Intellectually Supported Tyranny and Anti Intelectuallism aren’t exclusive tropes. It can coexist together in a contradictory regime making life worse for everyone involved in its creation. For Jerusalem the intellectual support is justified as almost everyone in the Reich is college educated.
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Propaganda is a hell of a drug. Anyone can fall for it, given the right message and conditions.
It's more complicated than a couple tropes can explain simply. People are complicated. Those who are educated in one area may not be educated in another. You wouldn't expect an economist to know everything a brain surgeon does and vice versa.
And again, the "literacy rate" as represented in game is more of a continuing education rate that includes institutions other than traditional accredited universities. People who didn't attend college but still went through a registered job apprenticeship would still count towards that number, even if they ultimately go into another field.
Nothing like a good old fashioned Roman civil war to REALLY spice things up, course you can say the Reich vs the Regency is already a civil war on its own but hey, civil war is a trademark after all going back to the days of the two brothers. Just another tradition to live up to. God save Rome, because there's no way in hell anyone is at this point. Also I am willing to bet the universe is finally making it clear that a Dandolo will be there to see the Empire fall, as it was predestined, or as a certain Spiderman 2099 would say, a Canon Event.
Also man, Josh and Alex meeting again, that's gonna be quite a read.
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Once Sakamoto is deposed, it’s Shondopilled Individual’s time to shine!!!
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In terms of "who the Suzaku?" is in getting Alex out I think there was a Artesh commander who was pro-Roman but was fired after the nationalist took over so maybe it could be him?
Either way something needs to happen fast considering who Alex's new roommate is.
Some things that a part of me hopes that you talk about in your 11th Century reworks besides the formation of the Reich would be the Pegan Resurgence, formation of India and about the Americas and Australia to flesh out those parts of the world as well. So I don't know if doing the 11th Century reworks as flash backs would work.
Also you talked about how future story arcs would not be as long as this one. Dose that mean that they won't be as long as the X-Files/Fringe/Committee arcs?
This is what happens when you move the Overton window to far what was once the extreme position is now the moderate position.
This sounds like a warped version of the "7 days of creation".
Other than the Pol Pot references I fell like there is a group in the HOI4 mod Red Flood that wanted to do this too.
Lastly with Heinrich giving the call to revolt will we see anything on the map in Chapter 468?
As the Wise Shondo says, The civilians? Shoot them! That's what Japan in TTL is doing, and it looks like Moria got inspired by Sakamoto or rather, Sakamoto got inspired by Moria and Elias.
Chapter 468: History of the End, Part 5 - Light in the Distance
(Chasing Daybreak (Rain) - Fire Emblem Three Houses)
“But the Lord is with me as a strong warrior: therefore they that persecute me shall fall, and shall be weak: they shall be greatly confounded, because they have not understood the everlasting reproach, which never shall be effaced.”
- Jeremiah 20:11
The Battles of Isfahan and Hawaii marked a turning point in the war. Jerusalem and China had been dealt their worst defeats so far. Those few of humanity who still remained free of totalitarianism’s clutches regained hope that they could ultimately win, even though they were massively outmatched and outgunned by the two leading totalitarian hegemons. But the hegemons had grown complacent and arrogant, giving an opportunity for Murad Mozaffar and Higa Ryunosuke to turn the tables and give the free world a fighting chance. Now it was time to press the advantage, while Jerusalem and China still reeled from their losses. This was no longer a war between Jerusalem and China for who would dominate the world. It was a war of tyranny against freedom. But behind the scenes, things were murkier. In Persia, political intrigue and an increasingly nationalistic public threatened the fragile stability that had been won after Isfahan. And in the Pacific, the ocean’s sheer size and the time needed to traverse it proved just as challenging for Higa as any Chinese fleet he fought. The war was still anyone’s to win. But now the odds were much fairer.
If there was any solace, the climate was slowly improving. The skies were starting to clear up. Blue skies and sunlight had become more common. But the soot in the atmosphere remained, even if it was no longer as concentrated as before. Although spring had arrived, average temperatures barely rose. It still remained just above freezing in some areas, and many areas remained covered in snow and ice. Other areas had the opposite problem, getting hit with extreme heat spells and increased ultraviolet ray exposure due to holes in the ozone layer. This was not a good time to be a farmer. It was nearly impossible to grow crops the traditional way. For most farms, either the farmers were dead, the land was unusable, or the infrastructure had been destroyed. Famine swept across many nations, particularly in the Eimericas. China’s rural provinces also reported mass starvation, but Han Xianyu suppressed word of it in the press. India, Livonia, Scandinavia, Russia, and Yavdi—the worst hit targets of Jerusalem’s aggression—descended further into chaos and anarchy. A 7% global decline in crop yield was expected when the year’s harvest came around. It would be the largest drop in crop yield ever recorded since modern agricultural recordkeeping began. Approximately 40% of the world’s population was currently starving. That was expected to rise to over 75% by 2041. A good number of those 75% would probably not get the food they needed to survive into 2042.
And that wasn’t even considering the casualties the war continued to claim.
Some Justice
“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
- Paraphrased from Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
In previous weeks, Pesah swept through North Eimerica with a ferocity never seen before. Despite the federal government’s best efforts, the epidemic soon reached existential levels of devastation. Almost everybody who got infected later died, and many member states reported infection rates approaching 50%. Atoc Sopa Atoc and his combined fleet off the coast of Este Muskogulkee lost the vast majority of their personnel, including the old admiral himself. The Eimericans’ attempt to retake the Muscogean capital of Cuscowilla from its Crusader occupiers crumbled as nearly everybody participating in the campaign got infected and died. Nor did the federal government have the manpower to replace them. Tsalagehi Ayeli had suffered a civilian casualty rate of 40%. The Myaamia Confederacy lost 60% of its population, with entire towns completely depopulated. The ancient commercial and spiritual center of Kahokiaki, in the Inoka Federation, was filled with the rotting corpses of its people, which remained where they were as everybody who could bury them had also died. The Paari Confederacy descended into civil war as its constituent polities fought each other over medical equipment and the few surviving doctors. Hasiinay’s cities fell into an eerie silence. Bodies floated down the Misiziibi River, past the port city of Bulbancha, where ships lay derelict in the harbor and entire blocks had been set ablaze to burn bodies 24/7. Tawantinsuyu and Mayapan fared slightly better, as the former’s population could hole themselves up in mountain bunkers while the latter simply imposed a maritime blockade on itself, shooting any ships that approached its waters. That didn’t cover Yucatan, though, and the peninsula’s cities rapidly depopulated on a scale not seen since the Classical Era collapse.
The Eimerican federal government had long since given up on its quarantine plan. Fusang had sabotaged its implementation, and as a result, entire nations collapsed. Meanwhile, the real enemy was still out there. Jerusalem’s Crusaders still held Cuscowilla and Tenochtitlan, not to mention Neurhomania and parts of Tawantinsuyu. More and more Eimericans were dying by the minute. Even the most optimistic estimates gave until the end of summer for the smallest member states to experience total social collapse. With that in mind, the combined military leadership called for a last ditch assault on Neurhomania, if only to prevent Jerusalem from taking advantage of the coming collapse. The plan was fast-tracked and approved, if only because such reckless assaults on Jerusalem elsewhere in the world had succeeded…and also because nobody else had another plan to suggest.
In May, the entirety of the remaining Tawantinsuyuan, Mexican, Mitteleimerican, and Mayan militaries conducted a major offensive against Neurhomania. Tawantinsuyu attacked from Qullqi Mayu in the south, crossing the Great Silver River into the territory of the former Nsorala. The Mayan navy conducted amphibious operations across the Kleinvenedig region to flank the Crusaders there, while the Mexicans and Mitteleimericans launched a direct assault on the Crusader lines. As the bulk of Jerusalem’s military in the Eimericas was concentrated in Kleinvenedig, the masterful encirclement and subsequent destruction of that army, though it came at a heavy cost in lives, drastically reduced Jerusalem’s power projection and overall military strength in Neurhomania. On May 23, the Tawantinsuyuan port city of Curiana, on the Caribbean coast, was liberated. By mid-June, the entire Kleinvenedig region had fallen into Eimerican hands. These four former national rivals had finally come together to achieve the impossible, and now the road to New Berlin was wide open.
As the combined army advanced, soldiers dropped like flies. The Kleinvenedig operation had directly killed thousands of Eimerican troops, but many more died from Pesah and various other local illnesses. As a result, the Eimerican federal military leadership prioritized the capture of New Berlin as soon as possible, before the entire army fell apart to Pesah. However, the further the Eimericans advanced into Neurhomania, the more they found something truly peculiar happening.
Neurhomanians were also dying to Pesah.
At first, it was believed that only towns with large native populations were being affected, in line with trends recorded throughout North Eimerica. But then the Eimericans came across Jerusalem’s concentration camps, finding everybody—both prisoner and guard—dead inside from Pesah. Furthermore, most of the depopulated towns they encountered had majority European-descended populations, and those demographics had also been affected. But perhaps these populations had significant Eimerican genetic ancestry? That theory went out the window once the Eimericans came across Crusader military bases that were supposed to house new conscripts from Europe…but they were all dead as well. When news of this was relayed back to the federal government, another development came to light. Fusang was reporting a surge of infections and deaths among its Chinese-descended population too. The Eimericans soon came to a startling but incredibly ironic revelation: Pesah had mutated to affect non-Eimericans as much as Eimericans.
In an even more ironic twist of fate, the Tawantinsuyuans marching through the region of Nsorala reported that infection rates among the Malian-descended populations remained low, on par with European infection rates from earlier in the epidemic. While the European Neurhomanians around them were dying off by the thousands, the Nsoralans were pushing through everything Jerusalem had thrown at them, and they were winning. By June, Jerusalem had effectively lost control over the entire region to local rebels, and by the end of that month, the Crusaders’ control had been reduced to just the provincial core. Although there were still Crusaders occupying territory in Tawantinsuyu, they had lost their entire supply chain and were now encircled by a vengeful enemy. There were even rumors that the Crusader general assigned to Neurhomania, Wilhelm Ludendorff, had himself succumbed to the virus.
Perhaps there was some justice in this world after all.
Haynau’s Wrath
“The only person who can engage in such madness is someone without humanity. Every time I pray to God, I ask Him to remind the Crusaders of their humanity, if they haven’t already lost it.”
- Ecumenical Patriarch Anatolios, in his diary
Jerusalem’s fronts in Europe were going just as well as in the Eimericas. Despite the surrenders of Scandinavia, Russia, and Yavdi and the effective capitulation of Livonia, hostilities remained across the continent. Scandinavia was a wasteland, but Ragnaroker suicide bombings claimed hundreds of casualties. Boris Bradziunas, chancellor of Livonia, resurfaced in Lev Konstantinov’s army, and the two smashed through what was supposed to be the Germanos Line border fortifications and laid siege to Lublin and Lemberg. The first fell on June 3, and the second on the 22nd. Attempts to take them back or stop Konstantinov’s advance all failed due to a lack of sufficient manpower. Jerusalem’s failures in Neurhomania, Persia, and now Eastern Europe were the direct result of the Regency’s callous disregard for human life. The sane thing to do would be to pull back nonessential troops from the Scandinavian and Yavdian fronts to make up for Eastern Europe and Taurica and to avoid using such wasteful strategies in the future. But the Regency was greedy. It wanted to cede no territory to the enemy and not change any of its own strategies. Instead of dealing with its own manpower shortage, Jerusalem would cause a manpower shortage in the enemy instead. On April 7, two days after Crusaders had taken the ruins of Kyiv, General Engelbert von Haynau was directed to carry out a Purification Order—the Regency’s new word for the murderous purging carried out in Scandinavia, Livonia, and India.
(As of uploading this screenshot for the final post, I just noticed what the leader is called in that event.)
The target this time was the whole of Russia.
On April 8, bombers from the Seraphim Luftwaffe entered Russian airspace without any interruptions, as the remains of the Russian Air Force had long since fled to Persia. The collaborators and occupation government in Tsarberg were not informed of the operation, having been deemed acceptable losses by Berlin. The long range strategic bombers over Russia carried all of Jerusalem’s most powerful weapons of mass destruction short of actual nuclear warheads. All of the chemical weapons used in India were now deployed in Russia. The crews were aware they were dropping chemical weapons, but not which ones, only that they should leave the bomb bay doors open for an hour on the return flight. Utterly unopposed, as the few remaining rebel forces within Russia had no anti-aircraft capabilities, the bombers spread out to ensure maximum coverage over Russian cities, water sources, agricultural areas, and other regions essential to ecological stability. Over the next few hours, thousands of bombs carrying dozens of chemical agents rained down across Russia. Each bomb, upon reaching a certain altitude, then split into several dozen smaller bombs, each of which deployed a parachute so that it could dispense the gas held inside. There were very few duds. The results were catastrophic. Civilian casualty rates in Kyiv, Poltava, Bryansk, Tver, Pskov, Novgorod, and Minsk exceeded 85%. Tsarberg saw a casualty rate of 65%, including the entire occupation government. For weeks, the sky over Russia would be colored a sickly yellow. Millions more Russians would die in the next few days, either from secondary bombing runs or from conventional ground attacks by Crusaders equipped with protective gear.
The Purification of Russia.
As had been done in Vilnius, Haynau ordered the ground troops assigned to the Purification of Russia to destroy all of Russia’s cultural heritage. There was no strategic value in the indiscriminate devastation his troops would cause throughout the next two months, but perhaps that was the point. Haynau—and the Regency itself—no longer cared about strategy or logistics, only on maximizing the damage and suffering inflicted on the Russian people out of pure hatred. Nothing else would explain the destruction of the Peryn Shrine Complex, the holiest site in all of Slavic paganism, and the complete razing of the nearby city of Novgorod. Haynau knew exactly what he was doing when he ordered his troops to destroy over a thousand years of Russian cultural legacy. He made grandiose speeches about the long delayed conversion of Russia, stalled for a thousand years by the Pagan Resurgence, but it was all propaganda. He just wanted to see the Russians burn for all of the times Konstantinov humiliated him. His troops also dedicated themselves to their barbarous craft with overwhelming zeal and competence. What artwork and historical artifacts hadn’t already been looted from Tsarberg and Kyiv were burned and smashed to pieces. Ancient ruins and historical temples and palaces were put to the torch and torn down to their foundations, to remove any proof they were ever there to begin with. Russia’s forests were burned down, its farmland salted with radioactive and chemical agents to be unusable. Food supplies were seized and sent to Jerusalem, and those that couldn’t be taken were instead poisoned. Dams were destroyed. The rivers were contaminated with more chemicals and redirected to flood villages and industrial areas. Wells were poisoned. Water delivery systems and sewage treatment facilities were destroyed and contaminated with Pesah. Energy plants were all torn down. The result was that almost every important scrap of territory in Russia, aside from land within 50 miles of the Jerusalemite border, was contaminated with an unholy cocktail of biological and chemical agents.
However, the people of Jerusalem would soon find out that 50 miles and a line on a map did not mean anything to viruses and chemicals.
Bloodbath in India
“The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man, as a man of war shall he stir up zeal: he shall shout and cry: he shall prevail against his enemies."
- Isaiah 42:13
Although India had not been a nation for months, it was not yet lost. As Ranjit Ahluwalia established a safe zone for the people in Nepal, his brother Banda marched south, planning to retake the homeland from the Crusader vultures who had torn it apart and feasted on its carcass. Expecting heavy use of chemical weapons, Banda ordered his troops to equip protective gear and adopt tactics like Konstantinov used. Although Jerusalem was now overextended on multiple fronts, he could not risk any failures on his part. His army was the last hope for India’s survival. Too many had died for him to fail now.
His first target was Srinagar, in Kashmir. The Crusaders had a major military base there, where they had set up a large missile launch system which dropped missiles on targets all across northwest India. His goal was to take the launch system and turn it against the Crusaders, weakening their ranks and allowing him to push further south. Banda spread his troops out and advanced on Srinagar from multiple fronts, so that the missiles couldn’t take out everybody at once. Once everybody had reached their positions, Banda began the assault, laying siege to Srinagar at a range too close for the missiles to be used. The Crusader garrison resisted fiercely, but Banda had more troops. It took several weeks and almost fifty thousand casualties, but once the dust had settled, all of the Crusaders had been killed, and the Indian flag flew over Srinagar on May 26. The Crusaders attempted to destroy the missile launch system, but Banda seized it before they could. On May 27, the first missiles fell on Crusader defenses in Parashāwar, Lahore, and Delhi. On May 28, the sight of Banda’s missiles falling on the Crusaders restored hope and determination in the people of northwest India. By the end of the day, unorganized rioting and violence against Crusader occupiers had escalated into a general uprising encompassing the entire subcontinent.
Unfortunately, the decentralized nature of the rebellion would be its own undoing. It had no organized leadership, was almost entirely comprised of civilians with little combat experience, and had almost no coordination with likeminded outside forces. Ranjit Ahluwalia was focused on Nepal, Persia on Mesopotamia, and Afghanistan and Turkestan on their internal issues. They had no unified goal other than fighting Crusaders, but they more often fought each other over petty differences. Some were random townspeople and survivors of previous purges who had reached their limits and just wanted to survive another day. Others were the few non-Ahluwalia soldiers who survived the purge but had lost their units. Others were angry nationalists who just wanted to kill Romans. Very few were actually with the old resistance groups.
The suddenness of the uprising caught the Crusaders by surprise, as they had focused on shooting down the missiles Banda fired at them from Srinagar. Many early battles featured mobs of angry civilians fighting the Crusaders. As the uprising spread and the scattered soldiers outside Srinagar rearmed themselves by raiding Crusader arms depots, the Crusaders found themselves attacked by organized military units. Banda’s troops then marched south from Srinagar, hoping to lend their strength to the growing rebellion.
The first Crusader counterattack came on May 29 with a missile strike on Bengaluru that launched over ten tons of the experimental XA-1006C-423 chemical agent into the city, reducing its entire population to organic slurry within hours. The same thing was done in Lakhnau, Kolkata, Dhaka, Chattogram, Golconda, Nagpur, Madras, Kalanpu, and Surat over the next two weeks. Without its major population centers, the rebellion tore itself apart as the various cells and organizations that comprised it blamed each other, allowing the Crusaders to wipe them all out. The last major rebel stronghold was in Delhi, which gave Jerusalem the excuse it needed to raze the entire city a second time, just like Vilnius.
Orange denotes the Ahluwalias’ area of control, while green denotes the maximum extent of rebel control.
Great Ryūgū, Mother of All
“The one who panics is the one who loses.”
- Wolfgang Ludendorff
One day, Higa Ryunosuke decided he would conquer Penglai.
Okay, that wasn’t quite what he actually said. What Higa told the Roman leaders in Adamshaven after saving their backs in the Battle of Midway was that he had a plan to take the pressure off Hawaii, by taking the fight to the Sinosphere homelands. Or rather, just Penglai and China. The Ryukyuans could go all the way to Fusang, sail into the harbor of Hongzhou, and force the Guomindang-aligned government to surrender, but that country was already collapsing on its own due to the unexpected Pesah epidemic. With China, there was no way Ryukyu could ever force Han to surrender, even with Higa’s absurd luck and skill. The country was simply too big and land-based, and its coastal defenses were too powerful. Which was why Higa planned to instead raise the cost of continuing hostilities with Ryukyu so absurdly high that it would be in Han’s best interest to give up and leave Ryukyu alone. But Higa also wanted the Chinese to leave the rest of the Roman Pacific territories alone. So he proposed that the various Pacific Länder—Hawaii, Mittagsland, and the assorted islands under Roman control—be temporarily placed under Ryukyu’s military protection. As for a more permanent arrangement, he proposed an economic union and joint military alliance similar to the early stages of the Srivijayan and Eimerican supernational projects. A Ryukyuan diplomat flying in from Nafa several days later gave official government support to the plan. The Romans took a week to discuss the finer points, suggesting a few changes and additions which were mostly accepted by the Ryukyuans. Islands legally administered by other countries but effectively left to their own devices also proposed their own changes.
On May 1, the Ryukyuans and Roman Pacific islands formally declared the formation of the Ryūgū Alliance (“Sea Alliance,” where Ryūgū refers to the sea as the one of the ultimate ancestors of life in the Ryukyuan religion). The Ryūgū Alliance encompassed all of the former Roman Pacific Länder—from Hawaii and Tahiti in the east to Mittagsland in the south to Anen Kio in the west—as well as Ryukyu. It also welcomed applications from other Pacific island polities which legally remained under Vietnamese, Tawantinsuyuan, and Chinese administration. However, none of those countries were in any position to defend their island territories. The Vietnamese government quickly granted basing rights to the Ryukyuans and permitted local governments to accept Ryukyuan military protection if they wanted. The Tawantinsuyuan government was holed up in a bunker outside Cusco to avoid the Pesah epidemic ravaging the cities, so the Tawantinsuyuan islands did the same thing and joined Ryūgū. The Chinese islands had a mix of reactions. Some saw the writing on the wall and joined to avoid a Ryukyuan invasion, while others refused and closed their ports, and a few had their Chinese administrations overthrown by locals, who were overwhelmingly in favor of joining. There were a few talks of full supernational union along the lines of Srivijaya and the Eimerican Federation, but no ideas were seriously suggested yet.
That left the last Sinosphere nation, Penglai. Luckily for Higa, its military was small enough that he could force its surrender through the application of military force. Higa wanted a high profile attack that would not only knock Penglai out of the war but also convince China that further hostilities would be too costly. The best way to do this would be to directly attack the Penglai mainland, specifically the capital of Fung Gong. This would be a joint military operation drawing on all of the resources at Ryukyu’s disposal, as well as those of the combined Ryūgū Alliance. Higa’s fleet would form the core of the naval armada, but it would be supplemented by Nusantaran, Vietnamese, Qiandao, Roman, Mexican, Mitteleimerican, and Tawantinsuyuan ships. Ground forces for amphibious assaults would not only include the Ryukyuan Marines but also troops from Srivijaya and the Roman Länder. Nusantaran, Vietnamese, and Ryukyuan air wings would be based in Sumatra and the Nusantaran island of Java, from which they would launch bombing runs against major Penglai cities. And finally, the Ryukyuan Admiralty wanted to deploy more Amamikyu-type orbital weapons, this time in stable orbits for combat operations longer than one day. After the Amamikyu orbital weapons platform’s literally stellar performance in the Battle of Hawaii, the Admiralty realized the strategic importance of space-based weapons. Launches of Amamikyu-types and missions for their resupply were given highest priority at Ryukyu’s two spaceports. Three were launched and armed during the negotiations in Adamshaven.
With all of the preparations complete, Higa’s fleet departed from Adamshaven later that month, heading southwest to Penglai. He took a few detours on the way, mainly to resupply at Ryūgū-allied islands and sometimes to pacify the few Chinese islands which attempted to attack him. With no military satellites left in orbit, Zhao Yu and his admirals did not notice Higa’s advance until long range recon drones spotted the Ryukyuans off the coast of Nauru. Realizing where Higa was going, Zhao went into a panic and ordered his admirals to deploy all available fleets, drawn from the northern and eastern coasts of Penglai, against the Ryukyuans. This combined fleet ultimately consisted of 3 aircraft carriers, 10 cruisers, and 22 destroyers. By the time the combined fleet was formed, though, the Ryukyuans had reached the Roman island of Isatabu, east of Papua. It was several hundred miles off the coast of Penglai. Most importantly, there were no other major islands between it and Penglai. This sent Zhao into a further panic. Fearing Isatabu would become a staging ground for a Ryukyuan invasion of Penglai, he ordered the combined fleet to attack the island immediately, before Higa had the chance to gather his forces. Unfortunately for Zhao, this impulsive order would be what sealed Penglai’s fate.
On June 8, as the combined Penglai fleet approached Isatabu, it was fired upon by the three operational Amamikyu-type coilguns, destroying the three carriers, 4 cruisers, and 10 destroyers. The three satellites would have wiped out the rest of the fleet, but their orbits were still being adjusted, and they soon moved out of range. Instead, the remaining Penglai ships were finished off by aircraft launched from Sanzan. Zhao’s pitiful excuse of a combined fleet ended up at the bottom of the ocean with barely any conventional fighting. Higa barely had to commit any resources to the “battle.” Honestly, it was a bit of a letdown. But this was the future of war.
As modern military technology advanced, direct engagements between fleets like Hawaii would become less likely. Once the Ten-Gushiku Network was fully operational, all Higa would have to do was send out aircraft and missiles to take out any stragglers the coilguns had missed or could not target. He knew Ryukyu could not completely rely on Ten-Gushiku. The limited ammunition of each Amamikyu-type platform required regular resupplies, and the time needed to manufacture tungsten projectiles, prepare the rockets, and send them up to the platforms meant Ryukyu had to pick its targets carefully. For all of the old SVI’s failures, its solar-powered plasma cannons eliminated the need for regular resupply trips. There would still be a need for the Three Mountains Defense Force. It was a bit weird if one thought about it closer. Logically, a government should do everything it could to minimize troop casualties in war. A good way to do that was by automating the war via missiles, drones, and orbital weapons, where the only humans involved would be pushing buttons in a room far from the front lines. Yet completely removing the human element from war paradoxically could increase the chance of war breaking out. If there was little chance of humans dying, then governments wouldn’t hesitate as much to attack their opponents, since the only casualties would be equipment and money. War still needed a human element in order to keep it unappealing and reduce the likelihood it could break out again. It pained Higa to know that his troops would still have to die, but if it meant deterring future generations from taking up arms again, then would it make up for it?
With that minor obstacle out of the way, there was literally nothing but open water standing in between Higa and Penglai. He continued gathering his forces at Isatabu and the surrounding islands. In Sumatra and Java, the air wings he needed were ready to go, as were the ground troops and the transports carrying them. More Amamikyu satellites were launched every week to increase Ten-Gushiku’s coverage. All of the pieces were in place. Penglai was isolated and alone in the world. Sakamoto’s Japan had withdrawn from the war and turned inward. Nepal was under Ranjit Ahluwalia’s occupation. And Jerusalem couldn’t care less about Penglai. Zhao Yu had thought he was siding with the victors who would inherit the earth, but his fate had been sealed from the very beginning. Now all of his Pacific neighbors knocked on his door.
The Siege of Penglai. Orbits shown go from west to east.
On the 27th, Higa’s fleet departed Isatabu and set course for Fung Gong.
A New Era of Tianxia
“The battle for cultural supremacy is growing on the world stage. Millennia of history have given China a rich cultural heritage and spiritual potential that has put it in a unique position to spread traditional Chinese moral and religious values. We must counter this defeatist campaign, waged by irrelevant nations, to discredit China and its selfless goals in service of a free humanity. In truth, China is a guardian of humanity’s traditional moral, social, and family values against the aggressive imposition of liberal views by said irrelevant nations.”
- Han Xianyu
As soon as the first chemical weapons were dropped in India and Central Asia and Pesah cases were reported outside of the Western Hemisphere, Han Xianyu wasted no time shutting down China’s long border. Unlike Japan, which had the benefit of being an island nation, China had thousands of miles of land borders, most of which were active fronts. There was nothing he could do about those front lines, so he focused on the stable ones. The Imperial Chinese Army withdrew from its occupied territories in Korea, Vietnam, Lan Xang, and Burma, in the former leaving the weak puppet government to its fate.
The army was instead tasked with guarding every inch of the national borders. Nobody was allowed into the country. All trespassers were to be shot on sight. It wasn’t too hard to enforce, since China was at war with all of its neighbors except Korea. For that last border, the military built a series of fortifications to prevent refugees fleeing the anarchy caused by Jerusalem’s chemical attacks from crossing into Manchuria. Many Chinese soldiers joked they were extending the Great Wall all the way to Korea. The border closure also extended to people trying to escape China. Chinese citizens were forbidden from leaving, for fear of “harming the international image of Chinese civilization,” as Han put it. Soon, China became as much of a black box as Jerusalem did. Ironically, the outside world still noticed social behavior and reactive government policies indicative of localized Pesah outbreaks within China, though exact numbers and locations could not be determined.
Han Xianyu carried on as if nothing was wrong. Every week, he stood before a podium in the main reception hall of the imperial palace in Nanjing, extolling the glories of Chinese civilization and his propaganda of freeing humanity from ideologies such as Romanitas, liberalism, and meritocracy to dozens of cameras which broadcast his speeches to the nation. Han doubled down on his anti-Roman rhetoric, having seen its popularity around the world. As Jerusalem’s madness only intensified and became deadlier in the aftermath of the Battle of Isfahan, it became far easier to associate the Roman refugees who had fled Jerusalem with the very insanity they escaped. Han labeled these Romans as the very things they opposed, calling on all of humanity to unite (behind him) to “lay low the Roman elephant while it is weak and put it down for good.” Fear and hate were powerful motivators. Outside China, popular opinion swiftly turned against the Roman refugees and the ideals they clung to, particularly in Persia. Inside China, Han associated anti-government dissent and opposition to his rule with Roman ideals, which were in turn associated with Jerusalem. This allowed him to call anybody who disagreed with him a Jerusalemite saboteur or sympathizer. These individuals were arrested on charges of treason and sentenced to death. But these were few and far in between, for the vast majority of Chinese had long been seduced by Han’s propaganda.
However, this was largely true for only ethnic Han Chinese. Non-Han populations were less convinced by the propaganda. Sinocentrism was just the word used overseas to describe the ideology promoted by Han Xianyu and his idols in the previous century’s Guomindang military junta. In Chinese, it was known by the older name of tianxia. The namesake of the modern Chinese political bloc and military alliance called for a world order focusing on China, then the ethnic Han, and finally the emperor at the top. Non-Han peoples were considered uncivilized unless they embraced Chinese civilization and accepted the emperor’s supremacy, thus being included in tianxia, hence the name of the bloc. The liberal administrations between 1989 and 2032 repudiated tianxia as a governing ideology, instead working to earn the respect of non-Han minorities by preserving their local traditions. In the fateful 2032 national elections, non-Han overwhelmingly voted for Tsai Ing-Wen, while the Han went with Han Xianyu. By sheer coincidence, Han Xianyu’s surname, 漢 (pronounced “hàn”), was the same character used to refer to the ethnic Han in writing. That only strengthened his association with the ethnic Han both in the eyes of Han and non-Han.
Han’s police state and embrace tianxia was, to nobody’s surprise, extremely hostile to non-Han. Specific details of what was done could not be found, but Turks who managed to escape western China into Turkestan shared stories of repression, surveillance, and cultural vandalism eerily similar to Jerusalem’s melting pot initiatives. As the economy crashed and the government sought to placate the Han population by keeping its standards of living relatively stable, Han Xianyu turned to seizing wealth and resources from the non-Han to do so. This provoked widespread protests and riots in the outer provinces—Central Asia, Mongolia, Tibet, Manchuria, and Siberia—which were harshly suppressed with military force. This only invited further uprisings. But just like the Indian uprisings of late May and early June, these scattered and disorganized civilian uprisings were doomed to failure. Yet that didn’t deter more from fighting back. As unrest continued, ideas that hadn’t been seriously supported in centuries made a resurgence. In Chinese Central Asia, Turks and Uyghurs embraced the symbolism of the old Ghaznavid Khaganate, which had ruled over the Tarim Basin until it was forcibly taken over by Chinese businessmen and annexed into the empire at the end of the 19th century. The Mongols of Mongolia positioned themselves as the heirs to the Yuan Dynasty and rallied around the eastern branch of the Borjigin clan, hoping to find their own Saikhangiin Börte. The Mongols of western Siberia—a region that had been annexed from Yavdi in various wars—embraced the ideals of the old Astrakhan government in opposition to both Otso Bielke and Han Xianyu. A certain Cantonese proverb became popular among the Manchus and natives of eastern Siberia, on the other side of the country from Guangdong: “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away.” Both Tibetan Buddhists and the descendants of Slavicized Ghaznavid Turks who had migrated into the region received financial and military aid from Ranjit Ahluwalia to weaken Han’s control over Tibet. Despite all these efforts, the Imperial Chinese Army could not be defeated. In fact, it was even winning on the Central Asian front, though that was more on Jerusalem for overextending and mismanaging its troops.
The Imperial Chinese Navy, on the other hand, lost favor within the imperial court and sought to regain it in increasingly stupid ways. Dancing to the whims of Han’s cadres, the Admiralty was forced to execute ridiculous plans that had little grounding in reality. Han’s inner circle was already heavily biased in favor of the Army, and the Army’s successes on the major fronts only increased that bias. To them, the Navy was just a distraction and a waste of money, demonstrated by Liu Shaokang’s loss at Hawaii. Hawaii’s conquest, aside from its immediate military and symbolic value, was to be the first stepping stone in what Han called the “Austronesian Return Plan.” For several decades, it had been well known that the Austronesian peoples—which included groups as varied as the Qiandaoren, Nusantarans, Malayans, the Malagasy, the Māori, and Hawaiians—and their languages descended from an ancestral group and proto-language originating in Taiwan. It wouldn’t be a stretch to hypothesize that ancestral group itself came from the nearby Chinese mainland. Although such a group would have migrated to Taiwan long before China was even an idea, Han seized the opportunity to declare all Austronesians as “barbarianized Chinese” and the lands they lived on as rightfully part of the empire. Once Hawaii fell, the rest of Polynesia as far east as Mata ki te Rangi would be similarly integrated into the empire. Some nationalists even calling for the annexation of Tawantinsuyu and parts of the UPM and Mexico as well due to theories of the former’s possible interactions with Polynesians and the latter two’s historical ties with Fusang. After that, China would take back its former colonies in Southeast Asia, together with Malaya, Nusantara, and Penglai. Then it would take Madagascar.
Of course, Ryukyu ensured that all these plans amounted to nothing. Although the individual strength of each non-Ryukyu member state was negligible, as a whole the Ryūgū Alliance’s combined strength and territorial coverage ensured Chinese naval power would not extend past the Ryukyu Islands. Speaking of Ryukyu, Han decided those upstart islands had to be put in their place. He believed Ryukyu could be brought to heel with overwhelming air power, followed up by a naval invasion of its main islands. The Admiralty protested that previous air strikes and missile attacks on Ryukyu had miserably failed, as Ryukyu’s aerial defenses were impenetrable, and the Navy no longer had the ships to directly attack Ryukyu, but Han didn’t care. He gave the Navy until the end of August to conquer Ryukyu. Surely it shouldn’t be too difficult to conquer a puny island kingdom, right? After all, another Imperial Chinese Navy fleet had somehow broken through the Srivijayan blockade of the Straits of Malacca, gotten across the Indian Ocean, and landed troops in Dubai as part of the western phase of the Austronesian Return Plan. Once a foothold in Arabia had been secured, China could strike at targets in Persia, India, and the Jerusalemite heartland while also denying the Persian and Jerusalemite navies access to the Indian Ocean, allowing China to conquer it—and Madagascar—at its own pace. The very fact that the Srivijayan blockade was that easily broken meant the navies of the Southeast Asian nations were in a rougher state than previously assumed, meaning there was still a chance for the southern phase of the Austronesian Return Plan to be implemented.
(That was all AI shenanigans, so I’m not even going to bother figuring out how it happened in universe. Reminds me of the Chinese invasion of Greenland in the last war.)
If all this could be done, then Ryukyu could be conquered. Han was sure of it. What he didn’t know—or didn’t want to know—was that the Dubai operation had the highest casualty rate of any Imperial Chinese Navy operation in the war so far, the Chinese foothold there was in constant danger of being dislodged, and Nusantara and Vietnam had almost immediately restored the blockade and increased their patrols in the South China Sea.
So Dubai wasn’t what it appeared to be, then what about Ryukyu?
Fearful Lion
“The Frashokereti, the final battle between good and evil as foretold in the Avesta, is upon us. Jerusalem, the servant of Angra Mainyu, seeks to plunge the universe into an eternity of wickness and evil. But we Persians, the last people of all humanity who remember the teachings of Zoroaster, can still walk the path of goodness that Ahura Mazda set before us all.”
- Murad Mozaffar
Only one of two nations that escaped November 2 unscathed, Persia was the last hope of the free world. There was no room for failure in all of its efforts to fight Jerusalem. The Battle of Isfahan was Persia’s riskiest move since the war began, but it had paid off amazingly. One of Jerusalem’s regents was dead, and another was captured. Eighty thousand Crusaders were dead, worsening Jerusalem’s manpower shortage. Things were looking up now, and Persia had only to press the advantage.
Unfortunately, things weren’t that simple.
Murad Mozaffar, the architect of the victory at Isfahan, had a long way to go before he could take on Jerusalem. Persia remained divided under the surface. There were many who sought to undermine the nation for their own selfish aims. Shahbanu Gunduz II had been one of them, putting aside her duties to recklessly charge into battle after the equally reckless Roman pretender Wilhelmina, and both of them were severely injured in the process. Many lives were sacrificed getting them to safety. Royalty always thought themselves above accountability, but in a modern meritocracy, nobody was above the law. Mozaffar personally didn’t think there should even be monarchs, since their position was inherited, not meritocratically chosen from among the people. The royals’ supporters were the most annoying lot he had ever dealt with, always harping about proper decorum and honor while the country continued teetering on the edge of collapse. And then there were the Romans. After the battle of April 2, public opinion swiftly turned against the thousands of Roman refugees in Persia. They had been in the country for years, but they had retained the culture of their homeland and lived separately from native Persians. The contributions they made to the economy were miniscule compared to the natives’. Essentially, their comfortable lives were being subsidized by Persian taxpayers. Given a few more years, and the Romans would become a new aristocracy ruling over the Persians, with Gunduz as their puppet. Persia would become a new Jerusalem.
Ever since he was young, Mozaffar had been a patriot. His father was a veteran of World War III, and his mother was a teacher at the local fire temple who instilled in him a love for Persian history. He grew up on stories of the great Persian shahs, from Darius the Great to Yunus the Saoshyant. In college, he majored in Persian military logistics and strategy, with a focus on historical Persian military campaigns. Through that, he came to appreciate the richness of Persian history. That appreciation turned into a desire to protect it. After graduation, he went into politics. Under the tutelage of the future chancellor Abbas Jaberi, he ran for the Isfahan city council, and after one successful term, he set his sights higher. He ran for mayor. From there, he entered the Majlis as a junior representative. Then, he became a senator. Finally, he became Minister of Defense under Chancellor Jaberi, despite having never directly served in the military. Through it all, his driving goal was to protect Persian culture from all those who would destroy it.
Now Persia was under threat, and only Mozaffar could save it. Gunduz had shown she couldn’t lead. The people instead looked to Mozaffar, the mastermind of Operation Slaying of Zahhak, to guide them through these tough times. Mozaffar told them what they wanted to hear: that everything was going to be okay, if only they joined forces against their enemies. He did everything in his power to make sure that would happen. A normal politician would just say the words and go through the motions while pocketing money from their donors, then sit in the Majlis and do the bare minimum. Not Mozaffar. He genuinely wanted to help his constituents. Politicians like him only came around once a generation.
To stabilize the economy, Mozaffar suggested adjustments to the national budget by cutting unused services and redirecting the extra funds towards relief for small businesses, not just the bigger corporations. He even donated much of his own money to charities working alongside the official programs. With Pesah spreading in Central Asia and India and many soldiers coming home injured, Mozaffar increased funding for healthcare. Furthermore, Gunduz and Wilhelmina were admitted to a hospital so they could receive specialized long-term treatment for their injuries. To alleviate the strain on the average taxpayer, he convinced the Majlis to temporarily lower income tax rates for the fiscal years of 2038, 2039, and 2040. To make up for the loss in revenue, he raised corporate taxes after consulting with industry leaders as to the ideal new rates. This made him incredibly popular with the common people without sacrificing powerful financial backers.
On the subject of injured soldiers, Mozaffar found a solution to that. As Minister of Defense, he was involved in the decision making process of the General Staff. After the success of both Operation Huma and Operation Slaying of Zahhak, the Artesh found itself controlling large swathes of Mesopotamia. Mozaffar wanted to reduce the number of casualties suffered in further Artesh operations. Fortunately, General Saikhangiin Börte, commander of the Yavdian forces in exile, offered to take on the riskiest military operations so that fewer Persian lives were put in danger. In addition, Mozaffar pushed the deployment of more automated drones and long range weaponry. The Crusaders were known to weaponize Persian compassion by throwing waves of conscripts and prisoners at them before detonating suicide bombs, sometimes even rigging dead bodies to explode in violation of international law. Then there were also the zealots who would blindly charge Persian lines without concern for their own safety, but enough had died that they were now rare. Mozaffar wouldn’t even let these enemies get within visual range of his troops. They would be destroyed at their source with missiles and drones, and the Yavdians would finish off the stragglers with their troops. Fewer families of servicemembers would have their hearts broken. As a consolation to the Yavdians who were going to die, he got the Majlis to pass a law granting citizenship to the families of any non-Persian soldier who died in battle. It wouldn’t be enough to make up for offloading all of the deaths onto Börte’s troops, but it was the best he could do.
The new strategy proved effective. Börte’s army pushed into Mesopotamia, devising creative strategies for defeating numerically and technologically superior Crusader armies with little reliance on Persian supply lines. A rare mistake led her main army to be encircled in downtown Mosul, but she somehow pulled herself out of that situation by destroying Mosul Dam and letting the raging floodwaters wash away her enemies, while she pulled back her troops to higher ground. On June 4, the Yavdians marched into Baghdad and drove out its weakened garrison. Baghdad’s fall effectively delivered the entire province of Mesopotamia into Persia’s hands. Remaining Crusader forces fell back to Anatolia and Syria. Three days later, long range Persian missiles began falling on Damascus, Aleppo, Antioch, Haifa, the city of Jerusalem, and Trebizond. The rest of the Levant was wide open to Persia. Mozaffar drew up a grand double-pronged strategy he called the Xerxes Plan. The Persians would first march into Syria. Once Damascus, Aleppo, and Antioch were secured, they would march south through Israel into Egypt, cutting off Jerusalem from its North African districts. Capturing the Suez Canal would allow the Persian Navy to sail into the Mediterranean and support a Yavdian invasion of Anatolia. Then they would take Constantinople, and surely that would break Jerusalem’s morale enough to enforce a surrender. Mozaffar’s military analysts assured him that Crusaders did not possess the numbers to resist such an offensive. They could be in Constantinople by the end of July.
However, Mozaffar’s attention was drawn back home. Not everybody was satisfied by his policies. Every politician always had their detractors, but the amount of opposition he received from the refugee populations was ridiculous. The large Roman population in Isfahan made a fuss about everything Mozaffar did, as if he was their Satan or Markos Angelos. Romans staged rallies and protests in downtown Isfahan. Mozaffar and his allies were constantly harassed in public. Royalists claimed Wilhelmina and Gunduz were illegally detained and demanded their immediate release. Conspiracy theories and rumors spread by students in over their heads singled out Mozaffar as a malicious and cruel man. It pained him that there were so many people who hated him just because he wanted to help. Such was the fate of political idealists over the centuries. For all of his efforts trying to save the world, there were still those who wanted him to fail, to drag Persia down. He really sympathized with the Romans’ plight. They had been escaping totalitarian tyranny and sought freedom in Persia, yet they brought their repressive views with them and made no effort to assimilate. They wanted to turn Persia into their home, a new Jerusalem with a Roman aristocracy.
One to try reasoning with his opponents before picking up a weapon, Mozaffar reached out to Roman community leaders—including government in exile Chancellor Izinchi Ochimeca—so he could hear their grievances and establish a dialogue. He understood that the vast majority of Romans in Persia were just civilian refugees, not soldiers or politicians, and they just wanted to live in peace. Leaving them alone would be ideal for Mozaffar. Roman businesses had revitalized local economies in many Persian cities. Many of the younger refugees had already integrated well into Persian schools. And if both sides could come to an agreement, then the unrest from the radical vocal minority would die down.
Unfortunately, Mozaffar’s hand was forced by radicals on both sides.
On April 26, Chancellor Ochimeca was shot and badly injured by a Persian nationalist while presiding over a memorial service for fallen Roman soldiers in Isfahan. The shooter was subsequently attacked by a gang of vengeful Roman nationalists. Although all involved were arrested—with the Romans immediately deported—this led to a string of protests, riots, and crimes perpetrated by both Persian and Roman radicals in an escalating cycle of revenge. The government was forced to intervene. Law enforcement cracked down on nationalist activity as fairly as they could. However, as the majority of crimes and riots had been caused by Romans, there was an appearance that the police had disproportionately targeted Romans. Such news only radicalized more of the Roman population. Businesses shut down in support of the rioters. Roman parents pulled their children out of schools. Roman gangs targeted wealthy Persian businesses and homes, claiming retribution for Ochimeca. On May 18, conspiracy theorists leaked classified military information to all major news channels that painted Mozaffar in a negative light with regards to his leadership in the war. These serious but baseless accusations, which showed even Börte had radical sympathies, inflamed tensions further. Pollsters estimated a majority of Roman adults had embraced at least a few radical ideas. The Persian radicals likewise increased in prominence. Regular anti-Roman demonstrations were held in major cities like Isfahan and Shiraz, calling for Romans to be held accountable for their crimes. Republican groups asserted Gunduz’s absence as evidence of the inherent flaws of monarchies. Nationalists called for the Romans to get justice—whatever they deemed would be an appropriate punishment for creating Jerusalem and letting Isfahan burn on April 2. Persian gangs attacked Roman businesses, but very few crimes were reported to the police by both the intimidated Romans and the vengeful Persians. Incidents of bullying against Roman children skyrocketed, leading parents to withdraw their children, which in turn directed the bullies’ energies on a smaller and smaller number of Roman students.
Things took a turn for the worse when rumors spread that Roman troops, both on the front lines and stationed in Isfahan, were plotting a coup against the Persian government. Mozaffar found few details—who was involved, the exact plan of attack, or what government they planned to establish once they won—but it was enough to spur the radicals in the Majlis to action and push panicking moderates to the radicals. A hastily written report by the General Staff to assess the threat level of this potential coup swayed more moderates when it concluded Roman general Gebhard Remmele—brother of one of the Crusader generals who had attacked Isfahan—had a high chance of being involved in the coup, taking revenge for Chancellor Ochimeca’s attempted assassination and Wilhelmina’s alleged imprisonment. Börte was also placed under heavy suspicion for her comments in the leaked military information from May 18. If Remmele and Börte rebelled, they would be in a position to immediately seize most population centers in Mesopotamia and western Persia. All that they needed was one final straw, an inciting incident that would give them an excuse to rise up.
The final straw came on June 19, when the refugee Dorothea Tesla—sister of Jerusalem’s Regent Theodor Tesla—was attacked by a Persian nationalist, who in turn was shot dead by her fiancé, Alexander Humboldt-Frank. Humboldt-Frank immediately went into hiding to avoid arrest, sparking another round of riots and protests by both sides. Romans of all kinds rallied behind Tesla and Humboldt-Frank, seeing them as victims of yet more Persian nationalist violence that the government had time and again failed to address. Persians overwhelmingly rallied behind the dead nationalist, seeing him as a martyr killed by Romans hiding behind their refugee status to avoid the law. Both sides were primed for all-out war. If nothing was done, Isfahan would become a battlefield again, and many innocent civilians would be caught in the crossfire this time. With that in mind, all of the major factions in the Majlis put aside their differences to present an ultimatum to Chancellor Jaberi and his cabinet, which included Minister Mozaffar. The ultimatum was simple: expel all of the Roman refugees to satisfy the Persian people and avert the coming civil unrest, or the Majlis would hold votes of no confidence to replace Jaberi with Vice Chancellor Parviz Zakaria, an ardent supporter of expulsion. Jaberi initially refused the ultimatum, despite the Majlis’ demands. He argued this would be a massive humanitarian disaster and a crime on the level of Shahbanu Furuzan’s suppression of Muslims in the 17th century. They would be punishing the whole group—including many innocents—for the actions of a few. The Majlis argued that the actions of the few were supported by the many. Most Romans had sided with Tesla and Humboldt-Frank, both of whom had ties to Jerusalem—therefore, in the eyes of the Persian people, they were all guilty. As a result, the Persian people, in their current fearful and vengeful state, would see nothing less than total expulsion as appropriate punishment. To only expel a handful would invite accusations of Romans being held above the law and becoming a new aristocracy, thus provoking more civil unrest. This was the only way to save lives. Jaberi believed otherwise. Not once did the people presenting the demands to him even mention where the Romans would go. There were few options for them outside Persia. Turkestan and Afghanistan were still being fought over by Jerusalem and China and had uncontrolled Pesah epidemics. Yavdi was crawling with warlords and Otso Bielke. India was India, and the last one was Jerusalem. No matter where they went, they would be sentenced to certain death. But the Majlis, riled up by the radicals and nationalists, demanded action. Discussions in the main chamber grew violent. Radicals from all ideologies—including both equalists and fascists—joined forces to harass and intimidate the remaining moderates and anybody else opposed to the expulsion. Chairs were thrown. One anti-expulsion politician was beaten so brutally that he went into a coma.
With both the government and the people on the verge of revolt, it was clear what must be done. On the 20th, Mozaffar made a midnight trip to Jaberi’s residence. Standing on his porch for an hour, he waxed poetically about three thousand years of Persian history leading up to this moment. Mozaffar talked about how the country was humanity’s last best hope for freedom, but it would waste that hope if the people turned on each other. For the sake of the future, they all had to be united. They all had to make sacrifices for the greater good. If anybody would be condemned for it after it was said and done, then Mozaffar offered to be that person. He would take the blame, so that Jaberi’s record remained clean. Jaberi would instead go down in history as the man who saved Persia.
It was that speech that finally convinced Jaberi to assent to the order. An official announcement came on the 21st, issued by Mozaffar on Jaberi’s behalf. All Roman nationals and their families were to leave the country by the end of the month. Their businesses would be seized and bank accounts frozen. Students were forbidden from attending class. Members of unions and other organizations were expelled. Benefits and social services were halted. Citizenship was revoked for all except those who had relatives in the Artesh—not any of the other exile armies allied with the Artesh—who had been killed in combat. Every effort was made to render all Romans persona non grata and compel them to leave.
So they left. The Roman government in exile—no longer recognized by the Majlis—established a temporary safe zone at Isfahan International Airport to gather all Romans in the city. Similar safe zones were set up in other major cities with substantial Roman populations. All in all, approximately twenty thousand Romans gathered at the safe zones over the next three days. That was all that remained of the Roman exile community in Persia by 2039—of the many millions who fled the Reich between 2030 and 2035, most had either died or disappeared into the chaos of the world. Joining them were another ten thousand non-Romans. Not only did non-Roman refugees like Russians, Scandinavians, and Yavdians join them, fearing they would be next in line for deportation, but many Persians also found themselves leaving their lives behind out of solidarity with the refugees. On the front lines, the combined forces of Operation Huma underwent a similar schism. The Yavdian armies, along with many Artesh divisions who disagreed with the order, immediately abandoned their positions to provide protection for the refugees streaming out of Persia. This created dangerous gaps in the Persian lines and overextended the units which remained loyal to Isfahan. What was most dangerous, though, was that these troops not only took their equipment with them but also stole experimental technology from various labs and field research facilities, including weapons and equipment seized from Jerusalem in the Battle of Isfahan.
The average Persian was not aware of any of this. For all the general public knew, the vast majority of Romans and other refugees were gone from their lives by June 30. Celebrations clogged the streets of major cities, organized by nationalists who hailed the order as the rescuing of Persia and its people from the clutches of the evil divinity Angra Mainyu, the enemy of all that was good in Zoroastrianism. Nationalist militias organized beatings and harassments of any remaining Romans who were either exempt from the deportation or did not have the chance to leave yet. In the afternoon of June 26, Chancellor Jaberi was still voted out of office by the Majlis, which had already decided on using him as a scapegoat for the inevitable backlash. Such a backlash came later that day, when the first protests erupted in Isfahan. Mozaffar was shocked by the size of the protests and their support from many different demographics, including students, teachers, dockworkers, law enforcement, trade unions, and business owners. It seemed once the jubilation and rush from the initial expulsion had worn off, the people realized just what they had done: condemn over twenty thousand Romans to certain death. Still, Mozaffar was not concerned with these grassroots protests. Polls still indicated a majority of Persians thought the deportations were justified, and Mozaffar was still the favorite to win the examinations in four days. In fact, his ratings surged to unprecedented levels once the media learned of his midnight appeal to Jaberi. There seemed to be only two losers in this whole incident: Jaberi and the Romans.
But there was no use dwelling on the fate of losers. History was written by the winners, and Mozaffar was a winner. He had a country to save.
Predictably, All Hell Breaks Loose
“Where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people.”
- Heinrich Heine
Jerusalem never recovered from the Battle of Isfahan. Not only were none of Gaugamela’s primary objectives fulfilled, but Jerusalem also lost massive swathes of territory in the Persian counterattack. Within eight weeks, Persian troops had taken Tabriz and Basra and were marching on Baghdad. High Command attempted new counteroffensives to retake the lost territory, targeting the region around Hamadan to cut off Persian supply lines, but all failed due to a lack of manpower. The Regency could no longer ignore Jerusalem’s manpower shortage. The solution was simple. What Jerusalem lacked in numbers, it would make up for with sheer overwhelming brutality. The Purification of Russia, although it lacked the manpower to be fully implemented, aimed to permanently cripple Russia and Yavdi’s capabilities to fight Jerusalem’s overstretched armies. A second wave of chemical and biological attacks in India was supposed to free up troops for other fronts by utterly annihilating the subcontinent’s population and habitability. Previous Purification Orders in Scandinavia and Livonia continued to be implemented. The Herem Doctrine was adjusted to focus on total annihilation of every aspect of the enemy, not capturing and brainwashing.
Yet people in all of the targeted nations continued resisting. Konstantinov and Bradziunas were no longer in Russia, but Jerusalem proper, and seeing the razing of their homes only spurred them to fight even fiercer. Much of Scandinavia’s population had already died, fled to Iceland, or committed themselves to bloody suicide attacks in Denmark. Although Börte had left Taurica, the commanders she left behind were more than capable of operating on their own. Lastly, Persia had only emerged from the whole Isfahan debacle stronger than ever, at least on the surface.
Jerusalem also had its own problems under the surface. Bysandros Malecares’ propaganda worked overtime to present an image of strength and stability to the world, but years of the firehose of falsehood had led everybody outside Jerusalem to simply tune out everything he said. More importantly, though, that propaganda was starting to lose its effectiveness among its target demographic, Jerusalem’s own citizens. Wasteful human wave tactics, military defeats, increased conscription, and dangerous working conditions left few individuals able to work. Although the “news” claimed everything was fine and life was better than it had been, half of Jerusalemites personally knew someone who had died in the war, a third knew someone who had been worked to death, and forty percent had received conscription orders to bolster the military’s ranks. There weren’t many left to actually work. Industrial and agricultural production plummeted, despite government attempts to bolster productivity through increased quotas and harsher punishments for failure. Those harsher punishments only made the problem worse by permanently removing more potential workers from the economy. Regent Josiah Burkard, an economist, attempted to solve the problem by reducing spending and redistributing funds within the national budget, but he ran into a large problem when he was forbidden from reducing the constantly increasing military budget in any way. Not enough money was coming into the economy and government coffers. He had already cut spending in other sectors to the lowest he could. The only thing he could cut further was the military, but he couldn’t. Still, he had to come up with the money somehow. Regent Philemon Moria suggested an alternative method of raising money.
Officially referred to as “donations to the Church,” Home Guardians went around the country to “humbly request donations” from the people. What really happened was that it was now illegal to own jewelry or precious metals of any kind. To enforce this law, Home Guardians barged into people’s homes to forcibly reposess these valuables. Anticipating the public backlash, Moria attempted to encourage zeal and faith among the people with nationalist propaganda campaigns against “foreign idols” and other foreign influences. Also anticipating the backlash to that initiative, Moria ordered Home Guardians to be stationed in everybody’s homes to keep an eye out for dissent. Ironically, he didn’t anticipate backlash to that.
Predictably, all hell broke loose.
Rioting and protests broke out in major cities, because as brainwashed as the people of Jerusalem were, there was only so much they could accept. For the first time in five years, there was meaningful opposition to the Regency being openly expressed by the people once known as Romans. These protests were more akin to the anti-Roman grassroots movement in Persia than the unorganized uprisings in India and China. While the latter were easily dealt with, the protests in Jerusalem’s heartland wouldn’t stop. No amount of propaganda or muddying the truth could convince them anymore. No fearmongering, gaslighting, or appeals to religion or nationalism worked. The people no longer cared about ideology. They were motivated by simple desires: food, water, safety, and money to afford basic necessities. All Moria’s ideologically oriented policies served to do was to fan the flames of dissent even further. None of it mattered anymore. They just wanted to live.
In the absence of leadership from Berlin, the Orthodox Church stepped in. It was only natural in a Christian theocracy that the Church claiming to lead all of Christendom would take charge of things, but the Church and Regency had many disputes under the surface. Although he formerly sat on the committee and still provided spiritual advice to the Regents after the reorganization of April 2, Ecumenical Patriarch Anatolios had his doubts about Jerusalem’s policies. He frequently criticized the more heavy-handed policies that the Regency had enacted “in Christ’s name.” Yet he could not fully break with the Regency at the moment. The Church had been split between clergy who had embraced Jerusalem and those who had shut up and stayed far away from politics. In particular, the Patriarchs of Berlin and Rome were strong regime supporters. The western Patriarchs of Carthage, Toledo, Paris, and Canterbury, despite officially remaining neutral, deferred to their judgment. Anatolios had the support of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria—with himself included, that meant four of the Pentarchy were on his side. But most of the population fell under the administration of the western patriarchs. It was important that he get some of them to help him. A pfarrernotbund (“emergency league”) he had covertly set up to recruit sympathetic western clergy could only go so far under the radar. He needed to act in the open but without alerting the Regency. He would have to operate within frameworks and protocols set by past Church doctrine. So Anatolios called a synod.
It was officially an ecumenical council, but he referred to it as a synod because the former carried connotations of rewriting and adding on to Church doctrine. Although that was what he aimed to do, the name would inevitably attract the Regency’s spies. The goal of this synod was to gauge each patriarch’s loyalties and then recruit those he could trust, along with their congregations. Through those congregations, Anatolios would then gain the manpower and spiritual authority he needed to take on the Regency. But the synod was to serve a much greater purpose. It wouldn’t be an ecumenical council if Anatolios didn’t propose the adjustment of religious doctrine, as had been done in previous councils as times changed and new social norms and technology emerged. There was to be a world after this war, and the Church had to be ready. Anatolios, though, wanted to go further beyond what was usually discussed at these councils. Recent ones merely updated the doctrine to reflect modern society, or decided which denominations were actually heresies. Anatolios instead wanted to dramatically overhaul Church doctrine on a scale not seen since the earliest councils which set the foundations on which the Church was built. He took aim at the doctrine of caesaropapism itself.
Caesaropapism had its roots in the pre-Mending Church of the Eastern Empire, where the emperor was considered God’s representative on Earth and the true head of the Church, while the Ecumenical Patriarch and the other patriarchs led the Church in his name. That arrangement had gone unchanged through the centuries since it began. The Kaiser always appointed new patriarchs and presided over ecumenical councils. He could overrule the Church if he so desired. While in practice this right was rarely used, it was still there. Otto the Great had heavily pushed his own ecclesiastical edicts during his reign, which made him somewhat unpopular in certain Church circles. When the committee and Regency took over, the throne’s spiritual authority passed from Wilhelm IV and Wilhelm V to the regents. Such a scenario had never happened before in Roman history, not even during past regencies. Before, the Church would simply assume direct authority to act on its own after being granted it by the regent. In the regencies for Wilhelmina, the interregnum of the Anarchy, and the regency of Otto himself, the Church operated without the oversight of the monarchy and in doing so won small but permanent concessions of autonomy which grew with each regency. There had never been a situation where regents with no theological training assumed full spiritual authority over the Church and then refused to relinquish it, instead wielding that authority for themselves. Anatolios realized that if Jerusalem’s Regency could do that, then any future regency could as well. Therefore, he came to believe that completely severing the political and religious ties between the Church and the state were necessary to preserve the Church’s autonomy and integrity. Anything less than complete autonomy would run the risk of the state suborning the Church to its whims and turning it into a political mouthpiece, serving the state instead of God.
The synod was held on May 29 in Hagia Sophia, Constantinople. Every patriarch, bishop, and high-ranking priest attended regardless of their political views. Anatolios opened the synod with a speech outlining his reasons for calling the synod, justifying his beliefs with verses from the Bible. Then he got to his main points: caesaropapism had to be overturned for the continued survival of the Church and the preservation of its mission. More importantly, Jerusalem had lost sight of everything to do with Christianity, and it had to be stopped before more innocents were murdered in cold blood. As he expected, the assembled clergymen became sharply divided between pro- and anti-Jerusalem factions, allowing him to discern their true loyalties. With that done, he could move on to the next stage in the synod, convincing those who agreed with him of the need for immediate action. Then they could discuss what they could do. After that, they could officially record all of the doctrinal updates into Church canon and go home. Seemed straightforward.
Unfortunately, Anatolios couldn’t even finish his speech before a nuclear warhead detonated over Hagia Sophia and wiped out the entire city, along with the entire leadership of the Church.
The official narrative was that the Chinese had fired the missile to both destroy the Church and one of Christendom’s holiest cities. Like everything else Malecares said these days, that was obviously false, even if the general public didn’t know that China’s entire nuclear arsenal was still disabled eight months after the SVI bombardment at the beginning of the war. Another narrative claimed it was a Catholic plot and that Anatolios’ body was found dead of a gunshot to the head with a Catholic crucifix placed next to it.
Nobody bought that one either because it was impossible to ignore the giant mushroom cloud over Constantinople and the ten million who had been killed. The truth was Moria was behind it. He had suspected Anatolios’ disloyalty for months and had his spies follow the old man to gather information on a potential coup. Learning every major Church leader was gathering in the same building at the same time, Moria used the opportunity to sneak in a nuclear warhead to kill Anatolios and anybody else who could have either supported him or gained enough spiritual authority to challenge the Regency. The ten million civilian deaths and the destruction of the entire city and its cultural heritage was a minor inconvenience for him. And to be extra sure the Church would not threaten him again, Moria ordered the executions of every surviving clergyman.
Predictably, all hell broke loose.
Apparently, killing the Christian clergy of a Christian theocracy did not go well with a Christian population. However, as a former RSB agent, Moria specialized in suppression tactics and neutralization of political enemies. So he applied his RSB training over the entire nation by harshly cracking down on dissent.
Predictably, all hell broke loose.
Moria cracked down even harder by increasing the severity of punishments.
Predictably, all hell broke loose.
Moria expanded the definition of a crime to provide an even bigger deterrent to bad behavior.
Predictably, all hell broke loose.
By the end of it, laziness was punishable with the death penalty.
Predictably, all hell broke loose.
At that point, Moria gave up trying. He blamed it all on Josiah Burkard and had him executed for treason. Then he turned to the most powerful weapon in Jerusalem’s arsenal, the one that the Regency intentionally refused to use after November 2. On June 22, nuclear hellfire rained down across Europe and north Africa. Every major city except Berlin was targeted. Only one city escaped destruction by shooting down its missile with an anti-aircraft defense system it fortunately had on hand. Fifty million would not live to see June 23.
Predictably, all hell broke loose.
On June 23, the other remaining Regent, General Heinrich Dandolo, staged a coup against Moria, ordering millions of Crusaders and Home Guardians across Europe to answer his call. Moria refused to relinquish power. On the 24th, the first battles between Dandolo’s forces, Moria’s loyalists, and the first serious Roman resistance groups in two years began.
Yet another Roman civil war. Purple denotes Dandolo’s and rebel forces.
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I think I finally managed to cut down the lengths of these gameplay chapters. No epic Ryukyu battle this time, because I have to stop recycling World War II battles in an era with drones, long range missiles, fighter jets, electronic warfare, and freaking orbital coilguns. I was planning to have Hong split off and invade Fusang on his own, but that would probably be too crazy even by Ryukyu’s standards. I have plans for one or two more battles before I wrap up Higa’s entire arc.
I ended up going with two music links per wartime chapter from this one on. I could’ve started doing this two chapters ago, but I felt like the various Roar of Dominion tracks fit the bleak “scheiße hits the fan” feeling of the war between Tsarberg and Isfahan, and there were four variations I could use after Three Hopes released. After Isfahan, the free world gets new wind in its sails, and the tide of the war shifts so there’s a chance of actually defeating Jerusalem. Hence I chose the two Three Houses variants of Chasing Daybreak, which plays during the first half of the war phase. The general melody, in my opinion, evokes the sadness and tragedy of war while still telling you something along the lines of “playtime’s over, now the battle begins.” The first “Rain” variant is the one that plays by default when looking over the map from the top down, while the second “Thunder” one plays whenever a unit initiates combat and the scene changes to a ground level view. So I chose Rain to go first for the top level view of events in this war, while Thunder was put at the Persian part because from there on I take a ground level look at things in Persia and Jerusalem.
Kahokiaki is Cahokia because the latter is from French. Nobody knows the city’s original name so I had to settle for the name of the Kahokiaki tribe the French named the city after.
The Anatolios quote is based on a line that stuck with me after watching an interview with a Ukrainian (I think a priest) talking about the atrocities he witnessed in the ongoing war. The Han quote is from a speech by Putin.
As an update for the current writing slowdown, I still have been having trouble with the story batch and have had to resort to splitting the one chapter I had finished into four parts, though each part is still at a decent length. Hopefully things improve in the next week. I hate to drag this out.
By the way, see if you can figure out which city escaped Moria’s nukes.
Edit: fixed wrong picture caption.
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You mean Shayan? I don’t see it, and besides, I’m going to show what he’s doing in the next batch.
I’d like to do that, but it’ll probably be in Definitive Edition for the most part. I don’t think I have the energy and time to do two separate gameplay chapter series at once, and the story will be very Wilhelm focused.
Most likely not. The first two were long because I adapted full 45 minute episode scripts, and the third is long due to my own writing. As with the 11th century rework, I don’t have the energy and probably the time to continue writing such long arcs like I used to. The recent slowdown is probably me starting to feel the burnout, unfortunately.
And the other extreme is…still this extreme.
I intentionally drew a parallel there.
I think it was the French Accelerationists?
Sorry that I couldn’t answer before I posted 468, but yeah, there’s that map at the end. Nothing in the actual game though, I made this up all on story side.
Please. Stop.
Do I see Ulm surviving Moria’s nuclear attacks and becoming Henrich’s base of operations? Damn, even here Ulm is op.
I also see Jerusalem pulling an Ivan the Terrible on poor Novogorod. That city can’t catch a break in any time. Also, Kharkiv is in Yavadi? A bit weird to think about it not being a Ukrainian/Russian city here. Also I’m not sure about Cherson/Kherson being on the map since it was founded by Catherine the Great and was by the Byzantine theme and the Greek city of the same name in Crimea.
Happy to see Ryukyu create that Pacfic Island superstate we all talked about, but I’m pleanstly surprised to see him invading Penglai. The sooner Zhao and his totalitarian government is deposed, the better. Also good that Fusang’s government will collaspe soon, through its incomptence and callousness have already caused the people of Fusang and the wider Eimercias a lot of pain.
I can’t help with sympathize with Mozaffar after reading his POV in the story chapters and the Persian section in this recent chapter. It also makes me wonder if restoring meritocracy immediately after defeating Jerusalem is really the right call to make in a post war order, especially with happened to Persia and the state of the Reich after the fall of the Regenncy. If there’s a risk of liberal democracy/meritocracy either dissolving down to chaotic mob rule with no sense of rule of law, a tyrannical demagouge taking over and establishing a totalitarian regime, or the system eventually stagnating in gridlock and getting gamed by oligarchs when the institutions decline enough, then meritocracy might not be the best system for a Reich with a destroyed infrastructure and a population radicalized by years of nationalist propaganda. Forcibly installing a democracy in a war torn nation that has known nothing but dictatorships for a long time seldom ends well in real life after all.
I also think the Loyalists joining forces with Henrich to defeat both Moria and their former ally of Persia is be the best call for them at this point, seeing how Persia has betrayed them and no longer liberating the Reich, but is instead encroaching on Roman territory.
Since we discussed the interactions between Ethiopian Jews and Christians recently, I wonder if you have lore ideas for Steppe Jews as well, especially their time of prominence under the Saray Khaganate and the earlier Khazar Khaganate?
Btw Zen, you seem to have mislabeled the map of Haynau’s genocide of Russia as the “purification of India” just a heads up.
Also @TWR97, I wonder if you have thought about the style you'd write your ASOIAF updates in, because doing them like Zen's FE/LOK updates with appropriate music and images might be a good idea, especially with how good Ramin Djawadi's soundtrack for GOT/HOTD is.
I also see Jerusalem pulling an Ivan the Terrible on poor Novogorod. That city can’t catch a break in any time. Also, Kharkiv is in Yavadi? A bit weird to think about it not being a Ukrainian/Russian city here. Also I’m not sure about Cherson/Kherson being on the map since it was founded by Catherine the Great and was by the Byzantine theme and the Greek city of the same name in Crimea.
Happy to see Ryukyu create that Pacfic Island superstate we all talked about, but I’m pleanstly surprised to see him invading Penglai. The sooner Zhao and his totalitarian government is deposed, the better. Also good that Fusang’s government will collaspe soon, through its incomptence and callousness have already caused the people of Fusang and the wider Eimercias a lot of pain.
I can’t help with sympathize with Mozaffar after reading his POV in the story chapters and the Persian section in this recent chapter. It also makes me wonder if restoring meritocracy immediately after defeating Jerusalem is really the right call to make in a post war order, especially with happened to Persia and the state of the Reich after the fall of the Regenncy. If there’s a risk of liberal democracy/meritocracy either dissolving down to chaotic mob rule with no sense of rule of law, a tyrannical demagouge taking over and establishing a totalitarian regime, or the system eventually stagnating in gridlock and getting gamed by oligarchs when the institutions decline enough, then meritocracy might not be the best system for a Reich with a destroyed infrastructure and a population radicalized by years of nationalist propaganda. Forcibly installing a democracy in a war torn nation that has known nothing but dictatorships for a long time seldom ends well in real life after all.
I also think the Loyalists joining forces with Henrich to defeat both Moria and their former ally of Persia is be the best call for them at this point, seeing how Persia has betrayed them and no longer liberating the Reich, but is instead encroaching on Roman territory.
Since we discussed the interactions between Ethiopian Jews and Christians recently, I wonder if you have lore ideas for Steppe Jews as well, especially their time of prominence under the Saray Khaganate and the earlier Khazar Khaganate?
Btw Zen, you seem to have mislabeled the map of Haynau’s genocide of Russia as the “purification of India” just a heads up.
Also @TWR97, I wonder if you have thought about the style you'd write your ASOIAF updates in, because doing them like Zen's FE/LOK updates with appropriate music and images might be a good idea, especially with how good Ramin Djawadi's soundtrack for GOT/HOTD is.
Fair enough, through character development for other characters like Sarah/Ida would be appreciated, especially her involvement in the politics of the HRE and Byzantine Empire.
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Ulmmmm. This is tough. I'll have to think about this.
Well after the Committee arc ends any future story arcs could be like the "Flight of the Valkyrie (1 2 3 4) (3 January 1966 - 4 January 1966)" arc in were other than Anne Frank most of the characters were only used in those four updates. So some possible story arcs could be a two part arc that covers a person running for office in the UN, one single update arc could be about how a family are getting by in the middle rim (between the core worlds and the outer-rim) or a three part arc on how a rebel group is faring in the outer rim. All of them separate from the other but still giving us that "lived in" feeling that this story arcs have been doing?
That actually does make a lot of sense. Maybe the loyalist could come in and apply pressure in the east while Henrich and his forces attack in the west?
Also CaptainAlvious. Since Kaiser Cat Cinema recently released their documentary video that covers Austria-Hungary, Italy, Romania, Serbia and Albania I was wondering if you were planning on doing a update on your Meskwaki Empire update for Tianxia?
I agree. The problem through would be how could the loyalists find out Henrich has good intentions and wants to destroy Jerusalem as much as them, as the loyalists right now think he's just another Committee leader and war criminal?
I wasn't planning on making another Kaiserreich update after the Ming update for Volkerschlact, so I think I'll leave that to you if you feel like doing it.
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(spoiler tagged for GhostRider124's convenience) I couldn't not include the other tiny meme country of EU4.Do I see Ulm surviving Moria’s nuclear attacks and becoming Henrich’s base of operations? Damn, even here Ulm is op.
Yeah, it was weird when I realized Kharkiv would fall into Yavdian territory while I was working on the map. But given its OTL origins as a settler fortress, I could explain it away as being Russians who migrated into western Yavdi. I've already established that western Yavdi has a significant number of Russians, just as eastern Russia has a significant number of Yavdians, because the border between the two countries shifted quite frequently and wasn't clearly defined in some areas.
As for Cherson, I put it there not because it's the OTL city founded by Catherine the Great but because it's a continuation of Chersonesus. In OTL, it declined after being sacked by the Mongols in 1299 and disappeared from history after the 14th century, but I had it survive here like I did with Babylon and Susa.
To be fair, Zhao and Penglai are pretty much jokes at this point, thinking they're important to the overall war when everybody else has long since forgotten about him, and Higa only decided to invade them because his other targets were either too strong or too far away.
It would be a shame if the loyalists go through all this trouble to restore the Reich but ultimately lose their values at the end, after they've won. Understandable given their circumstances and the necessities of the times, but still disappointing. Then the dream of Romanitas would truly be dead.
Neither the loyalists nor Heinrich currently have the capabilities to reach out to each other. The former are is more than a big refugee convoy with some military hardware, and the latter is stuck in the middle of Europe without clearly defined front lines. Not to mention the forces labeled as "rebel" on my map aren't all united under Heinrich, but occupied by both Heinrich and several hundred rebel groups with conflicting motivations and goals, just like in India. Though I do think it would be a good idea for them to form an alliance against Moria once they have the means of joining forces. Enemy of my enemy and all that.
That already is sort of happening at the moment.
Good question. I'm going to partially answer that in the next story chapter.
I already showed how there were some Jews and Jewish syncretism in Gulichi's village. I could go into them in more detail later on, if I can figure out how to work them into the story.
I hate editing on mobile. Did you know that sometimes if you make a line break, the site undoes your previous edit? And that if you want to center or italicize text, it scrolls to the top of the text box and moves the cursor to the very beginning? I keep asking myself why I even bother with mobile editing.
Anyways, fixed.
I definitely won't forget about Sarah and Ida, they're central to Wilhelm/Friedrich's story after all.
If you want a hint, just look at my last map.Ulmmmm. This is tough. I'll have to think about this.
My current plan is they'll just be a single arc in between gameplay chapters. I post a gameplay chapter, start and finish an arc, and then post the next gameplay chapter. Sometimes the arc might extend past the next gameplay chapter and we get a slightly longer one. I do like your idea of one-offs as well. It was pretty in line with how I imagine working in some of the flashback sequences to older Kaisers, like that one high seas ship chase between Kaiserin Victoria's ship and the Mexica flagship during the Sunrise Invasion I talked about before. I really need to do separate stories that are not tied to the chain of continuity started by Bernadette all the way back in the 19th century.
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Ulm and Baku have survived the city nukings. Now interesting.
Now that the crusaders are now in a civil war... which side will the player take? Moria's side, or Heinrich's side?
In the end of the day, Both Order and Chaos are Dangerous. Chaos is dangerous when there is no social order, as then everything falls apart, as Yadvi has shown when it fell apart into rebel groups, and too much order can be used to destroy entire culture as Han's China and Zhao's Pengali has shown.
Jerusalem is in a sense, both order and chaos. Order to it's citizens, which they use to force uniformity in cultural maps, and Chaos to the rest of the world, encouraging disunity to everyone else. Both are dangerous because as a result, more people become radicalized and become rebel groups. Jerusalem is dangerous in both ways due to it's contradictory nature, as a social darwinist environmentalist state.
Now that the crusaders are now in a civil war... which side will the player take? Moria's side, or Heinrich's side?
In the end of the day, Both Order and Chaos are Dangerous. Chaos is dangerous when there is no social order, as then everything falls apart, as Yadvi has shown when it fell apart into rebel groups, and too much order can be used to destroy entire culture as Han's China and Zhao's Pengali has shown.
Jerusalem is in a sense, both order and chaos. Order to it's citizens, which they use to force uniformity in cultural maps, and Chaos to the rest of the world, encouraging disunity to everyone else. Both are dangerous because as a result, more people become radicalized and become rebel groups. Jerusalem is dangerous in both ways due to it's contradictory nature, as a social darwinist environmentalist state.
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These updates always emphasize how both so little time ultimately and yet how much has happened.
To be fair, I think @GhostRider124 already found the city(spoiler tagged for GhostRider124's convenience) I couldn't not include the other tiny meme country of EU4.
Ulmmmm. This is tough. I'll have to think about this.
Yeah but I’m not sure if there would be a Kherson on the mainland when the orginal city of Chersonesus on the Crimea peninsula is still intact.
Zhao’s Penglai really ended up like Mussolini’s Italy in the end.
Indeed. Also, since we have Robert Guiscard and Hassan as antagonists for Fredrich/Wihelm respectively and Heinrich IV’s rivalry with Pope Gregory VII, I think it would be cool to have Ida’s foil be either Matilda of Tuscany or Maria of Alania. I’m leaning towards Matilda since I imagine her religious devotion would mean she’d be repulsed by Ida’s affairs and defiance of medieval political/social norms, think something like Alicient and Rhenarya’s conflict in HOTD/Fire and Blood if you’ve watched/read that.
Also, since Cannae was destroyed by Robert Guiscard in 1083 and abandoned in 1276, I wonder if the town would still be inhabited here? Now that I type this out, I kinda want to see Fredrich have a battle with Robert at either Cannae or Dyrrachium.
Indeed. Crazy to think it took WW2 six years to become the deadliest confilct in history, while this war easily suprassed that bloodshed by multiple mangitiude thanks to nukes, modern technology, and plague in a few months
Also, I wonder what the astronanuts in the ISS are doing and how well they’ve been faring up?
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Not just Baku, every city under enemy control survived. Not because they had the defenses to shoot down nukes, but because Moria focused on the cities he still controlled.
This didn’t happen in the game, as I mentioned in the chapter.
I guess you could say the message I’m trying to show is that there has to be balance.
No, Jerusalem is still order. But that order is falling apart.
This war surpassed every previous war in casualties on the first day alone.
…I got woosh’d. And not the first or second time on this thread.
…Okay you win. Though since I have both Theodoro and Theodosia on the same peninsula (despite their names originating from separate sources), perhaps I could get away with two Chersons? One settled by people from the original.
There will even be switching sides memes when all’s said and done.Zhao’s Penglai really ended up like Mussolini’s Italy in the end.
I’m also leaning towards Matilda because of the notes and research I’ve already assembled making her out to be a major power player in the Investiture Controversy. Just as Friedrich had Ida, Gregory had Matilda. I already had thought of her as a major intellectual and political rival to Ida since she was very well educated. She’d definitely try to weaponize Ida’s affairs, but that would open her up to Ida doing the same against her, since in OTL she was accused of many affairs as well, including one with the Pope. Perhaps when the Controversy ends with Friedrich’s victory, Ida could even try to bury the hatchet with Matilda.
Still haven’t seen HOTD or finished Fire and Blood, but I could try to pick them up again to get a reference on their dynamic.
If it was destroyed after 1066, then I could still have it be around. So yeah, a Friedrich vs Robert showdown at Cannae would be cool.
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It’s been a while since we’ve heard from them, so I wonder what the astronanuts in the ISS are doing and how well they’ve been faring up?
Well spoken. There’s a lot of cool historical women you could talk about in 11th century like the Jimena sisters in Castile, Sikelgaita, Matilda and powerful Byzantine noble women like Eudokia, Anna Dalessene and Maria of Alania. It would be interesting to see how Ida could bounce off them just as it would be interesting to see Fredrich bounce off his male historical peers. It could also be cool to see Ida displaying traits that could be passed down to Saint Wihelmina, like skills at navigating politics.