukyu had brought together the technologies of the past, present, and future in a single battle.
Most importantly, Hawaii was another major victory for Ryukyu. Not only had this tiny island nation taken on the entire Sinosphere at once and won, but it had completely wiped them out. Even though he had been out of commission for several hours, Higa had still pulled off a win that completely upended the balance of power in the Pacific. And when news of the other battles around the world spread, people began seeing it as part of something greater. Han’s dream of a Chinese lake would not be happening anytime soon.
Instead, it would become a Ryukyuan one.
The Last Stand of the Free World
(Prologue A - Xenoblade Chronicles 1)
“If you think we’re just waiting here for you to pick us off, you’re sorely mistaken! The people of the free world WILL NEVER LET YOU TRIUMPH! The future doesn’t belong to you, vile Jerusalem!”
- Murad Mozaffar, Persian Minister of Defense
In November 2038, the war looked like it would be a slugfest between the world’s two totalitarian superpowers: Jerusalem and Han’s China. The rest of the world would be the battlefield between the two giants as they fought each other for the chance to remake the entire world in their image. Everyone else was merely a pawn or a background to their conflict. By April 2039, that assessment was no longer valid. While the two superpowers continued throwing massive armies against each other in the steppes of Yavdi and the hills of Central Asia, their attention was increasingly drawn towards the inexplicable resistance offered by the two smaller nations which had escaped the November nuclear attacks. China swung at the mosquito it considered Ryukyu, but none of its attempts killed the bug, which continued to draw blood from the giant. And on the other side of Asia, Persia continued to make Jerusalem bleed. Despite numerous setbacks and initial problems dealing with Jerusalem’s change in tactics, Persia’s Operation Huma soon resumed its westward advance. Throughout March, Persian and allied troops seized more Mesopotamian settlements, and by the end of the month, Huma was on the verge of taking the cities Kirkuk, Ahvaz, and Tabriz.
Having realized the inherent unsustainability of human wave tactics and prisoner armies, Jerusalem switched tactics again. Although human waves and prisoners remained at the core of the new strategy, High Command now prioritized psychological and information warfare. Crusaders in certain divisions were ordered to dress in Persian uniforms, speak Persian, and commit horrifying atrocities against Jerusalemites in Mesopotamia, making sure to leave an ample number of witnesses so that rumors spread fast and far. These false flag atrocities were backed up by doctored videos and photos shared online and via airdropped pamphlets behind enemy lines to give of the impression of more atrocities being committed. Although it was an obvious deception to Persian military leaders and the international community, some saw an opportunity. In Isfahan, opposition politicians called for an investigation into the military’s conduct. Some genuinely wanted to hold the military accountable to the laws of war. Others saw an opportunity to discredit the current administration. And a minority called for closer alignment with Han Xianyu as the true defender of the free world. In Mesopotamia, the false flag operations served to sow distrust between local civilians and their Persian liberators. Just as High Command hoped, many of these civilians organized themselves into militias and reinforced the main Crusader armies. Suicide bombings rocked many Persian camps, while the weaker defended ones suddenly found their officers murdered in their sleep or poisoned after a meal. Supply lines and storage facilities were sabotaged. Informants turned traitor and instead fed Persian intel to the Crusaders. In response, Persian troops showed no mercy. Already traumatized by having to deal with the zealots and prisoner conscripts, General Gebhard Remmele stopped bothering and ordered his troops to stop collaborating with locals to avoid casualties. This barely changed anything, and the troops themselves didn’t hesitate to shoot any civilians they considered suspicious. Rumors of torture of Crusader prisoners of war spread through the general public at home, provoking more outcry and calls for investigations.
Despite these tactics, the Persians continued their advance, and as civilian militias lost manpower, High Command increasingly relied on scorched earth tactisc to slow down the enemy. As the effectiveness of such tactics decreased, orders from both Berlin and regional commanders became increasingly erratic. While there were many Crusader battalions which settled for burning down settlements, mining important roads, and poisoning rivers and wells with nerve agents, others instead spent their time on indiscriminate destruction and pillaging. Remmele had come to expect burnt villages, toxic rivers, and destroyed bridges and roads by now. What he didn’t expect—or even comprehend—was the use of large amounts of manpower, ammunition, fuel, and money to destroy cultural artifacts, burn down churches and museums, slaughter literally everyone who could be found in each settlement, and douse the rest in more chemical weapons. Bysandros and several Regents referred to this as an extension of Tabula Rasa, but not even the wanton cultural vandalism of 2037 had been this thorough. Crusaders packed up and carted off anything of cultural value that could be moved, then destroyed the rest to ensure Persia, as the ancient enemy of the Romans and Hellenes and Europeans in general (the exact name used depended on Bysandros’ mood), would not get its hands on them. Other Crusader units took to not only razing entire villages to the ground but salting the earth with radiation and chemical agents and slaughtering their entire populations, both humans and animals. This had the secondary effect of destroying water supplies, waste treatment facilities, power plants, and hospitals, but at this point High Command no longer concerned itself with primarily destroying targets with actual tactical value. This extreme implementation of Tabula Rasa taken to its natural conclusion left behind desolate landscapes so devoid of life some Persian soldiers wondered if they hadn’t secretly been sent to Mars. Other soldiers didn’t have time to wonder as they developed radiation sickness, got their bodies melted from the inside out by a cocktail straight out of Duzakh, or came down with Pesah. Pesah outbreaks claimed hundreds of lives before Remmele briefly halted the entirety of Operation Huma to quarantine everybody and implement appropriate countermeasures. It was yet another example of how Jerusalem’s political and military leadership had gone completely insane, and it would not be the last. But soon, Persia got other things to worry about.
Throughout the winter of 2039, Jerusalem had been massing troops in Mesopotamia for an invasion of Persia. The recklessness and complete disregard for life and logic in the rest of the front was merely a diversion to tie up Persian troops and keep Isfahan from noticing the buildup in Basra. High Command believed one swift and decisive attack on Isfahan would decapitate the Persian government and force the country to surrender. To do this, Jerusalem put together an army of 83,000 of its best and most experienced Crusaders, drawn from all over Jerusalem and its fronts. This army would smash through an identified weak point in the Persian lines, march straight into the Persian heartland, and capture Isfahan before the enemy could counterattack. The Persian Artesh had been severely overextended as a result of Operation Huma. High Command not only believed Persian border defenses were stretched thinly enough to be easily overrun, but the positions of Huma forces were arranged in such a way that they could be easily encircled and annihilated.
On March 30, 2039, the Operation Gaugamela war machine stirred to life and set out from Basra. On March 31, the fifty-seven thousand Crusaders of the Gaugamela Second Army approached the citadel and its garrison of five Artesh divisions comprising fifteen thousand men. Three divisions were immediately wiped out in the initial attack, while the remaining two holed up inside the citadel and the terrain immediately around it. Simultaneously, eighty-three thousand Crusaders of the Gaugamela First Army—led by the Regents Elias Anhorn and Theodor Tesla themselves—punched through the Persian border after a relentless artillery and aerial bombardment eradicated all who stood in its way. The Artesh scrambled every available military asset it had, but they barely slowed down the relentless advance. On April 1, the First Army entered Isfahan. In the early morning of April 2, the Second Army commenced its siege of the citadel, and the First Army struck out into the capital’s downtown and central districts. Persia prepared for what could be the deciding battle against Jerusalem. Whoever emerged victorious on April 2 would decide the fate of the war. Persia did not stand alone, for almost every Schengen country had volunteers fighting alongside the Persians. Russians, Scandinavians, Livonians, Yavdians, Afghans, Turks, Indians, Romans, and Persians all joined together for one last battle. This would be their last stand against Jerusalem—the last stand of the free world.
In Isfahan, the First Army secured a foothold in the western neighborhood of Sedeh. The Crusader commander in charge, Edmund Remmele, found the capital’s inner defenses far more robust than he had anticipated. Attempts at breaking into downtown through Nausherwan Street ended in stalemate. Other attempts at flanking the Persians from the west and north similarly failed due to resistance from Schengen remnant forces so fierce that at various points throughout the early morning, Operation Gaugamela was on the verge of itself being encircled and destroyed. It seemed the Persians wouldn’t go down as easy as High Command thought. Edmund suggested a sustained missile bombardment against targets in downtown, then using ground forces to finish off what remained. But Regent Anhorn, for reasons unknown, rejected Edmund’s order.
Anhorn’s own order was less thought out. He believed the core of Schengen resistance revolved around two individuals: Shahbanu Gunduz II and Princess Wilhelmina. He reasoned that if both were captured or killed, the now leaderless Schengen forces would surrender en masse like they had done in Russia. He did not care that significant Russian armed resistance was still present in both Lev Konstantinov and various civilian uprisings within Russia. The Regent had convinced himself that the key to conquering Isfahan lay in killing those two women. Yet he refused to order a missile strike on downtown that would have accomplished just that and ended the battle instantly.
(Google Maps only let me turn off labels on satellite view so I had to switch to that for this map.)
Anhorn came up with an elaborate scheme in which he would lure the princess into occupied Sedeh so he could kill her personally in a public spectacle. He announced that he was holding certain high-profile individuals hostage in Sedeh: the royal families of Russia, Livonia, and India, who had all been secretly captured and imprisoned by Jerusalem instead of being immediately executed. The most surprising development was the survival of both Samrat Jayasimha and Princess Lakshmi, whom everyone had feared dead after the razing of Delhi in the Scouring of India. But their lives were still in danger—Anhorn threatened to execute them if Wilhelmina did not surrender herself to the Crusaders.
The Persian government presented a united front to this ultimatum. Although Gunduz was in favor of rescuing the hostages, the Majlis, led by War Minister Murad Mozaffar, refused to authorize an offensive into Sedeh to accomplish that. Mozaffar understood that the hostages were a trap designed to lure in Wilhelmina, and the capture or death of the princess would be a massive hit to morale that could possibly cost them the battle and the war. Instead, he ignored the ultimatum. Schengen forces would remain where they were—on the front lines at Nausherwan—keeping the Crusaders’ attention focused on them. Meanwhile, the Artesh would surround Sedeh and cut off the Crusaders’ supply lines, besieging the besiegers and reversing the situation in Persia’s favor. He understood many Schengen troops would die in this plan, but they knew what they had signed up for, and they would gladly give their lives if it meant saving Persia.
However, Gunduz and Wilhelmina almost derailed the plan and cost Persia the entire war.
Acting on her own and influenced by her personal attachment to the royal hostages—particularly her close friend Jayasimha—Wilhelmina impulsively surrendered herself to Crusader control and was escorted to Anhorn’s headquarters in Sedeh, where she naively asked for the hostages’ release. To nobody’s surprise, Anhorn instead ordered all of the the hostages and Wilhelmina executed. Having expected this to happen, Gunduz—having commandeered a tank despite not being a trained soldier in any regard—followed Wilhelmina, her personal connection to Wilhelmina taking precedent over basic logic. The Shahbanu’s recklessness then forced the hand of General Shayan Tahmasb, who ordered an all-out Artesh offensive on Sedeh to save them both. Tahmasb was backed up by Gebhard Remmele—Edmund’s brother—who had returned from Mesopotamia to deal with Edmund. Anhorn ordered all available Crusaders to converge on his location and attack the Persians. As a result of the hysteria of one woman, the Battle of Isfahan descended into chaos.
Due to everything moving so fast, electronic warfare waged by both sides, later narratives pushed by Malecares, Han Xianyu, and the Persian government, and a general lack of communication between General Tahmasb, the Roman forces, and Mozaffar’s Ministry of Defense, it was nearly impossible to understand what happened in the confusion in Sedeh. Only a few key details were agreed upon. The hostages were rescued. Regent Anhorn was killed trying to escape—there was no sugarcoating it, he just died unceremoniously in a shootout with the Artesh. Regent Tesla and General Edmund Remmele were both captured alive. Wilhelmina and Gunduz survived, but both were badly injured and had to be hospitalized—the latter was recovered in a coma. More importantly, 12,471 Persian soldiers were killed as a direct result of the battle or in the hours immediately afterward due to the sudden and unplanned overextension of the Artesh deep into occupied Sedeh. Once news about the two regents filtered down to the rank-and-file Crusaders, panic and confusion spread throughout the enemy. Anhorn and Tesla had stupidly centralized almost all decision making on themselves, leaving little to Edmund’s discretion. All three of them were now gone, and the invasion’s house of cards crumbled. Operation Gaugamela completely disintegrated. Mozaffar, not letting a good opportunity go to waste, ordered the Artesh to execute Operation Slaying of Zahhak—the encirclement of the entire enemy force. The operation succeeded without any further complications. Out of the original 83,000 Crusaders, fewer than two hundred made it back to the border.
The battle at the citadel also ended in a Persian victory, but at a far greater cost. For hours, thousands of Crusaders threw themselves against the ancient citadel with everything they had. At first they attacked with tanks and fighter jets, but as ammunition ran low and Anhorn ordered more resources diverted to Isfahan to fuel his mad plan, the Crusaders at the citadel were left with nothing other than empty guns and bare fists. They nevertheless continued their assault, using human wave tactics to wear down the Persian defenders, both physically and psychologically. The outnumbered Persians resorted to increasingly elaborate tactics to even the odds—pitfalls, hidden machine gun nests, trenches straight out of 1915, and a careful use of the few tanks and artillery they still had. Once their ammunition ran out and the Crusaders breached the traps and trenches with sheer numbers, the Persians resorted to melee weapons, such as bayonets and swords. Their enemies, also out of ammunition by now, retaliated with their own melee weapons. This final and most brutal stage of the battle saw not a single bullet being fired, and yet casualty rates were far higher here than in previous stages. The most severe injuries found among the Persian survivors of the battle—hacked off limbs, deep cuts, lost eyes and noses—came from this stage. By noon, the ancient sunbaked walls of the citadel had been painted crimson. Only 381 Persians survived to see a Yavdian army, led by General Saikhangiin Börte, lift the siege and put the remaining Crusaders to rout. However, the brave defenders of the citadel held the line. The 57,000-strong army was routed almost as badly as the Isfahan invasion force. Out of the 19 Crusader divisions, 13 were completely destroyed, 4 suffered so many losses they could no longer operate as divisions, and the last 2 still had fatality rates upwards of 60%.
The siege of the nameless citadel.
Operation Gaugamela would later be regarded as one of the greatest military disasters in modern warfare. 140,000 of Jerusalem’s best troops had been sent to destroy Persia, but in the end, only a handful survived. Persia’s casualties were also high, but the Artesh remained intact as a fighting force. In fact, Mozaffar used the chaos of the battle to sneak a massive Operation Huma offensive under Jerusalem’s radar, seizing Kirkuk, Ahvaz, and other major Mesopotamian cities. Persian troops had even reached the outskirts of what was once the suburbs of Baghdad. This masterful strategy pushed the front lines deeper into Mesopotamia, solidifying Persia’s gains and further overextending Crusader forces in the border regions.
For a brief moment, the entire Jerusalemite war machine was in complete disarray. Those elite troops had been diverted from other fronts with the expectation that they return after Persia’s conquest, but that could never happen now. Other fronts now experienced a dangerous manpower shortage. Front lines which were stable days earlier were now dangerously overextended. Despite efforts to cover up the scale of the disaster, the truth inevitably got out once Malecares could no longer explain why Persia remained unconquered and thousands of family members simultaneously received word of a loved one’s death in battle.
The psychological cost of Gaugamela was equal to if not greater than the physical cost. News spread quickly across Europe. Spontaneous memorials to the dead popped up in major cities, with no input from the government. In fact, the committee cracked down on such memorials and services as heretical and even pagan. Due to the inherently repressive nature of Jerusalem’s law enforcement agencies, many crackdowns turned violent as Home Guardians opened fire with live rounds. Riots broke out in some cities. All were suppressed within a day once Crusaders were deployed, but the underlying sentiments remained. Long written off as apathetic and resigned to their fate by both Berlin and the international community, it seemed the people of Jerusalem were starting to awaken from their slumber. In the two years since Bremerhaven’s nuking marked the end of organized armed resistance within Jerusalem, various anti-regime organizations had failed to gain traction due to general apathy, cynicism, or genuine support for the regime. Yet that was now about to change due to a combination of factors boiling over in the aftermath of Gaugamela. Wasteful human wave tactics had led to worker shortages, which interrupted the supply chain and resulted in a reduction of available consumer goods. Food surpluses were starting to run out due to most going to the troops. Farmers complained they were unable to plant crops due to the soil still being frozen as a result of the nuclear winter. Complaints became frustrations, and frustrations gave way to anger. Anger, in turn, gave way to violence. More protests and riots broke out across Europe, inspiring similar displays of dissent in occupied Russia, Scandinavia, Lithuania, and Yavdi. The first cracks in the image of Jerusalem and its people being united behind a single cause had shown.
In Berlin, the committee sought to placate the masses as it once did. To calm down the public, it needed a scapegoat. Fortunately, Gaugamela had conveniently provided two who couldn’t object. The committee pinned the blame for the disaster on the dead Anhorn and the captured Tesla. The three remaining Regents—Josiah Burkard, Philemon Moria, and Heinrich Dandolo—saw an opportunity to seize more power for themselves. They purged all other committee members below them, concentrating all political power in a new triumvirate. Burkard would handle all matters relating to the economy; Moria the intelligence services; and Dandolo the military. The three of them believed this would be a more efficient use of Jerusalem’s administrative resources, in line with the principles of Reinstaat. This power play only served to further worsen the administrative issues plaguing Berlin. With the committee now purged of all lower ranking members, all decision-making and planning for the entire empire—spanning two continents and four occupied countries—had to go through three men who barely got along with each other. In the midst of a resurgence of unrest not seen since Bremerhaven, this was possibly the worst thing the Regency had done. But this was only the beginning.
On the other side, the defeat of Operation Gaugamela had not only saved Persia from oblivion but also revitalized the nation. The past five months had not been kind to Persia. Although no nukes had gotten through its Iron Dome anti-air defense network, it was not spared the effects of nuclear winter and conventional warfare. The economy was falling apart. The people were approaching their breaking point. Operation Huma had bought Persia some time, but all of the meager progress it made was on the verge of being undone by Gaugamela. The prevailing mentality among the general public was one of pessimism and even nihilism—a feeling that no matter what anyone did, Persia was doomed. Mozaffar, though, restored the people’s hope through the brilliantly planned Slaying of Zahhak. In one fell swoop, he wiped out almost 140,000 of Jerusalem’s best troops and saved Persia. Not only did Jerusalem no longer have the manpower or resources to launch another invasion of Persia, but it was now beset with manpower issues on other fronts and unrest at home. Mozaffar’s master plan had successfully turned the tables, weakening the invincible juggernaut of Jerusalem and revitalizing Persia. Celebrations broke out in every Persian town and city as news spread through both word of mouth and news media. Fireworks were set off in major cities, their booms echoing for miles. At the largest celebrations, thousands of Persians proudly waved Persian flags, burned effigies of Crusaders and stereotypical Romans, and chanted “Pâyande Bâdâ Irân!” As Zoroastrian fire temples lit their braziers and conducted memorial services for fallen Artesh soldiers, another fire had been lit in the hearts of the people. All of the doom and gloom dissipated. When the sun rose on April 3, daily life felt more vibrant and energetic. People enthusiastically greeted each other and put all of their effort into their jobs. With no feeling of dread hanging over them, they returned to their lives with renewed purpose.
Lifting the people’s spirits also lifted other aspects of Persian society. The Isfahan Stock Exchange opened on April 3 with an unprecedented rally as stock prices surged to levels not seen since before the recession of the last decade. So many people bought government bonds that the government had to temporarily halt all buy orders, fearing it would be unable to repay them within a reasonable time frame. Local businesses found themelves overwhelmed with hundreds of optimistic customers who had been patriotically inspired to support the Persian economy. Artesh recruitment offices had their busiest day since the first weeks of the war. Bidding wars and demos between Persian military contractors hoping to see their weapons and vehicles be deployed in Mesopotamia became as fierce and borderline violent as the actual war. Support for the Majlis, long mocked as just another gridlocked political institution, reached an all-time high. Mozaffar became a national hero for his role in planning Operation Slaying of Zahhak and saving Persia from the invasion. When news of the Shahbanu’s incapacitation was announced, the Majlis unanimously voted to name him Regent. There were even rumors he would run for chancellor in the coming summer.
As Mozaffar’s star rose, others fell. Wilhelmina’s recklessness upon learning of the royal hostages nearly cost Persia the war, a fact that was not lost on the general public and hammered home by Mozaffar and his allies. As the last Hohenzollern and the claimant to the Roman throne, Wilhelmina was a symbol of the Roman people and nation, who in turn represented her. The Kaiserin embodied the values and ideals of her people just as much as they espoused hers. Criticism of the princess was thus applied to the rest of the Roman government in exile and then to the larger Roman exile community. Persians complained about the Roman exiles taking their jobs, their taxpayer dinars, their housing, and their nation. For the last four years, Romans had integrated into the Persian economy and enjoyed certain tax benefits due to their refugee status. These largely college educated Romans frequently took high paying white collar jobs across Persia. As a result, many Persians feared the Romans would form a new aristocratic class or even turn Persia into Jerusalem. Rumors spread that Gunduz would even abdicate the throne to Wilhelmina, who would then legitimize herself through her Seljuk blood. Riots broke out at the Kleinrom community in Isfahan as Persian nationalists called for the Roman exiles to be deported and then beat down any Romans speaking out. The Majlis slashed the Roman government in exile’s funding and cancelled many of Chancellor Izinchi Ochimeca’s meetings with important Persian officials. Some minor parties even called for the government in exile to be dissolved or expelled altogether. All Roman troops under Gebhard Remmele were transferred to Artesh command. Remmele was stripped of his field command, and General Tahmasb was forced to resign.
The comatose Gunduz was derided and blamed for almost derailing Slaying of Zahhak due to her rash actions trying to save Wilhelmina. Unable to respond to the allegations due to her conditions, she became an easy target for critics of the monarchy, and Mozaffar did little to stop them. Soon, people took to calling her the second coming of Cyrus II, the shah who had collaborated with Reza Khan and almost got the monarchy abolished after the war. Since then, the Majlis had held the power to call a public referendum on the monarchy. But despite increasingly vocal calls to do so, the Majlis did not. Nor did it shut down those radicals, though. Mozaffar silently watched, interested, as republicanism reemerged in the land of Iskander Yinal.
Republics had coexisted with monarchies for centuries in many forms. The Reich itself claimed descent from the old Roman Republic of Scipio, Cicero, and Caesar. Well into the medieval era, the eastern half of the empire still followed many republican traditions which were integrated into the emerging Reich. Even though the old Roman Republic prided itself on having overthrown its kings, republicanism was not associated with any specific form of government, but rather to any government that wasn’t tyrannical, was based on popular sovereignty, and had institutions based on shared values. The eastern Greek half of the empire did not consider republicanism as a contradiction to monarchy. No medieval monarchy had any issue with Italian merchant republics and vice versa. Those merchant republics and plenty of peasant-run republics operated within the monarchical framework of the Reich. Historical republicanism saw hereditary monarchy and a popular republic as just two equally valid political systems.
That changed when the Persian Revolution began and Iskandar Yinal rose to prominence as the leader of the revolutionaries. Inspired by the failed Republic of Nsorala—the short-lived breakaway Malian colony in South Eimerica—and the republics of classical Greece and Rome, Yinal saw all monarchies as inherently tyrannical and corrupt. He advocated for a system operating on popular sovereignty, universal suffrage, and a democratic constitution providing separation of powers, with no place for nobility or a hereditary head of state. Although his revolution ultimately failed, the ideas he promoted proved popular enough to fuel later revolutions and influence the development of future governments and ideologies.
Starting in the 19th century, republicanism primarily defined itself in opposition to monarchism, as a result of Yinal. Many of the revolutions of 1848 sought to overthrow monarchies. Most failed. Those that succeeded only did so by compromising with a constitutional monarchy. Most of these, in turn, fell apart within decades and due to the corrupt and inefficient Maximist model they used. One, the Kanatan Corporate Republic, succeeded in its goals but imploded on its own. Only a handful survived by adopting the Sino-Ryukyuan democratic system, Roman meritocracy, or a hybrid of the two. The next century’s attempts at republics were almost exclusively of the equalist or Paulluist variety—namely repressive dictatorships without any popular representation. Only three Eurasian republics still existed in 2039: the Paulluist regimes of Nepal, Penglai, and southern Japan. Northern Japan’s Paulluist dictatorship had given way to a democracy which was on the verge of restoring the monarchical Shogunate before being annexed by the south. None of these regimes had popular representation, nor did they come to power peacefully or by the will of the people.
Republicanism had a better fate in North Einerica. Many of the Eimerican Commune successor states initially tried reverting to monarchies but soon found a lack of suitable candidates on account of over 70 years of equalist rule. Political planners then tried extending their search to the general population, which ultimately led them to simply dispense with attempting to set up monarchies altogether. The Eimerican republican model of the 1990s drew not on Yinal, classical Greece and Rome, or the legacy of 1848 but rather the native confederations and alliances of pre-Meskwaki Empire North Eimerica, which were formed out of opposition to the Mexica Empire’s expansion. Although they did not neatly fit into Eurasian categories due to the different nature of Eimerican and Eurasian politics, these Eimerican republics were more in line with historical republicanism, seeing monarchies and republics as equally valid and not always mutually exclusive, than modern republicanism, where monarchy is inherently tyrannical and opposed to the morally superior republicanism.
The Battle of Isfahan led to a reawakening of modern republicanism not only in Persia but also Eurasia at large. The entire world had watched as the two superpowers—both liberal constitutional monarchies with popular sovereignty—descended into totalitarian tyranny when unelected and unchosen individuals seized power through the monarchy and proceeded to wage war on the rest of the world in the names of said monarchies. Jerusalem still considered itself a monarchy (with a permanently empty throne) and waged war in God’s name. China waged war to force the rest of the world to submit to its emperor. Even Wilhelmina, backed by Gunduz, wanted to win the war just so she could be placed on the Roman throne. So why did the average person have to die in a war started by and concerning distant monarchs? The people of Persia should decide their own fate, without Gunduz’s influence. She almost cost them the war too. Did they really need her, after what she had just done?
Like the historical Battle of Gaugamela, Operation Gaugamela saw the destruction of one side’s entire army in a masterful display of skill. But unlike that decisive battle, Persia wasn’t on the losing side. Other analysts drew parallels to the Battle of Cannae, where Carthaginian forces annihilated a much larger Roman army and dealt a massive physical and psychological blow to the Roman Republic. While Jerusalem had failed to channel Alexander the Great, Persia had successfully channeled Hannibal. Mozaffar hoped this could continue. They had dealt Jerusalem a grievous blow, showing the totalitarian behemoth could be made to bleed. And if it bled, it could be killed. Together with Hawaii, he saw Gaugamela as the turning point in the war, the decisive moment where Persia would claw its way out of the abyss and led humanity to victory and freedom, away from the tyranny of both Jerusalem and China. Things still looked dark, but hope had returned. Mozaffar was confident in Persia’s ability to finally win the war.
After all, it always darkest before dawn.
And speaking of darkest…
REMAIN CALM
THE REGENCY ENDURES
THE KAISER LIVES
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE OF JERUSALEM ENDURES
THERE IS MUCH TO BE DONE
THE REGENCY ENDURES
THE KAISER LIVES
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE OF JERUSALEM ENDURES
THERE IS MUCH TO BE DONE
Each segment
Before I shifted to the current format, “The Final Commonwealth War” was the overall chapter name.
I realized the tracks I linked in the previous chapters were probably too short relative to the size of the chapters. So I switched to extended versions wherever I could find them.
Originally this chapter was supposed to have a section for Japan, as in the game two large Chinese and Korean armies landed in southern Japan, a Chinese navy destroyed a Japanese one, and then Japan surrendered to Srivijaya and became a constitutional monarchy. In the initial session, I just wanted Japan to democratize and leave the war and decided I could come up with an in-universe explanation later. Five years later, I still don’t have a good reason for it. So it’s no longer canon. I decided it would be better for the story if Sakamoto remained in power for now. Gameplay screenshots will still show Japan as a constitutional monarchy that isn’t in the war, but I’ll ignore that. My justification is that Japan technically still is in the war but no longer contributes to anything now that Sakamoto has united the islands. China and Korea don’t bother attacking it as they have other things to worry about (especially Korea with Jerusalem’s chemical attacks). There’s still technically a state of war, but neither side is interested in actually fighting. Sort of like how the Korean War is technically still ongoing. Here’s the screenshot I would have used for the section, just for the sake of not leaving behind unused content:
(Not canon, of course.)
Kondiaronk’s quote is loosely based on a line traditionally attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but Franklin never actually said it.
The main idea behind the Eimerican section was to debunk the myth of the virgin soil hypothesis, where smallpox singlehandedly wipes out most of the indigenous peoples of the New World due to a lack of immunity. You see this repeated quite often on Wikipedia and in popular culture, as well as pop history books like shudder Guns, Germs, and Steel. But as I said in the section, that is not how immunology works. In OTL, the reason indigenous populations declined so rapidly in the 16th century and after European contact was because of enslavement, disruption of their traditional ways of life, and warfare.
Birama is supposed to be Sundiata Keita, the founder of the OTL Mali Empire. I made up a quote for him because I couldn’t find any historical quotes attested to him. I didn’t actually name him Sundiata/Sunjata because that name is based on his mother’s name, and I didn’t want to fully retcon out this particular Malian ruler. But I want Birama to take elements from Sundiata’s life, particularly his empire-building efforts. When reading up on Sundiata, I realized his reign would have taken place during the Thirteenth Century Crisis. As for what I had him do, CK2’s Sunset Invasion had an option for the Aztecs to invade Morocco. Although our Ocuil Acatl targeted the British Isles and Scandinavia and never landed troops that far south in the game, it wouldn’t be out of the question for a secondary invasion force to hit Morocco. Since we already established the war hero Beathan of Tavira was from Portugal and there was a sizeable Malian community in Portugal, I had Birama fight off this secondary Mexica invasion in such a way as to justify why it wasn’t even mentioned in the initial chapters or shown on the game map. Then I had him contribute to the main campaign as shown in Chapter 1. As a result, Siegfried allows veterans of those campaigns to settle in Iberia, which is how we get those Malians in Portugal. Still have to explain how they adopted Norman culture, but I think that’s enough for now.
I’m not sure about the historicity of that Norse war cry, as I got it from Wikipedia. Despite all of the stuff that was written down about Norse mythology (and that stuff isn’t exactly reliable since they come from Christian authors long after Scandinavia was Christianized), we know next to nothing about actual Norse religious practices. So whatever, I guess I’ll make it historical here.
Remember how I said one of my original ideas for the modern day would feature radical Ragnaroker terrorists who act like real life Wahhabi Islamist terrorists, before I changed it to the Colli Mexicanist movement? Consider this me recanonizing it.
Eko is Lagos. Yep, another very quick retcon of a place name. I didn’t know “Lagos” came from Portuguese until I wrote this Africa section. I’ve now switched back to the native Yoruba name, which would’ve been kept by the Malians.
Same goes for retconning Krasnoyar to Kyzyl Char, which I found would have been a much better non-Russian name when working on the world map template. Funny enough, I first used the new name in TESB, but I wrote this one first.
And Naha (Japanese) to Nafa (Ryukyuan). I could have switched Sakishima to Sachishima, but I decided not to because Sakishima has already been heavily used. I put a Sachishima in the Ryukyuan OOB though.
The new names of Este Muskogulkee, Hasiinay, and other Eimerican towns and cities no longer have European influences. The former used to use what was rendered on Wikipedia, but I changed it when I figured out how to read Wikipedia’s phonetic symbols and then wrote them out in a way I thought could be easily remembered. Some Scandinavian towns were changed to Old Norse names or the closest equivalents I could find.
New flag for the Eimerican Federation for those who haven’t followed my other posts here. Other flags to be drawn up later.
Yet another really fast retcon when it comes to the ship prefixes in Ryukyu’s section. I realized the acronyms from 3 chapters ago were a bit confusing and hard to remember, so now I settled on the following German-based naming scheme: KCM/KFM/KVM/KTM (Kaiserliche Chinesische/Fusangisch/Vietnamesische/Tawantinsuyuisch Marine) for the Imperial Chinese/Fusang/Vietnamese/Tawantinsuyuan Navy; MRP/MRJ (Marine der Republik Penglai/Japan) for the Republic of Penglai/Japan Navy; SZI stays the same; QM/AM/NM/MM for Qiandao/Ainuisches/Nusantaranisches/Mexicanisches Marine; and finally VPM (Vereinigte Provinzmarine) for the United Provincial Navy (of the UPM).
In line with Penglai’s dialects taking heavily from the Yue dialects of Guangzhou which formed the Song court’s last holdings on the mainland, I decided to change their ship names to Cantonese, aside from the carriers which are still Mandarin because I don’t want to edit the battle maps again. I’ve also done the same with Penglai placenames on the world map. The capital of Penglai is now Fung Gong, not Aojing which is based on OTL’s Aozhou (the Chinese name for modern Australia). Fung comes from me the Peng in Penglai becoming the Cantonese Pung and then fudged into Fung through linguistic drift, and Gong is the same character as the Kong in Hong Kong, but I used one of the modern romanizations. The name “Penglai” would be referred to as “Fungloi” by its people. I’ve also added a few Japanese placenames down the middle of Penglai to reference the Japanese colonial resettlements there, but I’ll show those when they become relevant to the story.
Shengdongjixi (聲東擊西) is my romanization for a Classical Chinese proverb about a strategy by which to distract the enemy with a feint and then hitting them where they least expect it. Ironically, Higa did that more than Liu.
Higa’s comment on the effectiveness of Amamikyu compared to SVI is my subtle way of acknowledging I massively underestimated the destructive power of orbital kinetic bombardment weapons.
Mata ki te Rangi, the name of one of the Tawantinsuyuan ships, is the name of Easter Island. It was going to be Rapa Nui, but I found that name was introduced after contact with Europeans.
There’s an easter egg hidden in the Ryukyu section. If you want a hint: Look at the title for the Livonia section.
You know how we were talking about reworking the Mexica lore a while ago? Well, I’m finally decanonizing “Triple Alliance” on account of it being ahistorical. I’ll use Mexica Empire instead.
I finally call the Augustinian Code a constitution. Because it is and past me was trying to find an excuse to not call the Roman meritocratic system a constitutional monarchy like China was. I don’t understand past me.
Yes, repeating the ending from Thursday is intentional.
- 2
So basically if the legend ended with another tyrant rising to power instead of the hero.Nah, it’s more like he’s a Zahhak overthrowing another Zahhak. Despite being a horrible person, him paralleling Jerusalem and the Reich with Zahhak and Jamshid is actually pretty on point as I said before. But as Zen has said, the bs part is Mozaffar presenting himself as the revolutionary hero Kāva, basically justifying using Perisan and Roman soldiers as canon fodder and equating the loyalists with Jerusalem.
Also Zen, with how much you based this arc on real life events, I still find it funny kinda prophetic that you pretty much predicted Elon Musk‘s Twitter buyout over a year before it actually happened with Theodor buying Dikastirio. Hell, I see that a comment below that update predicted the start of WW4 in your story.
As I already mentioned Education for Death recently, I feel like you could reference Don’t Be a Sucker too, since it seems like Persia is about to fall into the same nationalistic trap that the Reich and China fell into before.
Funny how the Theodor thing worked out. Not the first time that's happened to me. Once I predicted the entire plot of an upcoming Phineas and Ferb episode in a short story I wrote in elementary school.
And ironically, by the time that comment was posted, I had already played through WW4 and was planning the story section at that moment. It was hard keeping myself from spoiling what was yet to come.
Okay, I might check that out, but I spent the last 2 hours editing
Got a good laugh out of that as an Evangelion and Attack on Titan fan. I just sent a screenshot of that to my friends as well. I'm guessing the Easter egg you mentioned at the end is a reference to either AOT or EVA.
So Japan will become an isolationist totalitarian state after this war like North Korea and Turkmenistan essentially. Either that, or it could be like Franco’s Spain. Sad to that see the Northern Japanese and Ainu fleets got destroyed in Hawaii, it would’ve been nice to see them inspire and help their people rise up against Sakamoto’s oppressive regime after winning the battle, but we can’t have nice things.
I swear Earth, unless humanity finds the means to colonize other planets in the next few decades, Earth itself . Its funny that the Committee that caused all this destruction to the planet is made up of environmentalists. At this point, they are more like OTL Dominionists than actual environmentalists.
Even though their criticisms against Wihelmina and Gunduz are unfair since it’s based on Mozaffar’s disingenuous framing of the battle of Isfahan, I actually don’t mind the revival of republicanism as a political movement in the modern day or their points against monarchy as a whole, which are pretty understandable in light of the old Reich’s absolutism. It reminds me a lot of how the role of the Avatar in a more modern society is questioned in LOK.
With Mali becoming the leader of an African superstate, I wonder what happened to the Benin Bronzes and other cultural artifacts looted by European colonial powers by OTL? I ask this because if they were looted by the Romans during the many wars between the Reich and Mali before and taken to European museums here like OTL, then chances are they would end up being destroyed by Jerusalem when Tabula Rasa happens, which is a scary thought.
I see you had the destruction of Vilnius by Haynau be inspired by the Nazi razing of Warsaw in OTL. I assumed Engelbert von Haynau was procedurally generated in the game, but I just looked up his name on Wikipedia and came across the Austrian general Julius Jakob Freiherr von Haynau who seems to be similarly ruthless, so I'm guessing you based our Haynau off of him.
It’s also nice to see Guiscard, Sikelgaita, Julie d’Aubigny, Augustin Komnenos get ships named after them in light of recent discussions and brainstorming of ideas regarding them.
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I see!
Again, I can see Japan being a constitutional monarchy in the end of World War 4, as the south Japan unifier commits an OTL Pop Pot and brings back the Shogun and the Emperor as Puppet Kings to the Dictators influence. Basically, those monarchs are only brought back to prop up the dictator.
Finally, it would technically be a constitutional monarchy if the dictator creates a constitution that puts himself at the top and enshrines the existence of the monarchy.
Again, I can see Japan being a constitutional monarchy in the end of World War 4, as the south Japan unifier commits an OTL Pop Pot and brings back the Shogun and the Emperor as Puppet Kings to the Dictators influence. Basically, those monarchs are only brought back to prop up the dictator.
Finally, it would technically be a constitutional monarchy if the dictator creates a constitution that puts himself at the top and enshrines the existence of the monarchy.
I see. That might be a good way to work around the screenshots calling Japan a constitutional monarchy. In that case Sakamoto could pull a Jerusalem and declare himself regent to a permanently empty throne. I don’t think he’d actually want the monarchy to come back since he purged it in the first place, but he wouldn’t mind calling himself an eternal regent. As for the “constitutional” part of constitutional monarchy, he could officially have elections but they would always be rigged in his favor like in Penglai. I could also see him seeing the writing the wall for Jerusalem and end up abandoning them in favor of an alliance with Han, thus explaining the presence of Chinese troops in Japan, only they would be there to prop up the regime and crush anti Sakamoto dissent instead of overthrowing him. Not sure about the Korean army tho, Korean soldiers most certainly wouldn’t like the genocide Sakamoto is committing against Koreans in Kyushu, but they aren’t in any position to invade Japan now.
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Sorry. To be more precise I meant This story.
In a way this feels similar to the Long March of OTL undertaken by Mao and the Chinese Communist right before WWII.
How long did it take Ryukyu to build something like this since they are such a small nation and how long before they could build another one?
I think something like this is what happened after the Battle of Midway in OTL after the loss of many of Japan's carriers.
I feel that this ride that has already been threatening to go out of control for a wile is about to fall off the tracks.
Probably most of the world at this point: "I want to get off the Committee and Han's wild ride".
Well. I think Samir is starting to get his wish of no monarchies.
A part of me does not feel like Japan will be that extreme. I feel that after Sakamoto dies a more "liberal" leader like OTL's Deng Xiaoping will succeed him and it will be like OTL's China under the CCP.
I feel like Sakamoto will remain in power for a long time before that happens, and during that period he would continue his persecutions of Koreans and political dissents and will probably begin repressive policies against Japanese Christians and Ainu people in the North. There’s also the fact that the last remaining heir to the Imperial Throne is a child and is in exile, so there likely won’t be a rebellion against Sakamoto until Yuki is of age to lead it.
Then again, it’s possible for Japan to be like Franco’s Spain and transition peacefully to democracy, with Yuki as empress leading that process in a similar fashion to the Spanish king.
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