«12. . .1,4231,4241,4251,4261,4271,4281,429. . .1,5071,508»
Took the time to collate another RP anthology from days past!
Iescech, Morocco mole, Janisport, and Saint Olav
Thousands of Bohemians living on the border of Iescech were now making frequent trips into Taube to purchase cheap goods, and many were staying to take up jobs in construction at a wage much higher than they could find in Bohemia. This was having a serious negative effect on the economy of southern Bohemia, with many local merchants already shutting their doors. Some of the smaller villages on the border were becoming dangerously depopulated, turning into ghost towns in just a handful of weeks. This economic downturn blindsided the Necare officials in Bohemia, who were already scrambling to fill the void left by Marshal Broti's untimely demise. Once again, the only Necare man who seemed to be competent, even if he was not prepared for this eventuality, was George Wesr. Wesr issued a high tariff on all Iennic imports, and ordered the municipal police forces of the effected border towns to open files on as many emigres as they could, so as to keep track of them. He contacted his informers in Taube to begin expanding their spy rings to manage the increased number of marks and potential targets in their AO. But, for all of these countermeasures, Wesr knew the only way he could truly end this crisis was by preventing Bohemians from entering into Iescech in the first place. Border control fell under the purview of the Whiteshirts, his nemesis Vidha Roskus' organization. Wesr would have to convince Roskus to seal the southern frontier.
George Wesr settled into the leather armchair across the cluttered walnut desk from Vidha Roskus in his chief political rival's Prague office. Wesr had never know Roskus to be a disorganized man and, when questioned about the uncharacteristic disarray of his files and documents, Roskus showed a surprising amount of candor. Tears welling in his eyes, though he tried to hide them, Roskus admitted that he was still grieving over Marshal Broti's death. Broti, Roskus felt, was his last and best route to restoring his family honor. A normal man might have felt pity for Roskus, maybe even put aside their politics for the moment and comforted him. But George Wesr saw only opportunity. Wesr casually mentioned that the Ienns were pulling thousands of working class Bohemians over the border into Taube, and that the local business leaders sure would appreciate it if someone were to stop this sapping of their workforce. Roskus connected the dots in his mind and, thinking he came up with the notion himself, decreed that the Whiteshirts would seal the border with Taube. Wesr commended his colleague on his bright idea, mentioning that it would probably help restore his family's standing with the muckety-mucks in southern Bohemia. This promise galvanized Roskus into taking action immediately, sending a memo to the garrisons on the Iennic border to block the roads before Wesr even left the office. Descending the steps into the lobby, a rare smile crossed Wesr's face.
---------------------------------------------
Tommy Knockery had been in the wind for months now. Keeping his head down, he had hopped from city to city, country to country, never staying in one place for too long. The light in his eyes was long gone, as were all of his friends. Lucky. Rose. Taube. All gone. But here he was, still roaming this mortal coil. Tommy had become even more gaunt, as he could hardly bring himself to eat. His days had become mechanical and rote. He'd spend most of his time in local bars, wracking up a tab he never intended to pay off. Sometimes his nights ended with a bar fight or a one night stand, but usually he'd be tossed out onto the street at the end of the night. He saw many of the great cities of the world as a vagrant, wallowing in their seedy underbelly. His clothes were in tatters, his hair had become shaggy and unkempt, and a patchy beard clung to his face. Tommy hardly believed in anything anymore, least of all the shiny idealism that inspired the Taube Revolution.
He was drowning his sorrows in a tavern in Port-au-Prince, at a dive reckoned to be the dingiest in all of Iennic Hispaniola, when he was approached by a beefy man with an eye-patch and many scars. Taking the open stool next to Tommy, he introduced himself as Ives Henri, a filibuster and soldier of fortune. Off of Tommy's disinterested grunt, Ives told him that he had a lucrative contract lined up. Tommy had caught Henri's attention with his military exploits in Taube, and Ives was willing to give Tommy a very generous cut of the payoff if he'd join their company. Tommy, having nothing better to do, inquired about the specifics of the job. Ives told him that he had been contracted by a group of concerned rice plantation owners in Thailand, a colony of the Scottian Commonwealth. A peasants' rebellion had broken out against the plantation owners in that part of the world, and the bosses wanted Ives Henri and his men to put it down by force. A year ago, Tommy Knockery would have repudiated this idea entirely, professing support for the oppressed agricultural workers in their liberationary struggle. But Tommy was not the man he was a year ago. Instead, Tommy knocked back the last of his drink and called for another. "Alrighty Ives. When do we leave?"
---------------------------------------------
Edward Toromas, the deposed ruler of Gettenfeld and the last of his name, presided over a grand parade in the central district of Cape Town. The assembed troops would march south to north, symbolizing the nation's commitment to march north and reclaim Edward's throne. It also symbolized Edward's decision to move his residence, and thus the capital, north to Pretoria, which he renamed Toromaia in his family's honor. Once settled in Toromaia, Edward began to review his country's situation. His eighteen regiments of infantry had been raised, and seven more were ordered. They were to be accompanied by three regiments of horse-mounted dragoons, one regiment of marines, a tank regiment, and a squadron of biplanes. By the year's end his ground forces would total 30 regiments, putting nearly 100,000 men under Edward's command. The racial tensions that strained the earlier regiments was somewhat mitigated when junior officer positions began to be filled by native soldiers, but the tension between the volunteers and conscripts still remained, and racial tensions between junior and senior officers began to brew.
The various mines Edward had opened were immensely profitable, giving Edward the funding he needed for his military expansion. He then poured thousands of tons of Bohemian concrete and steel to build up the nearly-nonexistent infrastructure in the country's hinterland, so as to facilitate the movement of diamonds, gold, and metals from the mines to the ports. The mostly European Toromist officers who had followed Edward to Africa were rewarded with lucrative business opportunities and vast tracts of land, becoming a racial aristocracy buttressed by obscene wealth. Grand villas began to dot the countryside, contrasted with the hastily constructed shanty towns that surrounded the mines. Diseases like cholera and typhoid fever ran rampant in the crowded hovels, cutting a deadly path of destruction that ravaged the native workers, but did not enter the gates of the European bosses. The workers felled by disease were quickly replaced by rural migrants and the mines continued to churn out their precious stones and metals day after day, the steep cost in blood notwithstanding.
Fifteen years had passed since the heady days of the Taube uprising. The revolutionary fervor had been quelled, but deep scars remained on the minds and bodies of Gettenfeld. The broken bodies of Tauben veterans lay prostrate in the dingy streets of Gettenfeld and Taube's cities, reduced to mendicancy like so many wounded soldiers before them. The Taube men, though no longer in the flower of their youth, represented the young guard of Gettenfeld's large community of dispossessed war wounded. Because they fought as an irregular force in a foreign civil conflict, the Taube men received no pension. The veterans on the Getten side of the border hardly fared better, as their pension was a pittance, barely enough to buy coal and bread, let alone the expensive medical care so many of them required. In dim alleyways and in the shadows of viaducts the young guard was joined by the old- the broken, aging bodies that build Gettenfeld up to her status as a great power. The Taubens were joined by veterans of the Arrian Intervention, The Troubles, the Panagoran Crisis, and peacekeeping duties in half a hundred places around the world. Though dwindling in numbers, some grey-whiskered veterans of the intervention into the Atravanian Civil War remained, and served as the de facto elders of this parallel society; marginalized though they lived in the beating heart of Gettenfeld.
On the surface, Taube had been a failure and the Getten Civil War wasted an ocean of blood for very little gain. Taube remains under Iennic rule, and today even has an air of normalcy. But the scarred walls and scarred people of Taube serve as a physical memory of the trauma this region suffered nearly a generation ago. New coats of paint and an economic boom distract her people from their pain, but material comforts do not erase the deep scars that still haunt this once sleepy Iennic hinterland.
The Getten Civil War of 1919-1920 was short, but sharp. Divided by factionalism, the numerous sides to this conflict achieved little in terms of strategic gains and grand offensives, but much blood was spilled nonetheless. Retribution became normalized, and escalated rapidly in the countryside. Vengeance for a slain son took another, then a whole family, then a whole village. To the surprise of outsiders, these blood feuds managed to remain along ideological divides and did not descend into ethnic or religious sectarianism. The true death toll of the Civil War cannot be accurately ascertained because, for some of those it cut the most, the War rages on still. The government prefers to publish, in the infrequent times it finds itself forced to acknowledge the Civil War at all, the much lower figure of battlefield casualties, which did not exceed ten thousand. This is deeply disingenuous, however, as the shape of the conflict that gripped Gettenfeld at the turn of the decade was less of a war, and more of a web of interconnected blood feuds, pogroms, massacres, and bouts of localized violence.
In its aftermath, the ruling dynasty was replaced and the economy underwent a massive restructuring. Although on a purely aesthetic level almost nothing had changed- Gettenfeld remained a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary legislature- the fundamental relationship between the masses and Power had been transfigured. The political meta-narrative of the century preceding the Civil War was one of the ascendant mostly-liberal bourgeois securing more and more concessions from the declining mostly-reactionary aristocracy. The system legitimized itself as the realization of Whig historiography, an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment. This narrative, however, denied historical agency to the laboring masses of Gettenfeld, who often did not see the fruits of these gains. The liberty the liberals sought was primarily economic so, while crumbs of political freedom might filter down to the masses, this liberty mostly took the form of decreased safety regulations and lesser government protections for labor. The Civil War swept away the last vestiges of aristocratic political influence, and demolished the political power of the bourgeois. This void of power was filled by the mass organizations of the organized working class. The economic power of the bourgeois was smashed as well, with massive programs of collectivization pursued across major sectors of the economy all across the nation. In the aftermath of the erection of the CES, many pauperized bourgeois emigrated to South Africa, which remained in the iron grip of Edward Toromas.
The Getten dependency of Bohemia entered the 1920's under the fascist government of the Necare, headed by George Wesr and Vidha Roskus. This unequal partnership- Wesr was always the one with more power- persisted until 1928, when George Wesr suffered a minor stroke. Wesr survived, but during his convalescence Roskus seized sole power in a bloodless palace coup. This move was transparently out of character for the obsequious and sycophantic Roskus, and the involvement of Getten intelligence agents was correctly suspected. George Wesr and his inner circle fled to South Africa, where the Toromist government warmly welcomed them. Vidha Roskus rapidly purged any remaining pro-Wesr elements from the bureaucracy with the help of foreign intelligence agents, and declared an indefinite period of martial law in Bohemia due to the continuing threat of "Wesrite subversives." Just as quickly as he cemented his power, Vidha Roskus' demeanor had been transformed. Roskus had restored the honor of his family name, besmirched by his father so many years ago in the lonely passes of the Hindu Kush. Vidha now held himself with the proud military-aristocratic bearing befitting his class, and acted more decisively as well. The cowardice of years past had been conquered. The new Vidha Roskus was a bold man of action, but also one who had been quietly learning George Wesr's weaselly tricks during all of their years of uneasy collaboration.
After securing power, Roskus reached out to the Getten government to normalize relations. Progress was slow at first, but eventually Roskus negotiated the 1930 Decade Accords, in which he and the Whiteshirts would remain in power in Bohemia so long as they accepted greater economic integration with Gettenfeld and formally returned to the Getten sphere of influence. This was a major diplomatic victory for the new Bohemian leader, and he used his newfound external security to focus on weeding out internal dissent. Roskus worked to clean up the image of the Whiteshirts in the first half of the 1930's, remolding them from roving bands of street thugs to a disciplined national gendarme corps. The Necare were officially removed from sole power in favor of a multi-party National Coalition. However, all the most powerful posts in the NatCol were occupied by Necare men. The remaining members of the NatCol represented an array of right-wing parties, but were essentially political set dressing. Vidha Roskus was elected as Generalissimo of the Whiteshirts, Chairman of the NatCol, and Minister of the Interior, giving him unrivaled political power. Though he was not the official leader of Bohemia on paper, Roskus was the defacto autocrat of the territory. The Roskus situation was not one the Getten government was particularly happy about or keen on supporting, but they much preferred Roskus' rule to Wesr's or, even worse, a costly and long reconstruction period.
George Wesr was blindsided by Roskus' coup, and fled in disarray with his family and closest allies to South Africa. He was accepted by Edward Toromas, Getten King-In-Exile, into the civil service, where his faculties as an administrator advanced his position at lightning speed. After seven years of dedicated service, Edward Toromas appointed Wesr as Prime Minister of South Africa in 1935. Wesr personally found the apartheid system Toromas had set up to be crude and distasteful, but he was seduced by the lucrative profits of the diamond trade. The extraction of precious metals was ramped up further and, as money poured into his purse as he acquired a financial stake in the mines, Wesr forgot all about his opposition to the near-slavery conditions that kept his profit margin high. Wesr increased the budget of Edward's armed forces, investing in a new and modern air force and expanding the Toromist Navy beyond the 20+ year old vessels of the mutineers. Wesr focused his greatest attention of all on building infrastructure in the hinterland. While it did provide greater mobility for rural subjects, the primary purpose of the new rail lines, roads, and canals was the facilitate the transport of raw materials to the ports for the profits of the Toromist elite. George Wesr came to South Africa a weaselly, backstabbing fascist but somehow managed to become even more morally depraved by wholeheartedly embracing the racist apartheid system of the Toromists.
Iescech, Morocco mole, and Scottian Commonwealth
Gettenfeld, Iescech, Morocco mole, and Saurisa
So glad you're still with us.
Sappier than a pine tree
Gettenfeld, Morocco mole, Saurisa, and Neutrality Foundation
Brocklandia, Gettenfeld, Iescech, and Saurisa
Brocklandia, Iescech, Morocco mole, and Neutrality Foundation
Brocklandia and Morocco mole
Loud speakers crackle to life
Cesaela, Aeginen! Hello, Agorans!
A snap election called by a lowly intern at the Agoran Election Commission has begun for AP!
Essiodame! Thank you!
Loudspeakers sharply turn off
Brocklandia, Gettenfeld, Morocco mole, Janisport, and 1 otherSaurisa
As our region's tender-hearted and apolitical mayor, I vote Mole...
Brocklandia, Gettenfeld, Morocco mole, Saurisa, and 1 otherNeutrality Foundation
Brocklandia, Gettenfeld, Saint Olav, and Saurisa
Fifteen years had passed since the heady days of the Taube uprising. The revolutionary fervor had been quelled, but deep scars remained on the minds and bodies of Gettenfeld. The broken bodies of Tauben veterans lay prostrate in the dingy streets of Gettenfeld and Taube's cities, reduced to mendicancy like so many wounded soldiers before them. The Taube men, though no longer in the flower of their youth, represented the young guard of Gettenfeld's large community of dispossessed war wounded. Because they fought as an irregular force in a foreign civil conflict, the Taube men received no pension. The veterans on the Getten side of the border hardly fared better, as their pension was a pittance, barely enough to buy coal and bread, let alone the expensive medical care so many of them required. In dim alleyways and in the shadows of viaducts the young guard was joined by the old- the broken, aging bodies that build Gettenfeld up to her status as a great power. The Taubens were joined by veterans of the Arrian Intervention, The Troubles, the Panagoran Crisis, and peacekeeping duties in half a hundred places around the world. Though dwindling in numbers, some grey-whiskered veterans of the intervention into the Atravanian Civil War remained, and served as the de facto elders of this parallel society; marginalized though they lived in the beating heart of Gettenfeld.
On the surface, Taube had been a failure and the Getten Civil War wasted an ocean of blood for very little gain. Taube remains under Iennic rule, and today even has an air of normalcy. But the scarred walls and scarred people of Taube serve as a physical memory of the trauma this region suffered nearly a generation ago. New coats of paint and an economic boom distract her people from their pain, but material comforts do not erase the deep scars that still haunt this once sleepy Iennic hinterland.
The Getten Civil War of 1919-1920 was short, but sharp. Divided by factionalism, the numerous sides to this conflict achieved little in terms of strategic gains and grand offensives, but much blood was spilled nonetheless. Retribution became normalized, and escalated rapidly in the countryside. Vengeance for a slain son took another, then a whole family, then a whole village. To the surprise of outsiders, these blood feuds managed to remain along ideological divides and did not descend into ethnic or religious sectarianism. The true death toll of the Civil War cannot be accurately ascertained because, for some of those it cut the most, the War rages on still. The government prefers to publish, in the infrequent times it finds itself forced to acknowledge the Civil War at all, the much lower figure of battlefield casualties, which did not exceed ten thousand. This is deeply disingenuous, however, as the shape of the conflict that gripped Gettenfeld at the turn of the decade was less of a war, and more of a web of interconnected blood feuds, pogroms, massacres, and bouts of localized violence.
In its aftermath, the ruling dynasty was replaced and the economy underwent a massive restructuring. Although on a purely aesthetic level almost nothing had changed- Gettenfeld remained a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary legislature- the fundamental relationship between the masses and Power had been transfigured. The political meta-narrative of the century preceding the Civil War was one of the ascendant mostly-liberal bourgeois securing more and more concessions from the declining mostly-reactionary aristocracy. The system legitimized itself as the realization of Whig historiography, an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment. This narrative, however, denied historical agency to the laboring masses of Gettenfeld, who often did not see the fruits of these gains. The liberty the liberals sought was primarily economic so, while crumbs of political freedom might filter down to the masses, this liberty mostly took the form of decreased safety regulations and lesser government protections for labor. The Civil War swept away the last vestiges of aristocratic political influence, and demolished the political power of the bourgeois. This void of power was filled by the mass organizations of the organized working class. The economic power of the bourgeois was smashed as well, with massive programs of collectivization pursued across major sectors of the economy all across the nation. In the aftermath of the erection of the CES, many pauperized bourgeois emigrated to South Africa, which remained in the iron grip of Edward Toromas.
The Getten dependency of Bohemia entered the 1920's under the fascist government of the Necare, headed by George Wesr and Vidha Roskus. This unequal partnership- Wesr was always the one with more power- persisted until 1928, when George Wesr suffered a minor stroke. Wesr survived, but during his convalescence Roskus seized sole power in a bloodless palace coup. This move was transparently out of character for the obsequious and sycophantic Roskus, and the involvement of Getten intelligence agents was correctly suspected. George Wesr and his inner circle fled to South Africa, where the Toromist government warmly welcomed them. Vidha Roskus rapidly purged any remaining pro-Wesr elements from the bureaucracy with the help of foreign intelligence agents, and declared an indefinite period of martial law in Bohemia due to the continuing threat of "Wesrite subversives." Just as quickly as he cemented his power, Vidha Roskus' demeanor had been transformed. Roskus had restored the honor of his family name, besmirched by his father so many years ago in the lonely passes of the Hindu Kush. Vidha now held himself with the proud military-aristocratic bearing befitting his class, and acted more decisively as well. The cowardice of years past had been conquered. The new Vidha Roskus was a bold man of action, but also one who had been quietly learning George Wesr's weaselly tricks during all of their years of uneasy collaboration.
After securing power, Roskus reached out to the Getten government to normalize relations. Progress was slow at first, but eventually Roskus negotiated the 1930 Decade Accords, in which he and the Whiteshirts would remain in power in Bohemia so long as they accepted greater economic integration with Gettenfeld and formally returned to the Getten sphere of influence. This was a major diplomatic victory for the new Bohemian leader, and he used his newfound external security to focus on weeding out internal dissent. Roskus worked to clean up the image of the Whiteshirts in the first half of the 1930's, remolding them from roving bands of street thugs to a disciplined national gendarme corps. The Necare were officially removed from sole power in favor of a multi-party National Coalition. However, all the most powerful posts in the NatCol were occupied by Necare men. The remaining members of the NatCol represented an array of right-wing parties, but were essentially political set dressing. Vidha Roskus was elected as Generalissimo of the Whiteshirts, Chairman of the NatCol, and Minister of the Interior, giving him unrivaled political power. Though he was not the official leader of Bohemia on paper, Roskus was the defacto autocrat of the territory. The Roskus situation was not one the Getten government was particularly happy about or keen on supporting, but they much preferred Roskus' rule to Wesr's or, even worse, a costly and long reconstruction period.
George Wesr was blindsided by Roskus' coup, and fled in disarray with his family and closest allies to South Africa. He was accepted by Edward Toromas, Getten King-In-Exile, into the civil service, where his faculties as an administrator advanced his position at lightning speed. After seven years of dedicated service, Edward Toromas appointed Wesr as Prime Minister of South Africa in 1935. Wesr personally found the apartheid system Toromas had set up to be crude and distasteful, but he was seduced by the lucrative profits of the diamond trade. The extraction of precious metals was ramped up further and, as money poured into his purse as he acquired a financial stake in the mines, Wesr forgot all about his opposition to the near-slavery conditions that kept his profit margin high. Wesr increased the budget of Edward's armed forces, investing in a new and modern air force and expanding the Toromist Navy beyond the 20+ year old vessels of the mutineers. Wesr focused his greatest attention of all on building infrastructure in the hinterland. While it did provide greater mobility for rural subjects, the primary purpose of the new rail lines, roads, and canals was the facilitate the transport of raw materials to the ports for the profits of the Toromist elite. George Wesr came to South Africa a weaselly, backstabbing fascist but somehow managed to become even more morally depraved by wholeheartedly embracing the racist apartheid system of the Toromists.
One of the provisions of Act 30 is the creation of a transnational and intercontinental railroad system that was connect the farthest reaches of Iescech and the edges of Gettenfeld. Part of that railway network would be a central convergence point at the border of the two nations, naturally in the province of Taube. This construction would require an immense amount of capital and buy-in from all corner of the nation, dipping into the nation’s coffers partially drained from the long fighting. But as promised, it caused an economic boom in Taube.
Some Getten refugees from the Getten Civil War had fled across the border into Taube or made a more perilous journey across the Adriatic Sea to the shores of Rocha and Naphellene. The numbers were small, estimated to be under 10,000 in total. However small the numbers, the already small villages of Rocha and Naphellene were unable to deal with any number of immigrants, although their cultures shared a great deal in common. Some Getten refugees found happy homes in the villages of the Italian peninsula, while others had to go further, some into the large cities, and some still, farther west into Iescech, or south across the Mediterranean into the deserts of Maghreb.
Bohemian refugees were few and far between since the sealing of borders on the Bohemian side. The occasional mendicant would find himself on the other side of the border, but other than a few minor encounters with inebriated folks, the past numbers of Bohemians crossing the border into Taube were forgotten. However, the ones who did cross over from over a decade ago found themselves in the fringes of society, untrusted by Taubians who were just trying to scrap together their lives. As for the matter of the Bohemian government itself, members of the Iennic government expressed their private concerns to the Vestiarch that the renewal of relations between Gettenfeld and Bohemia could lead to "unprecedented future events". The Vestiarch, while concerned, did not see a proper response to the events unfolding in Bohemia. However, she did send a secret envoy on the ship that George Wesr boarded to South Africa to keep tabs on him.
What? People from outside the region can't vote in the poll? How'm I supposed to interfere in the election results if you've observed basic security protocols and kept people like me out?
Gettenfeld, Iescech, Morocco mole, and Janisport
Brocklandia, Gettenfeld, Iescech, and Janisport
Brocklandia, Gettenfeld, and Morocco mole
Yeah, well, a minor problem. *Shakes the leg shackle and chain that prevents him from leaving the Bar*
Donchaknow I'm supposed to be able to have my cake and eat it too?--Says so right in the Agora constitution, on the back of the last page, the part handwritten in black Sharpie. Yep, distinctly says "Brocklandia" and "cake" in the same clause.
No, no, don't go wasting time trying to identify the handwriting. The commitment's already in the constitution, so you have to honor it. But, I might be willing to accept a donation of pie instead.
«12. . .1,4231,4241,4251,4261,4271,4281,429. . .1,5071,508»
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