Imperium Offtopicum: The Aftermath

Marian fall heralds 'end of an era'

MALABO: It was the last surviving leader of the "bloc period", and now the Marian Republic takes its place alongside the New England Alliance and the Empire of the Rising Sun as a historical memory. The triple-continent nation officially dissolved earlier this week, outlasting its old foe Japan by mere days.

With the nuclear attack that plunged the government into disarray, and the subsequent retaliation that led to a near-global declaration of war against the state, the chances of Marian survival were minuscule. How cruelly ironic, then, that it was one of the post-war participants that looked best set to recover: its lush Congolese colony landed it enviable status, and in spite of early trepidation by its neighbours, it facilitated local international agreements that looked to secure it a new alliance.

But in the wake of the Japanese atomic bombing, the Marians blacklisted themselves with a nuclear strike against Petrograd, one of the two members of the so-called Alliance for Nuclear Non-Proliferation. The international response was immediate: even its closest friends rallied behind a United Nations proposition calling for the invasion of the Republic and the arrest of President Sombra de Mar. Rather than bleed further, the Marians folded, openly surrendering to neighbour states, and splintering into new nations in South America.

The Marian Republic was best known as the de facto leader of the European alliances of ANTIEDO and GUN, holding a longstanding belligerence with the New England Alliance and the Empire of the Rising Sun that eventually exploded into the world war that left the planet horribly scarred. The Marians are also commonly held responsible for the emergence of the Kaetif as a result of genetic experimentation carried over from the annexation of the Neo Incan Empire.

Marian history was generally one of a democratic, if idealistically-driven nation, but the Operarius and Sombra régimes were hallmarked by rampant nationalism and dictatorial concentration of power. Sombra was repeatedly accused of advancing Kaetif interests at the direct expense of humans, and Petrograd had been in the process of preparing formal charges of human rights abuses before the war broke out. Sombra, believed to be alive, is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the international community.