Autumn of Nations

J.K. Stockholme · Feb 18, 2023

OLD NEWS

Spoiler Democracy in Oz :

Spoiler 2010 :

Democracy in Oz (Regional Australia Front):
New Events:

Europe: rolled a 7, failure. -1 FP for democracy evangelizing

The racist right-wing one-party regime in Australia consolidated its grip on power this year by absorbing and diffusing a wave of pro-democracy agitation. Australia’s part in the global saga centred on a fight over succession plans for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Murdoch is 79, and when he dies, control of the world’s largest right-wing news empire will fall to one of his two sons, the first born Lachlan who has long been a proponent of politically diversifying News Corp, and the second born, James, who is a steadfast rightist. This year appeared at first like a victory for Lachlan when the elder Murdoch agreed, at the request of European conservatives, to expand News Corp to the European Union, an infospace where News Corp might have to moderate its messaging to acquire readers. Lachlan was made head of the expansion efforts and was tipped to be Murdoch’s successor - until James Murdoch caught wind of a concerted European Union influence campaign against Australia that even had News Corp itself as an intended target. In a dynastic intrigue reminiscent of pre-1991 American television, James gave the go-ahead to a discrete investigation of an EU training program for young liberals. An investigative journalist flew to western Europe and witnessed the EU directly training dozens of young Australian liberals in the art of regime change, protest, and democratic organizing. Waiting for the right moment, the story was left on the shelf by James until summer, when pro-democracy protests picked up momentum in Australia and Lachlan fell for the trap and tried to liberalize News Corp’s messaging in the EU market. After breaking the EU training program story, Australian public opinion turned sharply against the democracy protesters, with News Corp’s Australian ventures publishing successfully dominating their home infospace. The degree of News Corp knowledge of EU efforts have led some to suggest that News Corp is doing something more than just investigative journalism, perhaps even illegal phone hacking - though this is mere speculation. The elder Murdoch demoted Lachlan and promoted James, likely insulating News Corp, and Australia at-large, from the influence of liberalism for perhaps another generation. Moreover, with Lachlan at the helm, News Corp’s focus in western Europe will not be to gain market share as fast as possible but to maintain a steady flow of right-wing messages, abetting nationalist and conservative forces in the European Union.
Changes:

new World Fact: News Corp is institutionally insulated from liberal-democratic capture and has almost complete dominance of the Australian infospace
new World Fact: News Corp is growing its audience in the European Union and maintaining a strongly right-wing perspective in its coverage
Europe gains 1 XP for rolling a fail

Trajectory: By 2013 the European Union will gain 1 Collapse Point for the “nationalism” long-term Stress Front.

Spoiler Body Count :

Spoiler African Copper Belt :

Spoiler Indian Tensions :

Spoiler 2010 :

Indian Tensions (Regional India-Hindustan-Bengal Front):
New Events:

India & Argentina: rolled 18.8, soft success. +1 for brinkmanship

The international community was given yet another nuclear threat to worry about this year as India and Hindustan engaged in the worst escalatory spiral since the Cold War. The crisis began when the University of Buenos Aires published satellite and seismic data suggesting Hindustan has been secretly testing nuclear weapons in underground facilities. Although Hindustan denied the accusation, India asserted the findings were legitimate and grounds for new sanctions, targeting Hindustani migrant remittances and key imports via dissuading multinational corporations from doing business in Hindustan. Responding to India’s economic escalation, Hindustan issued the largest recall of migrant workers they had ever done in response to new Indian actions. Although migrants often escape Hindustan by becoming migrant workers in India, the vast majority of Hindustani migrants remain tied to their home country through family whom the Hindustani government can threaten as leverage - and thus a massive exodus of workers left India this year on the Hindustani government’s orders. Though the 2010 economic war hurts both countries, it has done so asymmetrically, with the larger share of damage done to the isolated and underdeveloped Hindustani economy and some indications of widespread food shortages. Thus the escalatory spiral spilled over into other domains. An Indian military vessel was sunk at sea, leaving 40 sailors dead - the Indian government claimed Hindustan had torpedoed it. India shot down a Hindustani fighter plane that India claimed had trespassed into their airspace, which was followed up the next day by a Hindustani artillery barrage against sparsely populated villages in the Great Rann of Kutch. Then in fall the story took an interesting turn as Hindustan declared it had caught traitors in its party, agents of Argentina (of all places) who were trying to overthrow the regime. The accused mid-ranking party politicians were publicly executed on live Hindustani television. The story would have been ignored as bizarre propaganda had Hindustan not, after the executions, presented an Argentine national of Hindustani descent who was later verified as a member of the Argentine intelligence community. The Argentinian remains in Hindustani custody until an agreement can be brokered with Argentina - but the public evidence is now strong that Argentina is trying cultivate ties to “technocratic” communists, which has been viewed unfavourably by some technocracies, such as New England, Mexico, and Iberia, where Hindustan is viewed as a communist enemy to be destroyed. Whatever the public relations effects of the Argentine angle or the economic effects for India, the escalations of 2010 are only beginning, and the threat to Hindustan’s communist hardliners appears genuine for the first time in at least two decades.
Changes:

new World Fact: India and Hindustan are engaged in a trade and economic war involving a vast exodus of Hindustani migrant workers from India back to Hindustan

Trajectory: Hindustan’s government will suffer a decisive coup by technocratic opponents of the hardline government in 2013, handing over control of the Hindustani Army Power Centre to Argentina. These technocrats will stop remittance flows and liberalize the domestic economy, reducing Indian leverage. Argentina will also suffer a reputational World Fact among anticommunist technocracies from an association with a nominally communist government.

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Chaos Journalism :

Spoiler 2010 :

Spoiler 2006 :

Chaos Journalism (Eurasia Short-Term Stress):
New Events:

Long-Term Stress “inflexibility and corruption” Collapses (8 out of 8 Collapses Points)

Eurasia’s most respected broadcaster, Eurasia Today (ET), went rogue this year, delivering news that was profoundly uncomfortable for the government for a few months, before the broadcaster was “temporarily” shut down and some of its staff arrested for spreading “misinformation,” others having fled to independent Siberia. ET was the brainchild of several oligarchs and the nascent strongmen who were just establishing their rule in Eurasia in the 1990s - they wanted a news service that would be respected even in western countries, and could present a Eurasian worldview that was also factually accurate. Inadvertently, ET’s backers had too successfully cultivated a culture of honest reporting, creating a news organization that was inevitably bound to buckle under the impossible tension of promoting state narratives and also doing journalism with integrity. Elvira Galliamova’s death proved to be the breaking point, with ET’s journalists covering the Revolt of Small Numbers on television, radio, and print, spreading far and wide the neglect of minorities to the wider Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish publics. The critical reporting expanded to all manner of other complaints even among Russians, from cases of corruption or state inflexibility and indifference, ballooning over summer and early autumn before finally the state intervened forcefully, raiding ET’s offices and shutting the broadcaster down for the rest of the year. This didn’t stop the intrepid journalists however, who, it turns out, had planned for this eventuality, with underground press and media operations that took their place, spreading post-communist samizdats through illegal Russian publishing networks, as well as on the internet. This “chaos journalism,” as the state has billed it, was also helped along by Siberia, where Garry Kasparov and members of the Sakharov Centre have integrated many of the fleeing ET journalists into Radio Free Eurasia, a broadcaster and internet news media non-profit with the explicit goal of bringing true democracy to Eurasia. It seems that cracking down on ET has only opened the floodgates, with its journalists now unbridled by the threat of censorship and publicly committed democratic regime change. Unless the national narrative can be brought back under control, Eurasia’s Russians may join the Small Numbered Peoples in protest for reform and perhaps even truly free elections.
Changes:

Eurasia suffers a penalty from having 4 simultaneous Stresses: -4 Administrative Proficiency, -Legitimation Capability

Rules: If this Stress is not resolved before it collapses, it will transform into a long-term Stress. Resolution of this Stress can be indirect (i.e. as a secondary consequence of an Action on a semi-related but distinct Front) or direct (i.e. making a Front specifically targeting this issue).

Spoiler Eagles of Saladin :

Spoiler 2010 :

Spoiler 2009 :

Eagles of Saladin (Regional Babylon Front):
New Events:

Eurasia: rolled 20.4, full success. +2 FP for supplying the Eagles of Saladin

Egypt has been rocked by a series of assassinations and terror attacks against Babylonian officials and military posts this year that have culminated in an Egypt-wide armed struggle for independence. In a grainy video spread online early in the year, the shadowy cabal of ex-Nasserist officers, known as the Eagles of Saladin, claimed responsibility for recent attacks and ominously promised Egyptians that their part to play in the liberation of Egypt would come soon. The Eagles’ attacks displayed their excellent military training and deep infiltration of the Babylonian intelligence services, killing only one Egyptian civilian throughout a dozen attacks. More concerningly, the attacks this year demonstrated their possession of a number of new weapon systems, some considerably more modern than the army leftovers the Eagles’ were thought to have stashed in the weeks prior to Babylonian victory over Egypt in the 1990s. Moreover the attacks strategically targeted Babylon’s most important agents and officials aware of events on the ground. Babylon, left mostly blind to what was really happening in Egypt, was therefore caught off-guard when numerous districts of urban areas up and down the Nile started reporting unidentified militias were simply seizing the streets and routing Babylonian security forces. Babylon’s Egyptian occupation officials mobilized the police and local army units to rescue these districts - only to get their forces slaughtered in the thousands, caught in urban death traps. Babylonian helicopters and tanks were even destroyed by rocket launchers that could only have come from a foreign power. By December, the Eagles posted videos online that declared themselves the legitimate rulers of Egypt and a continuity of government with the old Nasserist regime. Babylon is now mired in yet another conflict, one which may see them lose the crowning achievement of their many conquests.
Changes:

when this Front succeeds, the Babylon Stress “Eagles of Saladin” will have additional stakes for Babylon, namely the potential loss of Egypt, the loss of the counter-intel capability, and the loss of 2 Espionage Proficiency points, should the Stress Collapse a second time (the time after next turn)

Trajectory: By the end of next year (2010) the Eagles of Saladin will be fully underway in an open and popular armed conflict in Egypt and the Eagles of Saladin Long-Term Stress will gain 4 Collapse Points (i.e. it will have only 4 Collapse Points left before Collapsing again). The Eagles of Saladin Stress will Collapse again in 2014, whereupon Egypt will be an independent country, and Bayblon will lose their counter-intel Capability and 2 Proficiency Points from Espionage permanently - these will be transferred to a Power Centre in Egypt called the Eagles of Saladin that will be controlled by Eurasia.

Spoiler 2006 :

Eagles of Saladin (Babylon Short-Term Stress):
New Events:

Long-Term Stress “Egyptian Islamism” Collapses (8 out of 8 Collapses Points)

Among Saddam’s conquests, Egypt is the thorniest. Half of the population of Babylon live in Egypt, packing 68 million people in a dense, almost ungovernable megalopolis stretching up and down the Nile. Half a century of pan-Arab Nasserist propaganda has cultivated an Arab-Egyptian identity practically defined by opposition to neo-Babylonianism. Moreover, before its conquest, Egypt was a stratocracy - the vast majority of the economy, from construction to real estate to industry and more - was directly owned and operated by the armed forces. Despite formally disbanding Egypt’s rabidly nationalist military after their subjugation, Egypt’s officers and soldiers were so thoroughly enmeshed across the economy that nothing short of an economic meltdown could displace them. Moreover, in the last months of the Egyptian War, the military destroyed hundreds of thousands of service records and transferred firearm stockpiles to the rank-and-file in anticipation of a prolonged resistance to Babylon. These officers and soldiers have remained socially, economically, and politically connected to each other through legal economic arrangements as well as illegal separatist organizations. These groups contrast with the Muslim Brotherhood’s mass appeal and religious fervour, instead occupying positions of power in plain sight. Many of these secret societies exist, from the Arab Salvation Army or the Egyptian Patriotic Movement, but one more than any other concerns Babylonian administrators of occupied Egypt: the Eagles of Saladin. A shadowy conspiracy of ex-Egyptian army officers, airmen, soldiers, policemen, and security forces, the Eagles of Saladin are believed to have well-hidden agents across every strata of Egyptian society. This year, Egypt was rocked by an unusual assassination - one of Babylon’s top Egyptian administrators was killed by a poisoned drink, with the only possible culprits presumed to be members of the Mushussu itself. If it's true that the Eagles of Saladin have agents within the Mushussu, this could spell the beginning of a much more damaging rot in the Babylonian state, portending a corruption that would extend well beyond Egypt.
Rules: If this Stress is not resolved before it collapses, it will transform into a long-term Stress. Resolution of this Stress can be indirect (i.e. as a secondary consequence of an Action on a semi-related but distinct Front) or direct (i.e. making a Front specifically targeting this issue).

Spoiler Islamism & Jihadism :

Spoiler 2010 :

Spoiler 2003 :

Spoiler 2002 :

Islamism & Jihadism (Super Worldwide Social Control/Espionage Front):
New Actions:

Argentina: rolled 5, failure. -1 FP for social science efforts representing Regress

The bizarre story of two Argentine academics arrested while visiting Babylonian Egypt helped journalists uncover a seemingly innocuous Argentine charm offensive carried out across the Islamic world this year. The pair were allegedly on sabbatical and visiting friends at Cairo University, but were arrested by police who rounded up a dozen other instructors and students, some with confirmed links to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Argentinians, it turns out, were indeed academics, but were also under orders from the Argentine state to persuade Islamic scholars of a synthetic Islamic-technocratic model of social theory. Although Babylonian intelligence was on high alert for Islamists this year in unrelated events, the academics were also just plainly untrained in the art of international intrigue. From the moment they landed at the airport the academics aroused suspicions with the Babylonian secret police who tapped their calls, followed them to their meeting, arrested them and their co-conspirators, and interrogated out the details of the wider plot. The academics were extradited back to Argentina, but only after a spate of arrests on campuses across Babylon, Libya, Kush, and Persia. Though barely denting the wider Islamist movement, the potential technocratic turn has been pretty well snuffed out. The ivory tower overtures are believed to have failed more or less anywhere they went even outside the neo-traditionalist regimes, with local professors showing disdain at Argentine Catholics and atheists bringing in ideas that were seen as too religious (Afghanistan), not religious enough (Bengal), or just antithetical to pre-existing ideological ethos of the academic and student bodies (Oman).
Changes:

new World Fact: the great majority of technocratic Islamic thinkers are imprisoned in Babylon, Libya, Kush, and Persia

Trajectory: Technocratic Islamist ideas will wither away while their believers rot in jails; other strains of moderate Islam takeover in their stead, making technocratic Islam a historic footnote in less than a decade (2009). Argentina will receive 1 XP for failing this Front.

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Equatorial War :

Spoiler Metapolitefsi :

Spoiler 2010 :

Metapolitefsi (Middle Greece Front): Greece’s political future is wide open in the wake of its dictator’s death. Georgios Papadopoulos began his rule in a military coup in 1960, widely assumed to have CIA approval. Greece was a centrepiece of the Cold War, with the Iron Curtain to its north, Soviet and Yugoslav-backed KKE guerrillas waging a low-level conflict internally, and the United States navy ever present in its ports. Papadopoulos was never bold enough to pursue Greek territorial ambitions against Turkey, nor competent enough to quash the KKE, which transitioned into a Suzukian outfit after the Autumn of Nations. He was however, great at muddling along, preserving both the internal conflict as well as Greece’s nineteenth century territorial claims into the twenty-first century. The death of Papadopoulos this year has sparked disorganized protests demanding some kind of change from the status quo, mixing anti-authoritarian grievances, resentment over economic stagnation since the departure of American forces in 1991, and also nationalism bitterly defensive of Eurasia’s valiant struggle in its motherland against the scourge of Babylon (who is notably now the new puppet master over Greek territorial claims across the Aegean). A highly likely outcome of this instability is the reassertion of dictatorship under one of the military leaders. Greece’s top admiral has already shown himself the leading contender in this race, showboating after a non-lethal exchange of fire between Greek and Ottoman ships in the Aegean this summer. The admiral claims Ottoman ships violated Greek waters, something the Ottomans deny and claim is exactly the reverse of what happened. With Babylon tied up in a continental showdown, and the Ottomans a weak shadow of the threat that Turkey once posed, the Greek military establishment is likely to see a war against the Ottomans as a way to rally people around the flag and drown out complaints against their continued rule. Another pair of plausible outcomes might see the Greek military regime finally come to an end, either voluntarily stepping aside and allowing elections, or with forceful persuasion by a renewed attack from the KKE. The KKE, after decades of futile war, have for a little while now limited their demands to peace negotiation terms, such as that they be included in government, something they reasserted again this year, alongside demands for unconditional amnesty and an indefinite right for them to maintain their militias in-case the government should backtrack. Many Greeks oppose peace with the KKE, including the rank-and-file and lower level officers of the Hellenic Merchant Marine, who sided with vaguely pro-democratic protests and might be seen by the junta as a more acceptable force to keep the military establishment in power even after democratization. Finally there’s King Constantine II, who for decades has bid his time and kept quiet as a figurehead - this has earned him a great deal of legitimacy, as he’s never been blamed for Greece’s problems, instead serving a vessel into which Greeks imagine whatever they prefer he be to them. The reality of Constantine II is known in intelligence circles - he’s long hoped that Babylon would offer an olive branch and help him restore his ancient mandate from god to lead the Greeks as absolute sovereign. Greece is in a brief moment of uncertainty where Metapolitefsi, or regime change, is well within the realm of possibility - will it come to pass?
Rules: Progress and Regress represents the top two rolling sides who attempt to consolidate a government Faction. Collapse of this Front will trigger a d6 roll to determine which ideology takes power and whether war with the Ottomans breaks out. Results on a d6 roll are as follows: (1 or 2) Greek ultranationalists remain in-power and declare war on the Ottomans, (3) Greek military establishment transition to democracy, excluding the KKE, by boosting popular leaders in the Hellenic Merchant Marine to democratic power, (4) King Constantine coups the government with backing of a conspiracy of mid-level colonels, (5-6) the KKE’s renewed attacks fracture the military and propel them to popularity in the country’s first elections, solidifying a Suzukian dominated quasi-democratic state. These outcomes are of course subject to change if the underlying fiction changes in Greece or among its neighbours.
Rewards: fate of Greece

Spoiler Natural Disasters :

Spoiler 2010 :

Spoiler 2005 :

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Warming Trend :

Spoiler 2010 :

Spoiler 2004 :

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler The Rise of Azania :

Spoiler 2010 :

The Rise of Azania (Regional Azania Front): Azania’s troubles did not end after the revolution. Although Nelson Mandela and his guerrilla force slash political party of pan-African socialists destroyed apartheid in a people’s war against United States forces, their triumph turned into tragedy when their own policy of land redistribution from whites to blacks in the 1990s caused a famine. Despite this, Azania is a nation of great potential - a vast nationalized mining industry, more industrial capacity than the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa combined, more than 70 million people, and the proprietor of one of the world’s few nuclear weapons programs. Since the 1990s Mandela has tempered the party’s socialism, though he has also become older and frailer, unable to stop polarization among Azania’s elites along environmentalist and Rainbow socialist lines. The radical ecological socialists point out that Africa in-general and Azania in-particular suffer from environmental problems innate to capitalism, from Sahelian droughts to the loss of Lake Chad to destruction of the Congo rainforest to increasing loss of the Veldt biome in Azania itself. They see East Asia as a role model of environmental stewardship and multinationalism uniquely suited to Azania’s situation. The Rainbow socialists meanwhile highlight lack of productive forces and insufficient focus on social inequity as key drivers of Africa’s and Azania’s problems. The Rainbow socialist argue that ethnic animosity still exists between peoples in Africa and Azania, and only through social justice, as well as growth that may come at some environmental cost, can Azania become a regional and perhaps even global leader. The increasingly rudderless Mandela dictatorship and fracturing of the elites has allowed power to concentrate outside of the country’s only legal political party. White supremacist militias still hold onto limited white-majority territories throughout the country, acting out terror from time to time against the government. There are rumours of at least one particularly ruthless party leader who may have delusions of grandeur who, if backed, could lead the country down the path of Peru. Another such rumour exists for the King of the abaThembu people who participated in anti-colonial war as a guerrilla leader and has been known to mix monarchism and socialism in his writings and speeches, likely only tolerated due to his status as a war hero and as Xhosa royalty. Finally there are the younger generation of party members who lean towards the technocratic inclinations of socialism. These elements remain small compared to the big two factions of course. This leaves Azania with a choice: who will succeed Mandela, and will they overcome the country’s gridlock to claim Azania’s place among the Great Powers?
Changes:

defunct government Faction: pan-African socialist revolutionaries
new government Faction: pan-African Rainbow socialists
new government Faction: pan-African eco-socialists

Rules: the country’s pink and teal factions are by-default Progress and Regress; for another ideology to win this Front, it will have to separately build-up that faction to the same level of power in a separate Front before supplanting one of the main two factions
Rewards: a Great Power of your ideological flavour

Spoiler The Reaction :

Spoiler 2010 :

The Reaction (Special Front): The ideological pendulum swings back, then forth. The global liberal turn of the 2000s has hit a high watermark as of 2010, and although it will take years, the backlash will set in eventually. Many peoples of the world are unconvinced that India represents anything other than yet another empire, filling the void left by the collapse of the United States. The contest is on to discover which corner of the ideological spectrum will present the strongest alternative to India’s liberal capitalism. The war between the Eurasian strongman system and the neo-traditional way of Babylon may yet prove a crucial moment, after which the forces of right-wing counter-revolution and reaction will have only one hegemon to kowtow to. However a peculiar path socialism has taken, from dominating Europe to dominating the heartland of America, its core tenets remain strongly held beliefs across the world and the Rainbow Republic has proven a powerful new model for its spread. The world faces only worsening impacts of climate change, a global problem to which only East Asia champions with its unique mix of ecological socialism and state-led capitalism. The world also faces the ongoing march of technology, including the internet and computers, phenomena that Argentina, and its academic-technocratic system of government, lay their own unique claims to. Should either the long disunity of China or the recent disunity of Azania come to an end, such events could also score a victory for any of the contending powers. The 2000s were the decade of liberalism and democracy - what will become of the 2010s?
Rules: this Front resolves at the end of the 2010s and the winner is determined by GM fiat; the blue ideology (India and Europe) cannot win this Front; other Great Powers will be ranked according to how significantly global geopolitics have swung in their favour and to what extent ideological activities have broadened their ideology’s appeal to a world audience, especially as a contrast to liberal democracy
Rewards: a global wave of enthusiasm for your ideology that will last for a large part of the 2010s and will translate into a) at least one or two revolutions, b) one or two oppositions or governments converting to your ideology, and c) other logical narrative benefits from ideological momentum

Spoiler Sinhalese Separatism :

Spoiler 2009 :

Sinhalese Separatism (India Short-Term Stress)
New Events:

Long-Term Stress “gridlock and backsliding” Collapses (8 out of 8 Collapse Points)

Every so often new cracks formed in the fragile peace that has held Ceylon together since the 1990s. The Sinahelse-dominated People’s Front never gave up on their dreams of independence, and have provoked small acts of violence with the pro-government Tamil Tiger militias from time to time. This dangerous state of affairs usually ends with the federal government weighing in convincingly on the side of the Tamil Tigers, reminding the Sinhalese that Indian public opinion, and therefore India’s tremendous military, is against them. Dysfunction at the federal level in recent years however has started to change the political terrain for the People’s Front, who’s extremely popular revolutionary leaders have simply been biding their time and probing for weakness since the 1990s. A confusing outburst of violence at the border between Tamil and Sinhalese villages in the interior of Ceylon prompted small-scale mobilization of both Tamil Tiger and People’s Front militias (both sides claim the other provoked a fight over the property boundaries of a Sinhalese tea plantation that was expanding into rainforest on the Tamil side of an administrative boundary). Despite stern warnings from the Prime Minister, parliament dithered on the issue, and two weeks of violence ensued that were the worst since the 1990s. In the end the government threatened intervention and de-escalated the situation, but the damage was done: the People’s Front have started publicly demanding a democratic referendum on the independence of Ceylon, whose people are largely Sinhalese and would vote enthusiastically for their heroic leadership’s preferred outcome of independence. No plans are in-motion yet to set a date for such a referendum, and the Tamil Tigers have appealed to the federal government to quash any attempt to arrange such a referendum as a violation of the terms of the 1990s peace and not to recognize it, but agitation is in the air once again across Ceylon. The possibility of a new armed conflict in Ceylon, the high cost of energy, and the sudden increase in interest rates, have all combined together to cool the Indian economy and in-particular the construction sector.
Changes:

India suffers a penalty from having 4 simultaneous Stresses: -4 Economy Proficiency, -Engineering Capability

Spoiler Electrostates :

Spoiler 2009 :

Electrostates (Special Front): Clean technology has become technically affordable, but to scale it up to the size of whole national electrical grids will require vast quantities of minerals, namely copper (a great thermal and electrical conductor) and lithium and cobalt (both necessary for lithium-ion batteries). Much like strategic resources of past eras, these clean tech resources are concentrated in a handful of places. More than half of all the world’s cobalt is located inside the African Copper Belt (also a massive source of copper as the name would suggest), where mineral rights are still up for grabs should any Great Power make a push to dominate the country’s extractive industries divided between Mozambique, Angola, and to a lesser extent Kongo. Australia possesses the next largest share of cobalt, is also the world’s second largest holder of lithium reserves, and is a notable copper producer as well, though its mining industry is well-developed and access to its resources would depend upon good bilateral trade relations. Then there’s Argentina, which is in a league of its own, home to half of the world’s lithium reserves (known as the Lithium Triangle, stretching up Chile and into Peru) and also a historic major producer of copper, also mainly in Chile. Productivity in Chilean copper mines hasn’t increased in a long time, while lithium remains underexploited, though these lands are within the boundaries of a well-recognized Great Power, making any new extraction projects contingent on their agreement. Finally there is China, which has notable quantities of lithium and copper, and the Caribbean Federation, which has the next largest cobalt reserves after Australia. The race for the resources of the energy transition is now underway.
Rules: In-order to achieve decarbonization through emerging clean technologies players must arrange the economic order so as to extract the relevant raw materials at-scale. The speed at which decarbonization can be achieved will be dependent upon both the scale of manufacturing (is only one country the hub of clean tech production, or multiple?) and the scale of resource extraction (how many of the named places have been engaged through Action Point spends into the clean tech economy, and how big are their reserves?). Who manufacturers clean tech and how many places do so, and where resources are extracted from, will have narrative impacts on the nature of the world economy in the future.
Rewards: Decarbonization, inputs for a major boost to economic development from clean tech manufacturing.

Spoiler Dutch Elections :

Spoiler 2009 :

Dutch Elections (Regional Netherlands Front):
New Events:

Europe: rolled 14, hard success. +1 FP for election interference

The Netherlands exited the Soviet Union as a labour union-dominated socialist democracy with a semi-market economy. Labour unions dominate economic and political decision-making, with the New Left Party’s popularity high from their successful protection of the Dutch from the Soviet Civil War. That era of easy election wins is now over with the consolidation of western Europe under the EU, a liberal democracy that purports to be an alternative to the still fairly rigid Dutch political-economic order. This year, the Dutch Liberal Party began a vigorous organizing drive to win the next elections, promising deeper market reforms, free trade with the EU, and selling government stakes in Dutch companies (such as the Zuiderzee Arbeiters) on EU stock exchanges. As part of this electoral drive, several forms of interference have taken place. Germans have been identified advising and even directly organizing on behalf of the Liberal Party. The European Media Group (EMG) launched a popular television show about the Soviet Civil War that has portrayed the German Democracy Movement as heroic freedom fighters. The Union News Group (UNG), which opened a Dutch outlet in the Netherlands this year, has overtly promoted pan-Europeanism, for example hosting “debates” between Dutch politicians about whether Babylonian expansionism should make the Netherlands consider joining a larger political configuration (i.e. the EU). The concerted and obvious influence campaign has been noticed by Dutch election regulators, and of course all of these activities are super illegal (being a union-led socialist democracy, the only groups allowed to make political contributions are unions). Although regulators have fined the Liberals heavily and begun proceedings to close down some news outlets, the effects of the EU’s influence campaign have started succeeding - polling has shown increased approval for closer relations to the EU and more economic liberalization by a larger and larger share of everyday Dutch voters, even if their union representatives overwhelmingly disagree. Alarmed at the possibility of losing formal political power, the New Left Party is pushing a constitutional amendment that would prevent the Netherlands from joining the EU, which the unions are advising their members to pass. Moreover the country’s unions are separately insulating companies from full privatization, demanding up to half of the board of directors be representatives from the unions on all major Dutch corporate boards, including the Zuiderzee Arbeiters. These moves would frustrate a Liberal Party government, and moreover put the New Left Party in a position to easily win back power should they be organized and convincing enough the next time around. As for the Zuiderzee Arbeiters, their union claims that the company is of such vital strategic interest that sale of its shares on an EU exchange would almost certainly result in a dominant stake for Indian investors with ties to their foreign policy establishment. With co-determination likely to reach fifty-fifty thresholds, whoever ends up owning the Zuiderzee will only have a fraction of its value as a political asset for any non-socialist owners.
Changes:

new World Fact: the Dutch labour movement will resist neoliberalization of the Netherlands and could easily help boost the New Left Party back into power in the right circumstances or with the right backing*
new World Fact: the labour union for the Zuiderzee Arbeiders has significant power inside the company and restricts its use as an asset of non-pink Great Powers
the Zuiderzee Arbeiders Power Centre’s Proficiencies are reduced by half (or in the case of 0.1, removed altogether) for non-pink Great Powers

Trajectory: Europe will boost the Liberal Party to power in the Netherlands by 2012, and thereby give control of the Zuiderzee Arbeiters Power Centre to India.

* Europe’s +1 FP will become 0 FP per turn should any other Great Power succeed in a roll to boost the pink government; should this Front conclude as a success for the EU and regime change, any other Great Power could still make a roll to win the next election for the pink faction (i.e. the blue faction’s control is not especially secure) and receive a context bonus for doing so

Spoiler Europe in Shambles :

Spoiler 2009 :

Europe in Shambles (Regional West Europe Front):
New Events:

India: rolled 19.8, soft success. +1 FP for reconstructing Europe

The opening of the European market to Indian and British investors was a welcome reprieve for international finance from the wider economic turmoil caused by the global energy crisis this year. Indian companies have for a few years now been seeking places to offshore manufacturing where labour is cheaper, and given two decades of civil war and India’s persistent economic rise, western Eorope is actually a cheaper place to hire labour. Moreover Europe’s human and physical capital are still largely present from Soviet times, if underused, allowing Indian firms to create new factories without having to build them from scratch. Indian construction firms have also been involved in a massive infrastructure repair program, rebuilding power lines, roads, rail, and bridges, with the Indian government footing some of the bill on behalf of Europe to expedite their recovery. In the new context of a global energy crisis, Indian investors have also been eager to extract shale with hydraulic fracturing, a modest project at the current scale that will take years to build-out. However despite great progress on reconstruction, many issues linger since Soviet times, in-particular the highly unequal concentration of ownership that a handful of oligarchs have maintained. These oligarchs, from Silvio Berlusconi’s media empire in Italy to Vincent Bolloré’s construction interest in France, established themselves during the civil war as apolitical moguls and have been able to thwart Indians, British, and even other Europeans, from meaningfully disrupting their hold over certain industries throughout the country. Unfortunately Indian reconstruction has even propelled these oligarchs into further entrenchment by allowing them to cast themselves as patriotic defenders of national ownership of the European economy, as opposed to foreign ownership.
Changes:

new World Fact: ownership of the European economy is unequally skewed towards a handful of powerful oligarchs

Trajectory: India will have reconstructed Europe by 2012, giving Europe a Power Centre worth 4 Proficiency Points in a category of Europe’s choice.

Spoiler 2008 :

Spoiler Hollywood :

Spoiler 2009 :

Hollywood (Regional California Front):
New Events:

Union of States: rolled 19, soft success. +1 FP for capturing Hollywood

Ronald Reagan was an actor before he was a politician, and thus his dictatorship took a special interest in outing and persecuting leftists in Hollywood - Reagan’s policies made the blacklists of the 1940s and 1950s look like benevolence. With the end of the Reagan dictatorship last year, the big movie and television studios have become skittish at the possibility of the cultural revolution coming full circle and causing more havoc on an industry already in terminal decline since the collapse of the United States as a single unified market for their products. This year, coming to Tinseltown’s rescue, the Union of States has entered, stage left. The Union has promised access to their domestic market, in dire need of some levity, and moreover that the Union will aggressively incorporate new Hollywood films and television into state-run institutions like community centres, library catalogues, and schools - on the condition, of course, that these cultural productions are deemed acceptably left-wing. Union research groups have begun a top-down polling program to identify popular themes and genres that might sell well in their private market too. The newborn Rainbow regime in California is also being extended administrative resources by the Union to regulate, unionize, and thereafter politically consolidate the Hollywood system into a pliable asset of the international Rainbow agenda. Many celebrity actors, writers, and directors have publicly come out since last year as secret leftists all along (many implausibly so), and the Union’s economic liferaft has energized the development of new scripts on left-wing themes. Unfortunately many of these ideas are in a tense relationship with Hollywood’s widespread culture of racism, sexism, homophobia, and generally reactionary impulses, as well as with what apolitical viewers in the Union and the world more broadly actually want to see. These factors have contributed to a lot of failed films and pilots this year, as California critics and Union censors disapprove of them, even though their high-level narrative is politically neutral or left-wing, because these films and pilots contain reactionary cliches that Hollywood directors and writers are not used to being seriously criticized for. This steep learning curve means that it will be a long time before Hollywood gets good at making left-wing films and television with popular appeal.
Changes:

new World Fact: Hollywood films and television are pushing more left-wing narratives, but they are also not that good and have limited appeal outside California and the Union of States

Trajectory: The Union of States will control the Hollywood Power Centre by 2012.

Spoiler Illiterati :

Spoiler 2009 :

Illiterati (Regional China Front):
New Events:

Argentina: rolled 16.6, soft success. +1 FP for corrupting the blue KMT

Although the south Chinese branch of the KMT professed a belief in democracy, the seeds of corruption were always there. Chiang Kai-shek ruled with an authoritarian hand, allowing only limited civil liberties. Even after his death in 1975, KMT officials on China’s southwest border got involved in the drug trade. And of course politicians have to do what they have to do to get pork for their constituents. While reporters might deride it, this involves unsavoury backroom deals with CEOs and monied interests to make sure projects happen in one’s locale, as opposed to somewhere else in China. With the rise of Shanghai’s financial and economic dominance throughout the country, reporters have begun noticing a pattern of late in how politics is done in the south: more and more KMT politicians are taking “donations” from groups emanating from Shanghai while major Shanghai businesses agree to set up shop in their constituencies. Meanwhile other politicians who talk too sincerely about democracy have noticed a decrease in investment inflows. The creep of this economic persuasion has alarmed the central party officials for the southern KMT, who have complained about what they believe is a concerted effort to cultivate patronage networks within their own party that are loyal to Shanghai technocrats. The lower ranking politicians the central party have accused of graft have mostly ignored these complaints, and are hardly fearful of being removed from the party, as they are the ones getting benefits to their constituents, not the central party. The downside of the spread of this pro-technocratic corruption is, well, of course, that it is corruption: a culture of backroom dealing, economic elitism, and graft for the top politicians appears to be taking the southern KMT from the bottom up, and if it succeeds, it will perpetuate itself for a while to come.
Changes:

the China's Warlords Front loses 0.5 Collapse Points

Trajectory: South China’s blue KMT will convert to technocracy by 2012, leaving behind a culture of corruption in the region. The China's Warlords Front will lose another 0.5 Collapse Points.

Spoiler Nissan Heavy Industries :

Spoiler Saddam's Concessions :

Saddam’s Concessions (Regional Babylon Front):
New Events:

Babylon: rolled 7.4, failure. -1 FP for appeasing the public

Surrounded by profound threats to his rule, Saddam sought to allay longstanding grievances this year through a mix of propaganda, institutional reshuffling, and genuine concessions that ended up aggravating his own elites and doing little to impress the public. Regime propagandists spread a new narrative about the Turkestani and Eurasia war as a ghazwa (or a pre-Islamic Arabic form of raiding warfare), while heroically portraying Babylon’s hand-picked defector to rule Turkestan after Babylon’s war is won, a former official in the Turkestani civil service who has renamed himself Khan Ghazi Tughlugh. Akkadian language requirements were eliminated in the military and accommodations for prayer were made, allowing Arab Muslims to become officers without having to hide their faith. Saddam expanded the Council of Ancients to include reserved seats for the Gulf Forum and putting “prominent Muslims” on the Executive Council. Saddam has even surrounded himself in Islamic iconography all year. Yet all of these concessions and reframings did nothing to improve public attitudes to the regime. Most Arab Muslims didn’t know what a ghazwa was until this year. Most Arab Muslims who wanted to join Saddam’s armies have already done so, and so the removal of the Akkadian language barrier on officership, even on top of other new perks, did little to entice new recruits. Gulf Forum members are widely despised as some of the least pious people Saddam has gotten into bed with, and since all of the country’s actually “prominent Muslims” are Eagles of Saladin or Muslim Brotherhood leaders, the seats were handed to compliant no-names that did nothing to make the general public feel included in governance. All in all Saddam’s concessions have basically not moved the needle in either direction for the general populace - it convinced no one but also did not aggravate the protest movements further. But for the neo-Akkadian elites, the reforms have been perceived as a serious threat to their privileges, and evidence that Saddam might be the wrong leader for neo-traditionalism and Babylon. Allowing Arabic speakers to access high posts in the military? What if they use those positions to conspire to overthrow us neo-Akkadian elites! Promoting Islamic iconography and deploying Islamic religious concepts in state propaganda? What if this makes the masses believe that they are entitled to a state that actually looks and believes the same things as them! Though these sorts of complaints are mere gossip and rumours for now, they could become a serious threat to Saddam should he not reassure his own upper class that he isn’t turning back on the ideological core of the Babylonian project.
Changes:

new World Fact: Arab Muslims in Babylon are skeptical of efforts by Saddam to paint his regime as compatible with Islamic and Arab identities

Trajectory: Disgruntled neo-Akkadian and Babylonian elites will begin seriously considering a coup in 2012, creating a Short-Term Stress that itself Collapse in 2016 and become a Long-Term Stress.

Spoiler Days of Rage :

Days of Rage (Babylon Short-Term Stress)
New Events:

Long-Term Stress “corruption and resentment” Collapses (8 out of 8 Collapse Points)

Protests and civil disobedience have broken out across Babylon this year, apparently triggered by the invasion of Turkestan, but actually about deeper grievances. Citizens have regularly refused to sign up for the draft, with those of means leaving the country on sudden “vacations.” Meanwhile, reform protests have been happening regularly in major cities in the Levant and Mesopotamia, with protestors adopting a number of novel organizing tactics, involving the internet and smartphones, that have misled or overwhelmed police enough to garner international attention for their issues. These internet-based “Days of Rage” have gathered people in the thousands into rallies that appear as if from thin air, or helped move and coordinate protestors around urban spaces to avoid police blockades and minimize arrests. Moreover the normally tight censorship has been evaded by use of the internet, with examples of police brutality spreading rapidly online and compelling more people into the streets. The primary thrust of the complaints are aimed at police corruption and brutality, as well resentment against the privileges that come along with being a neo-Akkadian elite, and the indignities that the Arab Muslim majority faces for simply being who they are. It seems that these protests will be an ongoing issue for the coming years, unless something more drastic is done, and have already begun to hamper military recruitment and forced Babylon to shift personnel from their rocket forces to other branches of the military to make up the difference.
Changes:

Babylon suffers a penalty from having 4 simultaneous Stresses: -4 Warfare Proficiency, -Missiles Capability

Rules: If this Stress is not resolved before it collapses, it will transform into a long-term Stress. Resolution of this Stress can be indirect (i.e. as a secondary consequence of an Action on a semi-related but distinct Front) or direct (i.e. making a Front specifically targeting this issue).

Spoiler Victory or Death :

Spoiler Globalization :

Spoiler 2009 :

Spoiler 2006 :

Globalization (Special Front): Despite the economically destabilizing events of 1989-1991 and their aftershocks in the 1990s, the world economy has remained remarkably globalized. By historic standards trade barriers are low, trade volume is high, supply chains are inter-continental, and markets are robustly globalized, especially in energy and food. Globalization since the 1980s has hugely boosted economic growth and technological dispersion, at the expense of economic resilience, especially around geographic bottlenecks, strategic resources, and key manufacturing hubs. An unexpected shock (e.g. an interstate war, a civil conflict, or a once-in-a-millenium disaster) over any of these linchpins could have unwieldy implications. Although there are globalized markets in many industries, the three most significant are those for food, energy, and consumer goods. Eurasia and the Union of States are the world’s two breadbaskets and whose agricultural restoration after the Autumn of Nations has brought down the global price of food, which itself underpins stability around the world. Eurasia and Babylon meanwhile are the two largest energy exporters, with the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Strait of Hormuz serving as three crucial export passageways. As energy is an input for everything else done in the industrialized world, an energy shock in either country would have disastrous consequences. Then there is the global market for consumer goods, whether electronics, appliances, furniture, apparel, or automobiles, all heavily concentrated in India, and to a lesser extent China and East Asia. The price of staple goods since the 1990s have remained low or declined alongside increases in quality as these lower wage countries have taken up the bulk of the world’s manufacturing. Together, these three sectors keep the entire world relatively stable - should a disaster strike even one, the second-order effects could be unpredictable and disastrous.
Rules: This Front concludes by fiat when the GM agrees that the world has achieved post-scarcity or the global economy has abandoned trade for autarky. This Front does not generate Collapse Points but should players or other Fronts ever substantially interfere with any globalized industry, the GM will trigger a “global economic crisis” with enormous and unwieldy ramifications.
Rewards: none

Spoiler Not in My Backyard :

Spoiler Marea Rosa :

Spoiler The Belt and Railroad :

Spoiler 2008 :

Spoiler 2006 :

Belt and Railroad (Super Babylon-East Asia Economy/Science Front):
New Events:

East Asia & Babylon: rolled 17, soft success. +1 FP for railroading

The world’s foremost petrostate and warmonger, Babylon, has teamed up with the Marxist-environmentalist regime of East Asia on an ambitious engineering project: a national network of magnetic levitation rail lines. Billed as the Belt and Railroad, an East Asian network of engineering and design bureaus have taken contracts with Saddam Hussein’s state to build rail lines criss-crossing Babylon’s major cities. These rail lines will employ cutting edge technology that has been perfected in Japan for decades by Nissan, Obayashi, as well as the Socialist Association of Science and Technology itself, that will allow passengers to commute between major Middle Eastern cities at breathtaking speeds. Moreover, Babylonian construction companies will work in tandem with East Asian counterparts so as to help bootstrap an East Asian hub of construction knowledge on-top of their world-class design and engineering. A beautiful example of international cooperation. At least, that’s all how it is supposed to work on paper. In-practice, the first year of the Belt and Railroad has been a bit of a propaganda loss for East Asia and a minor economic bubble for Babylon. Although there were grumblings among East Asian politicians, the Belt and Railroad was far more harshly and swiftly condemned by foreign environmentalist groups in developed economies like Buffalo-Caribou and Scandinavia; how could East Asia countenance working with a fascist imperialist petroleum dictatorship? East Asian assurances that the railroad would be solar powered and help promote decarbonization fell on incredulous ears. Meanwhile in Babylon, private companies and investors pretty quickly found out the list of cities intended to get stations - which has spurred a speculative boom through patronage networks with access to the final planned rail routes. This has already pushed up housing prices in random places throughout Babylon, with a small exodus of people being evicted or simply forced out for having lived in informal housing arrangements. These people are already becoming homeless and resentful, disconnected from their social networks and ironically unable to access new housing in other cities due to the poor shape of Babylonian roads and rail.
Changes:

new World Fact: East Asia’s environmentalist reputation has taken a hit among foreign environmentalist groups in developed countries (e.g. Scandinavia, Buffalo-Caribou) due to the Belt and Railroad partnership with Babylon
new World Fact: residents along the rail route are being forced out of their homes by speculative investors, increasing homelessness and resentment

Trajectory: East Asian and Babylonian mag-lev activities will produce a Belt and Railroad Power Centre in East Asia and build-out an enormous network of high-speed rail across Babylon within a little under a decade (2013).

Spoiler Shale Revolution :

Spoiler An International Space Station :

Spoiler Drones :

Spoiler Mass Surveillance :

Spoiler Internet Platforms :

Spoiler Revolt of Small Numbers :

Revolt of Small Numbers (Eurasia Short-Term Stress):
New Events:

Long-Term Stress “secessionists and nationalism” Collapses (8 out of 8 Collapse Points)

2006 has been a year of widespread civil disobedience among minorities in Eurasia, sparked by the disappearance and later discovered murder of a Tartar forest ranger and nature conservationist, Elvira Galliamova. Her disappearance was ignored by Russian Volga-Ural authorities, with her dead body found only after a community search party scoured the nearby woodlands of her majority Tartar hometown. The leaders of that effort were thereafter arrested for trespassing onto the private property of a lumber mill, where Galliamova’s body was found. The incident quickly escalated into a public outcry among Eurasian minorities, spread by Eurasia Today (ET) as well as internet forums. Far more competent federal officers arrived to solve the case and, convincingly arrested the local lumber mill owner and some of his employees, all Russians, for Galliamova’s murder. Despite cracking the case, a swift trial and conviction, and releasing the search party leaders, the political ramifications of the initial delay and neglect had already spiralled out of control - numerous other instances of neglect, malice, environmental destruction, and racism by Russians against “small numbered peoples” - from the Komi to the Nenets to the Karelians and more - bubbled up on the internet and to ET. Resistance has mostly been in the form of peaceful civil disobedience, from sit-ins at local strongmen’s offices to refusals to pay taxes or cooperate with Eurasian authorities. The resentment solidified further by autumn when demonstrators were joined by a wide array of Cossack groups (rehabilitated and revived since the fall of the Soviet Union in some localities as paramilitaries and auxiliary police), which began refusing duties and orders, causing disruption to law enforcement in Ukraine, Don, Kuban, and other regions. By December, small town and village minority politicians, left-wing academics, indigenous land defenders, and high-ranking Cossacks, had gotten together and formed the Association of Small Numbered Peoples to combat racism, environmental destruction, and also to advance the interests of indigenous and small numbered peoples in Eurasia. The similarity in structure and purpose to Rainbow coalitions in the Americas, as well as the organization’s uncomfortably Suzuki-esque interest in the environment, has alarmed the Eurasian establishment. Eurasia remains surrounded by Suzukian and leftist regimes, from Turkestan to Transcaucasia to Scandinavia to Anatolia to Yugoslavia - any of which could easily help push the Small Numbered Peoples towards more violent means or secessionary ends.
Rules: If this Stress is not resolved before it collapses, it will transform into a long-term Stress. Resolution of this Stress can be indirect (i.e. as a secondary consequence of an Action on a semi-related but distinct Front) or direct (i.e. making a Front specifically targeting this issue).

Spoiler A North America Treaty Organization :

Spoiler A Smart Phone :

Spoiler 2005 :

Spoiler 2004 :

Spoiler Olympomachy :

Spoiler Petropolitics :

Petropolitics (Super Worldwide Economy Front): Born in Baghdad, OPEC died in Baghdad. The era of co-operation between oil producers that helped them control the price of oil and use it to threaten oil dependent countries ended dramatically when Saddam Hussein made the decision to simply annex the oil rich regions of OPEC’s Middle Eastern members. The oil cartel was abandoned in the 1980s but since the double-collapse and the stabilization of a multipolar world order, politicians in oil rich countries like Babylon and Eurasia have begun to promote the idea of a new OPEC for a new era. These politicians point out that if just the top six oil producing countries were to band together (Babylon, Eurasia, Colombia, Scandinavia, and Buffalo-Caribou), they would command more than half of the entire world’s oil output, allowing them to control the price of oil, or even threaten or actually enact oil embargoes to get their way against governments that depend on energy imports.
Rules: Progress represents the creation of an international oil cartel. The nature and makeup of this organization are up to the founding players. For every Great Power that participates (i.e. spends 1 AP), the organization will possess 0.1 AP as part of a special Action pool. Whenever the organization accrues 1 AP, it can enact a petroleum trade-related action that the participating players agree to by the organizations decision mechanisms (voting, rotating leadership, etc.). This can be used to allow players to carry out multi-state actions without each having to individually spend AP to carry it out (e.g. instead of 3 players spending 1 AP each to “hike the price of oil” or “enact an oil embargo against x country”, the oil cartel spends 1 AP and all the players’ relevant agents act on that 1 AP expenditure). Regress represents efforts to crush the creation of an international oil cartel and/or to create an international energy market that cannot be unduly influenced by any one state.
Rewards: The creation of an international oil cartel, or the frustration of such a cartel and the establishment of a global apolitical free market for oil.

Spoiler An Assembly of Nations? :

An Assembly of Nations? (Special Front): The threat of nuclear annihilation between the communist east and capitalist west was tempered during the Cold War through a small diplomatic club composed of the superpowers and their entourage: the Soviet-American Security Council (SASC). Although nowhere near as ambitious as proposals for a League of Nations or a World Court that were briefly in vogue during the 1920s and 1940s, the SASC had become the world’s best vehicle for military de-escalation before it disintegrated with the Autumn of Nations. In a world of escalating conflicts, institutional internationalism is fashionable again, with lawyers, diplomats, and academics across many countries promoting the idea of a global forum of nations that could vote on matters of war and peace and would be provisioned with the resources and authority necessary to enforce the will of the world’s sovereign states. Should the contemporary Great Powers participate and encourage the creation of some sort of assembly of nations, it might be capable of finally bending the arc of history toward peace and security.
Rules: Progress represents the creation of an effective international peace and security organization (i.e. a United Nations with teeth). The nature, makeup, focus, and authority of this organization are up to the founding players. The resources and strengths of this organization will be based on what Proficiencies players use to create it. For every Great Power that participates (i.e. spends 1 AP), the organization will possess 0.1 AP as part of a special Action pool. Players may put forward resolutions they wish to see enacted and if they pass (dependent on the players’ voting structure, e.g. one vote per country, one vote per Great Power, something else), the organization will pursue those goals, rolling against its own stats. Regress represents efforts to create an alternative global body or to frustrate and dispel the dreams of any global body of this nature. Only the winning side will get the bonus Action Point pool and resolution passing mechanics.
Rewards: The creation of an international peace and security organization with its own stat block that can accrue and spend Action Points on resolutions agreed to by its members.

Spoiler China's Warlords :

Spoiler Amazon Conflict :

Spoiler Kongo-Sudan Conflict :

Spoiler Blockbusters :

Spoiler The Drug Trade :

Spoiler Untouchable Global Elite :

Spoiler HIV/AIDS & Malaria :

J.K. Stockholme · Feb 18, 2023

ARCHIVE

Spoiler Mali Famine :

Spoiler 2010 :

Spoiler 2009 :

Spoiler Raids of Eurasia :

Spoiler 2010 :

Raids of Eurasia (Regional Eurasia Front):
New Events:

Eurasia: rolled 17, soft success. +1 for defending the motherland
Babylon: rolled 12.2, hard success. +1 for black ops
Babylon wins the Front (4 out of 4 Front Points)

The titanic war between Eurasia and Babylon continued to escalate this year, with Babylonian forces completely occupying Eurasia’s southeast, aside from some parts of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan which were lost due to a Tartar-Bashkir rebellion. Despite a heroic effort by the Eurasian armed forces to defend the motherland from the Babylonian invasion, they had lost too much strategic ground last year and were beset by a comprehensive campaign of sabotage that undermined their counter-offensives to recover Eurasian soil. The infamous Babylonian Mushussu supported Babylon’s conventional forces from behind the lines, blowing up munitions depots, sabotaging infrastructure, and generally causing havoc for Eurasia. Babylonian intel groups were less successful in their plan to create a loyal force of Bashkirs and Tatars, who turned fully against Babylon this year. The plot to recruit them had downsides from the beginning: Bashkirs and Tatars are Turkic peoples expressing some solidarity for Turkestan’s plight; moreover, their primary issues were racism, unfair treatment, and matters of social justice - not much for the neo-traditional Mushussu to work with. Despite some success last year with Islamic propaganda about the war as a ghazwa, the brutality of the Babylonian invasion was too much, involving raids against their homelands, combined with plain old fashioned incompetent and capricious violence being done by Babylonian intelligence services. Despite Bashkir and Tatar misgivings for Eurasia, Babylon remains the greater of two evils. In a considerable intelligence failure, Babylon even armed and prepared groups of Bashkirs and Tatars who had already planned to use the guns against Babylon - which they did in summer in a major rebellion in their two provinces, joining up with Eurasian forces who provided air and artillery support. Despite losing inroads into Eurasia’s agitated Small Numbered Peoples, Babylonian forces finished off their original mission on schedule - southeastern Eurasia is militarily secured, and the Eurasian oil and gas industry is in tatters. Moreover, the supply lines between Eurasia and Turkestan (itself occupied up to the Tarim Basin) have been severed, making any attempt by Eurasia to meaningfully affect the last Turkestani forces fighting out in the east a near impossibility. Eurasia’s military defeat on home territory has spurred calls for peace with honour, before it's too late - both from the loud protests in major Russian cities, from the Small Numbered Peoples, as well as increasingly in hushed whispers from the civil service and general staff. Even if peace cannot be made, analysts believe both powers will become vulnerable to manpower issues due to the conflict’s enormous body count and its unpopularity. For Babylon, the advances into Eurasia have been logistically taxing. Eurasia maintains a missile advantage and has made the advances costly in manpower and resources. Any further push deeper into the cold and populous interior of Eurasia will be operationally complicated on a scale Babylon has never had to deal with before.
Changes:

new Front: Body Count
new World Fact: Eurasia’s Small Numbered Peoples in occupied Babylonian territory have revolted against Babylon
new Eurasia Short-Term Stress World Fact: the Eurasian oil and gas industry lay in ruins from the Babylonian invasion (-Industry Capability)
new World Fact: further advances into Eurasia by Babylon will run into tremendous logistical challenges
Eurasia gains 1 XP for losing the Front

Spoiler 2009 :

Raids of Eurasia (Regional Eurasia Front):
New Events:

Babylon: rolled 21.4, full success. +2 FP for raiding Eurasian oil fields

In a stunningly escalatory move, Saddam ordered Babylonian forces to stretch their supply lines through the entire latitude of Turkestan and assault Eurasia itself. Striking at Eurasia’s southeastern underbelly, Babylonian commanders pulled off a challenging strategy of deception and horrific resource raiding that bluffed Eurasian commanders into concentrating forces on feigned attacks against their supply lines leading into Turkestan, rather than Babylon’s true target, Eurasia’s oil fields. Babylonian rapid action forces drove hard and fast through temporarily weaker points along the front with close-air support, captured or bombarded oil and gas facilities as well as pipelines from more isolated regions in west Siberia, and promptly retreated to defensible positions before Eurasian forces could rally a defence. What’s worse is that Babylonian commanders, apparently surprised by their success, were also able to simply defeat and occupy significant parts of southeast Eurasia by the end of the year, putting them on track to occupy the oil-rich regions they have damaged by late next year, which would also make Eurasia’s supply lines into Turkestan substantially more circuitous. Throughout public addresses this year Saddam has spoken of the Eurasian offensive as a 21st century ghazwa and tried to recharacterize himself as a defender of oppressed Muslims, a ploy that although totally ineffective (perhaps even counter-productive) inside Babylon, has unexpectedly resonated with the Muslim peoples in southeastern Eurasia, such as Tartars and the Bashkirs. Many among these ethnic groups have been engaged in civil disobedience and refusal to pay taxes since 2006 over the death of Elvira Galliamova, and more broadly endemic discrimination against Muslims. Babylonian forces have therefore had a relatively easy time finding collaborators in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, and the Eurasian invasion, while unifying the Russian public opinion against Babylon, has radicalized minorities into a militant posture receptive to the Babylonian invasion.
Changes:

Globalization Special Front conditions triggered (see above)
new Front: Victory or Death
the Eurasia Stress “revolt of small numbers” gains 1 Collapse Points and becomes a long-term Stress
when this Front succeeds, Eurasia will gain a new Short-Term Stress related to the destruction of their energy sector

Trajectory: Babylon will fully occupy southeast Eurasia by the end of next year (2010), having destroyed or taken control of the large majority of Eurasia’s oil and gas industry. This will create a new Short-Term Stress for Eurasia.

Spoiler Beautiful Borneo :

Spoiler 2010 :

Spoiler 2007 :

Beautiful Borneo (Regional Borneo Social Control/Economy Front):
New Events:

East Asia & Union of States: rolled 18, soft success. +1 FP for kickstarting ecotourism

East Asia’s crackdown against clear-cutters and fire-setters continued this year, preventing another bout of smog and reversing some of the deforestation caused last year. Cognizant of widespread poverty and anger against Japan, East Asian officials enacted a sweeping new economic program to uplift the neglected region, declaring Borneo a Special Economic Zone for eco-tourism and voluntourism. Though only one national champion relocated its headquarters to Brunei, the tourism campaign, labelled “Beautiful Borneo,” was hugely successful in attracting massive flows of cash into new schemes. Beautiful Borneo has advertised to the wider world the wondrous natural beauty of Borneo, from its elephants, tigers, orangutans, to its coral reefs and still enormously well-preserved rainforests. The Beautiful Borneo campaign was especially successful in the Union of States, whose government agreed to promote Bornean tourism amongst its populace. Seriously disconnected from the wider world since the Autumn of Nations due to geopolitics, Americans were eager to jump at the opportunity for travel, with churches, neo-pagan groups, and naturalist clubs organizing large delegations to visit the remote island of Borneo throughout the dry season. Beautiful Borneo was also visited by folks from other places, with notable numbers of tourists among British subjects residing in Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as people from China, Indochina, and India, not to mention various parts of East Asia itself. Locals have celebrated the new influx of capital and income, though already several trends have started that may take a generation to be truly felt: the loss of endangered language proficiency in-favour of Japanese, English, and Malay, the loss of cultural pride due to catering to foreign cultures, resentment toward relaxation of religious norms for the benefit of tourists, and even (to a limited extent) the poor treatment of animals used for tourist purposes.
Changes:

new World Fact: Borneo’s tourist industry is slowly hollowing out local cultures

Trajectory: East Asia will have spurred a trend of positive economic growth for the sub-region of Borneo, growing its economy and improving the government’s reputation there, by 2010.

Spoiler 2006 :

People’s Palm Oil (East Asia Short-Term Stress):
New Events:

Long-Term Stress “anti-Japanese sentiment” Collapses (8 out of 8 Collapse Points)

Southeast Asia was blanked by dangerous concentrations of pollution due to a disastrous fire season in Borneo, something quite unusual for the environmentalist nation to which that island belongs. Although a decades-long East Asian effort has curbed illegal deforestation across most of Indonesia and Malaysia, desperate poor criminals still disobey the law and burn forests for palm oil production in Borneo, where anti-Japanese resentment runs high. Before the fire season, this year had already been a historic moment of unrest around the world, and it was no different in Indonesia, where spontaneous anti-government and crypto-separatist demonstrations, sometimes even supported by National Unionists, took place in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Brunei, and other major cities in Indonesia and Malaysia. East Asian authorities took a dual-track approach of suppressing the protests forcefully, but also offering limited economic concessions after-the-fact as a goodwill gesture, including a promise to lighten policing in the region’s poorest province, Borneo. This promise, which East Asia dutifully carried out during the fire season, was a regrettable mistake that encouraged thousands of clear-cutters to burn more forest in one year than had been burnt in the entire previous decade. Although at first appeased by East Asian concessions, Borneans were quick to return to protests when East Asia brought back the full weight of its criminal justice system against fire-setters and clear-cutters. Even worse, the Borneans have rallied in support of the criminals deforesting the country, promoting them as heroic resistors to Japanese imperialism and promoters of the economic interests of the poor Bornean people. Although East Asia could concede to Bornean demands for legalization of at least some deforestation and palm oil production, something the Osaka Clique in Japan flatly endorses as overdue, doing so would threaten Borneo’s biodiversity, including species like the Borneo Orangutan, the Borneo elephant, and the rare Hose’s civet. For now the nationalistic rallying around the illegal Bornean fire-setters and clear-cutters is limited to Borneo, though the movement has momentum and could spread to other islands as well as sharpen their demands, should their currently modest ones remain unaddressed.
Rules: If this Stress is not resolved before it collapses, it will transform into a long-term Stress. Resolution of this Stress can be indirect (i.e. as a secondary consequence of an Action on a semi-related but distinct Front) or direct (i.e. making a Front specifically targeting this issue).

Spoiler Radio Free Eurasia :

Spoiler 2010 :

Radio Free Eurasia (Regional Siberia Front):
New Events:

India wins the Front (4 out of 4 Front Points)

Wherever, whenever, and however they are needed, the intrepid journalists at Radio Free Eurasia (RFE) will answer the call. From warzones to autocracies, from the cities to the countryside, on every continent - the RFE will spare nothing in pursuit of truth. Since 2007, RFE has grown from a small outfit in Siberia to a global news media superpower, leveraging the growth of the internet and outpacing the established newspapers who have failed to realize the new medium’s potential. The RFE is fearless in the face of government suppression - and that even includes the very government that funds their operation, India. The RFE-affiliated WikiFiles organization has relentlessly exposed the Indian government for foreign policy secrets, corruption, and coverups. While the Indian government may grumble at being embarrassed from time to time, the RFE’s India division reserves its greatest journalistic efforts for exposing anti-democratic forces in Indian society. In the last few years, the RFE has devastated the reputation of ultranationalist and neo-traditional plutocrats who’ve been trying to gain power through demagoguery and populism. This includes Arjun Goyal who’s bid to take over the National Progressive Bloc failed due to investigative journalists unearthing scandalous video recordings of him committing adultery. This paved the way for the United Democratic Front to win this year’s elections called by the Prime Minister. The RFE’s negative coverage of the Indian government has made it popular among Indian news readers and given the RFE unique credibility with which to destroy threats to Indian democracy, even while it exposes the government for its failures. The RFE will continue to be a formidable new force in the news industry - accessible anywhere through the internet and unrepentant in their rugged idealism.
Changes:

India controls the Sakharov Network
the India short-term Stress “make India great again” is resolved
India regains engineering Capability from falling below 4 Stresses

Spoiler 2007 :

Radio Free Eurasia (Regional Siberia Social Control/Economy Front):
New Events:

India: rolled 19, soft success. +1 FP for supercharging journalism

Faced with a growing crisis in Eurasia, the Sakharov Centre opened its doors to hundreds of fleeing journalists, some of the best in Eurasia and perhaps even the best in the world. With only an under-resourced radio network and old Soviet-era equipment, liberal-minded Indian investors who had caught wind of the events saw an opportunity and took a fateful trip to democratic Siberia, where Sakharov Centre spokesman Garry Kasparov not long thereafter publicly hailed a new business arrangement. A massive inflow of investment from Indian investors would come to modernize Radio Free Eurasia (RFE), allowing it to hire thousands of new reporters and set up branches in dozens of countries with the goal of becoming the world’s top news organization. With a motivated core of honest, hard-working reporters possessing experience creating such an organization from their time in Eurasia Today, progress has been swift. RFE reporters have already begun to compete on the home turf of the world’s most global newspapers, Australia’s News Corp, Great Britain’s BBC, and New England’s New York Times. Before pivoting to news last year, the Sakharov Centre’s main work was protecting and trafficking dissidents from authoritarian regimes to Siberia, contrasting the Centre’s and RFE’s ethos sharply against the respectable, detached, establishment cultures at the other networks. So committed are the journalists at RFE to idealism and disrupting rather than merely reporting on world events that they eagerly domiciled a coterie of “internet activists” in Siberia, including a controversial group called WikiFiles, who specialize in publishing leaked government documents on the internet for anyone to see. WikiFiles, who’s previous disclosures embarrassed the Australian government for various secret authoritarian programs they made public, took a broadside against Great Britain and India this year, disclosing secret documents shared between the two powers as part of regular intelligence sharing that acknowledge hitherto unreported atrocities committed by the German Democracy Movement last year against French villagers. Whereas the Sakharov Centre was previously focused on criticizing and ultimately bringing down the Eurasian state, now it shall be a beacon of truth everywhere.
Changes:

new World Fact: journalists affiliated with the Sakharov Centre have a penchant for publishing state secrets given to them by whistleblowers in democracies
Power Centre changes: Sakharov Centre gains +0.2 Economy, +0.2 Social Control, changes name to Sakharov Network

Trajectory: India will have decisive control over the Sakharov Centre and its subordinate news group, Radio Free Eurasia, by 2010, with intrepid journalists planted all around the world.

Spoiler New Eurasian Person :

Spoiler 2010 :

Spoiler 2007 :

New Eurasian Person (Regional Eurasia Social Control/Administration Front):
New Events:

Eurasia: rolled 18, soft success. +1 FP for eliminating corruption once and for all

The Eurasian oligarchy has been on a warpath against corruption for more than half a decade. Agents of the civil service have worn body armour and suffered casualties in the war on arms smuggling and the war on crime, both successful if costly operations that have practically eliminated illicit arms movements out of the country and mafia activity broadly. This year the council of strongmen have approved a last offensive on the remaining vestiges of Soviet era corruption in every department of government, from the military to social programs to officials all the way down to the municipal level across Russia and Ukraine. Informally referred to as the New Eurasian Person Policy, accountability mechanisms are being extensively deployed to detect abuse of funds, rank and compare departmental efficacy, and generally fire and replace officials throughout all levels of government. There are two wrinkles in the plan, which outside observers have been quick to note. The first is the obvious contradiction of an unaccountable council of unabashed strongmen promoting honest, accountable government. What justifies the continued rule of the strongmen if they themselves do not submit to the same exacting standards as the rest of the state? Moreover, is this not exactly the same mistake the oligarchs behind Eurasia Today made by letting high-minded principles get in the way of what really matters (namely, ultranationalism)? Although the issue is dormant while the current strongmen live on, someday they will have successors - but will they be ultranationalists or will they lose the faith and become technocrats or even liberals? The second wrinkle is Poland. Although it’s never spoken about by the strongmen themselves, it’s clear that Poland is the exception - while the anti-corruption drive runs at full steam in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, in Poland efforts are managed by the local strongman and to a great extent it’s scope is limited so that patronage can be handed out and thereby allow the local strongman to maintain his power.
Changes:

new World Fact: civilian and military officials in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine believe in higher principles of honesty, integrity, and accountability, veering at times toward technocratic or even liberal democratic thinking

Trajectory: Eurasia will eliminate Soviet-era inefficiency and corruption in favour of an honest and energetic military and civil service by 2010, removing Eurasia’s long-term Stress “inflexibility and corruption.”

Spoiler Arabian Nuclear Program :

Spoiler 2010 :

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Ethiopian Revanchism :

J.K. Stockholme · Feb 18, 2023

ARCHIVE CONTINUED

Spoiler Filibuster War :

Spoiler 2010 :

Filibuster War (Regional Mexico Front):
New Events:

Argentina wins the Front (8 out of 8 Front Points)

Mexico’s two-decade civil war ended this year in anti-leftist victory. The ex-American filibusters, who defected from the United States when it became the Rainbow Republic, marched north, finishing off the last remnants of Chicano and Norteño fighters resisting their rule. Meanwhile the Chiapas-Yucatan territories were formally admitted into the Plurinational Union of Central America, something the regime in Mexico City has been notably silent about in what observers believe is to be the regime fulfilling secret obligations it undertook in 2003 to secure the Chiapas-Yucatan split from the then united Suzukian resistance in Mexico’s south. That Suzukian resistance was largely quashed by 2006, though an eco-terror campaign against the Mexican oil industry continues even into this year, having succeeded in decimating extraction and output and making Mexico, despite its reserves, a net importer of fuel, precisely in a time of international energy scarcity. Moreover, besides regular blackouts due to the energy crisis, endemic eco-terror and violence continue in Veracruz, hampering Mexico’s economic recovery. Although the ex-American filibusters who now control the country have always claimed to be defending the legal government of científicos enlightened by reason, science, and unregulated markets - in-reality the filibusters run the show as a corrupt military junta who have switched from siphoning Argentine funds for their luxuries to siphoning from the taxpayers of Mexico. With the war over, the filibusters may also reignite tensions with their true enemy: the Rainbow Republic. The filibusters were of course once an American occupation forces, and their loyalty to the old apartheid United States never died.
Changes:

defunct World Fact: Yucatan-Chiapas rebels intend to politically unify themselves with Central America
defunct opposition: Yucatan and Chiapas indigenous leftist guerillas
new World Fact: the Mexican military are ex-American armed forces personnel with a burning hatred of the Rainbow Republic

Spoiler 2006 :

Spoiler 2003 :

Filibuster War (Regional Mexico Warfare Front):
New Events:

Argentina: rolled 13, hard success. +1 FP for intelligence activities

The so-called Filibuster War kicked up dust for the first time in years, as the ex-American military forces based out of Mexico City began a renewed offensive against Suzukian rebels in the south of the country. The attacks started in summer after a hugely consequential fracturing among the Suzukians in the early months of the year: rebels controlling Yucatan and Chiapas declared their intention to formally petition to join the Plurinational Republic of Central America. This dramatic split made an opening for the filibusters to push out the now weaker Suzukian resistance. The sequence of events is not well understood, but most intelligence assessments believe Argentine agents cavorted secretly among disaffected leftists and Central America. Argentina is also assumed to have carried out these spying activities due to their fairly public disbursement of funding to the filibusters, who reporters attest have lavishly wasted Argentine money on mansion and other luxuries instead of the war effort. Although the filibusters claim to be científicos in the tradition of Porfirio Díaz, Argentinian attaches are bristling at the filibusters’ indifference to technocracy, which is used merely in rhetoric and rarely in-practice. Nonetheless, the filibusters are on a warpath to take over the country, though territorially reduced due to the impending departure of Yucatan and Chiapas into Central America. The impending doom of the Suzukians has forced them to shift tactics to more desperate measures, including an increase in eco-terror bombings of oil rigs around Veracruz, which are blow up at a concerning pace.
Changes:

new World Fact: the filibusters’ commitment to technocracy is opportunistic and politically cynical, they are mainly corrupt self-interested authoritarians
new World Fact: Mexican oil rigs are harassed by eco-terror bombings
new World Fact: Yucatan-Chiapas rebels intend to politically unify themselves with Central America

Trajectory: The Filibuster War will be long and hard-fought over less than a decade, but the filibusters appear on route to be triumphant (2010). By that time, Yucatan-Chiapas rebels will politically separate from Mexico and join Central America, and the Mexican petroleum industry will be seriously undermined due to eco-terror attacks.

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Dictators :

Spoiler 2010 :

Spoiler 2007 :

Spoiler 2005 :

Spoiler Sinhalese Separatism :

Spoiler 2010 :

War of Ideas (Special Front):
New Events:

India wins the Front by GM judgement

The ideological competition of the post-Cold War order may still be ongoing, but the dust has settled on the first phase of the new struggle in the 2000s, which turned out to be a victory for liberal democracy. India emerged as the leader of a reinvigorated free world, militarily aligning with other free nations like Texas and Great Britain, while dexterously creating new democracies out of autocracies from Oman to Bengal. The decisive battle in the war of ideas played out in Europe, where democratic forces defeated a buffet of ideological enemies and refounded a united Europe on the will of the people. This decade of success culminated this year in a global wave of revolutionary activity, a miniature Autumn of Nations based on democracy theology. In Afghanistan, the Islamist guerillas, inspired by Bengal and on the doorstep of an apocalyptic war between two authoritarian petrostates, have shifted to clerical republicanism, promising free and fair elections within the constraints of Islamic law when they finally oust the reigning technocratic regime. On the other side of the world, the reigning Utah fundamentalists found themselves without an ideological lodestar amidst a war between the mightiest right-wing powers in Asia, giving pro-democracy Mormon opposition leaders the opportunity they needed to win this year’s elections, overcoming the typical obstacles of the fundamentalists put in their way. In Siberia, the studious work of Radio Free Eurasia and the Sakharov Centre has diminished opposition voices, partially by accommodating indigenous religious and cultural practices that helped split them off from Suzukian influence. This has brought a level of institutional security to the region matched only in mature democracies like India or Great Britain. Elsewhere in the world, new democratic movements are organizing on the downstream effects of the energy crisis and the Eurasia-Babylon War. The corrupt authoritarian ultranationalists in Nigeria have been rocked by energy and cost of living protests too big to be responded to by the typical brutish crackdown - instead, liberal-minded leaders have emerged and transformed the local technocratic-leaning Islamic teachers and students into a democratic movement, inspired by Afghanistan, Bengal, and Oman. In Indochina, folk religious movements are losing interest in neo-traditionalism and are increasingly instead seeing India’s religious democracy promotion as a viable alternative for their own context. Sporadic protests over government mishandling of energy supplies leading to a major fuel shortage were seized on by major Cao Dai leaders, causing Indochina to re-enact a national ban on the movement - though this may have only increased their salience as the leading faction opposing the government. The blue wave also bridged outside of religious groups to near-democracies like Anatolia and the Southern Republic, where elites moderated their tone this year. The leftist Kurdish-Armenian party is popular even among Turks for their heroic defiance of Babylon, and many in the party see an advantage in shifting from socialist democracy to social democracy so as to curry favour with India, a regional player who might help Anatolia regain lost lands. In the Southern Republic, top Dixiecrats have started moderating their positions under the new presidential administration, which replaced the old virulently anti-Rainbow leadership that failed so spectacularly to thwart Rainbow disruption. The Southern Republic has long gerrymandered its elections to favour white supremacists and reactionaries, but now that moderate nationalists are in-charge, they might see more benefit to liberalizing reforms that could align their government with India, with whom they already partner on armaments production. This global democracy wave off the back of an energy crisis and the Babylon-Eurasia war has yet to be named but its legacy will also be measured at least in-part by the anti-democratic reaction: already alarm bells are ringing in the halls of power among India’s ideological enemies. The war of ideas is not over, and a lasting victory will not be measured in years but decades.
Changes:

new Front: The Reaction
opposition becomes government: Utah’s liberal democratic Mormons and non-Mormon Christians
government becomes opposition: Utah’s pan-Christian hardliners
opposition changes: Afghanistan’s rural Islamist insurgents flip from black to blue
opposition changes: Indochina’s Cao Dai acolytes flip from grey to blue
opposition changes: Nigeria’s Islamic teachers and students flip from tan to blue
defunct opposition: indigenous Siberians and environmental radicals
new World Fact: some of Anatolia’s Kurdish-Armenian leftists are moderating policy and rhetoric away from socialist democracy to social democracy
new World Fact: top-level Southern Republic Dixiecrats are moderating policy and rhetoric around apartheid policies
new country tag: Siberia is Secure

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Bratva :

Spoiler 2006 :

Spoiler 2004 :

Spoiler 2003 :

Bratva (Super Eurasia Social Control Front):
New Events:

Eurasia: rolled 12, hard success. +1 FP for auditing the mob

The war on guns has expanded in Eurasia to a war on the Russian mafia this year. The top Eurasian strongmen decided not to send law enforcement after these criminals, nor use their widely rumoured connections to the Russian mafia among their intelligence services, but instead opted to hand the task over to accountants and civil service bureaucrats. Although some attempts to audit the mafia as instructed from the strongmen were made at the start of the year that fizzled out, the Eurasian civil service is one of the most agile in the world and developed a couple trick-shot avenues of approach that will at least mitigate the Bratva if not eliminate it. First the administration put further pressure on government officials who could be more realistically audited and targeted for corruption, which helped remove a lot of bad apples with criminal connections to the state outside the arms trade. Second, the civil service got the government to approve a wide ranging package of social policies aimed at reducing crime, from support for neighbourhood watches to partially decriminalizing prostitution to targeted welfare for families at high-risk of criminality. These efforts however ran up against multiple problems outside of the civil service’s scope of expertise, including more mafia-linked assassinations that have made working for the civil service a life-threatening job. The other major headache has hit Eurasia at the heart of its politics, as the regional strongman in-charge of Poland decried being prejudicially targeted by the civil service and has made public statements hinting at the possibility he might raise the spectre of Polish independence if the national bureaucracy doesn’t stop picking away at his subordinates and his other corrupt dealings.
Changes:

the Eurasia stress “secessionists and nationalism” adds 2 Collapse Points
the Eurasia stress “inflexibility and corruption” adds 2 Collapse Points

Trajectory: Eurasian civil service agents will slowly but surely shrink the power of the Russian mafia through social policy and aggressive audits such that they become a relatively more marginal force than they are in the present by the end of the decade (2010).

Spoiler Make India Great Again :

Spoiler Global Reserve Currency :

Spoiler 2009 :

Spoiler 2002 :

Global Reserve Currency (Super Worldwide Economy Front):
New Actions:

India: rolled 15, hard success. +1 FP for monetary efforts representing Progress

Global investors have taken note of a combination of fiscal and monetary policies in India this year that appear aimed at establishing the rupee as the world’s most stable and reliable currency for central banks and international trade. Indian oil imports from Babylon, Eurasia, and to a lesser extent East Asian Indonesia, already helped build up a central bank reserve of rupees in three of the world’s foremost economies. The Indian government further cemented this trend by constitutionally reinforcing the independence of their central bank, which has begun to lower interest rates, promised a 2% inflation target, and is helping make Indian securities easily accessible to foreign buyers. Buzz among economic elites is making India’s central bank the most prestigious in the world, attracting both India’s best economists, as well as some from the former United States and Great Britain. India's open long-term currency strategy has nonetheless created problems in the short-term. Firstly, politicians in oil rich countries whose central banks are India’s first currency foothold have started promoting the idea of a new OPEC that could give them bargaining power against oil dependent countries like India. Secondly, transnational criminals have already begun to ramp up rupee counterfeiting, especially in the illegal drug production hubs like the Amazon, Afghanistan, and the rainforest borders between Southeast Asian countries. Thirdly, a strong rupee will ultimately make the cost of labour and goods made in India more expensive, which some forward-looking Indian companies have taken as their cue to begin planning industrial investments abroad in markets where labour will remain cheap.
Changes:

new Front: Petropolitics (see below)
new World Fact: criminals in the world’s three drug production hubs are ramping up rupee counterfeiting
new World Fact: Indian companies are planning to shift industrial investments abroad to low-wage labour markets
new World Fact: the Indian central bank is constitutionally protected from political interference

Trajectory: Years of effective monetary policy and a good reputation will position India's rupee as the global reserve currency in less than a decade (2009).

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Green Valley :

Spoiler 2009 :

Green Valley (Super Worldwide Science Front):
New Events:

East Asia wins the Front (14 out of 14 Front Points)

Monumental breakthroughs in solar, wind, lithium-ion battery, and electric vehicle technologies have come to fruition after decades of research and investment in East Asia. Cost reductions in the price of solar and wind have made these energy sources price competitive with coal, while battery costs have come down to a point where some fully electric vehicles manufactured in East Asia are price competitive with internal combustion engine models, at least when you consider costs over the lifetime of the vehicle. East Asia also unveiled its first battery storage power station, which although more expensive than peaker plants, is a proof of concept that with further improvements in efficiency could become a standard form of energy storage. These developments all emerged out of a dynamic tech hub in western Japan, the “Green Valley,” where National Champions and F11 universities collaborated intensively for the last half-decade in a renewed push to find ways around East Asia’s infamous degrowth policy. With commercially viable clean energy available in East Asia, other National Champions have been able to up investment into energy-intensive activities without fear of exceeding pollution limits. Despite these revolutionary achievements in science, to actually achieve an energy transition and escape degrowth the Green Valley will now need to consume vast quantities of raw materials, specifically copper, cobalt, and lithium, to produce the batteries, electric vehicles, and solar and wind components that will wind-down carbon emissions first in East Asia, then the world.
Changes:

the East Asia Stress “degrowth policy” loses 2 Collapse Points
new World Fact: the price of solar and wind is competitive with coal
new World Fact: lithium-ion battery costs are down sufficiently to make electric vehicles price competitive with internal combustion engine vehicles when accounting for life-time costs
new East Asian Power Centre: Green Valley
new Front: Electrostates

Spoiler 2003 :

Green Valley (Super Worldwide Science Front):
New Events:

East Asia: rolled 24, full success. +2 FP for investments in clean tech

East Asia’s raison d'être since Suzuki’s rise to power has been environmentalism, focusing the populous and developed nation’s industrial might and creative wits toward clean technologies well before the turn of the millennium. Even for the world’s foremost environmental power, the practical realities of clean technology have been challenging. Solar and wind power remain expensive, while nuclear power is unpopular (especially among environmentalists), forcing even East Asia to continue to rely on oil, gas, and coal for energy. Moreover, even cheap solar and wind would still have issues of regularity, as the modern battery remains unsuited to the job of grid-sized electrical storage. Mass transit and cycling are nice but no replacement for the automobile, for which a hydrogen or electric design that is cheap remains elusive, even if energy efficiency has eliminated urban smog. To solve these problems, a coterie of National Champions, F11 universities, and other laboratories and science bureaus have increasingly concentrated their resources into an integrated and dynamic clean tech hub in western Japan that has this year been dubbed the Green Valley, in honour of Silicon Valley in North America. The economic integration is a self-conscious effort on the part of the economic managers and elite of East Asian society to bring the cost of clean tech production down in three key areas so that they compete with their fossil fuelled competitors on international markets: (a) solar and wind for energy production, (b) electric vehicle for transportation, and (c) lithium-ion batteries for energy storage. Although this does not solve the emissions problem inherent to other fields (aviation, shipping, cement, chemicals, etc.) it is a powerful first step.
Changes:

n/a (changes will take place when the Front succeeds)

Trajectory: In a little less than a decade East Asia will have consolidated a Power Centre in the form of the Green Valley, which will hawk its clean tech wares on international markets at costs competitive with their rival fossil fuel tech versions (2009).

Spoiler Golden Crescent :

Spoiler 2008 :

Spoiler 2005 :

Golden Crescent (Regional Afghanistan Espionage Front):
New Changes:

Babylon: rolled 12.8, hard success. +1 FP for cartel covert ops

Afghanistan has been rocked this year by political killings, terror attacks, and rare gang violence that the ageing Afghan dictator, Daud Khan, blames on covert operatives from Babylon. Afghanistan asserts, among other crimes, that Babylon has infiltrated the government with moles and informants, sent hitmen to murder uncooperative local officials, is instigating gangsterism, and has even violated Afghan airspace and sovereignty in secret helicopter night raids across the border from bases in Persia. Although the Afghan government wouldn’t provide an explanation for why Babylon would carry out these operations, the foreign press were quick to notice a pattern: the few Afghan officials caught and charged with treason were known to be heavily involved in the Afghan drug trade. Babylon, for its part, has admitted to “border patrol” activities in Persia to “combat al-Qaeda.” Combined with the unusual outbreak of gang violence and an uptick in drug smuggling-related counterintelligence inside Babylon and its client states (which serve as a major route for traffickers to get to Europe), foreign journalists believe the Babylonian efforts are directed at obtaining a decisive influence over the “Golden Crescent” drug hub, which if successful, would give Babylon extraordinary leverage over the Afghan state. For decades the secular Khan dictatorship has neglected to enforce its laws against the drug trade on an informal social contract with the vast majority of farmers who cultivate poppy, as well as the traffickers who move the product: as long as you sell your goods abroad and the state gets its share of the proceeds, you get to keep breaking the law. This has resulted in Afghanistan becoming a near total worldwide monopoly on opium production, comprising the country’s most profitable sector and the bulk of state revenues. The Afghan government has also warned its people that Babylon may be preparing for yet another war of conquest, and has slated several light mobilization efforts, from increasing the age and duration of conscription to new arms purchases, paying for these while it still has control of opium revenues. Islamist-fundamentalist fighters in Afghanistan, who despise both Babylon and the Khan dictatorship and have never relied on opium (zealously punishing farmers for cultivating it wherever they can), are well positioned to begin a new insurgency should the Afghan state’s revenue from the drug trade be abruptly cut off. Meanwhile, problems have also emerged on the Persian side of the border, where another rebellious group, Suzukian-influenced rancher-farmers who are also opposed to opium production, have taken this moment of weakness among the gang-affiliated farmers and the Persian puppet regime to begin a campaign of violent land seizures in the name of redistribution and environmental restoration.
Changes:

new World Fact: the Afghan government’s budget largely relies on opium production and exports
new World Fact: Afghanistan is hardening itself in anticipation of a Babylonian invasion
new World Fact: Afghan Islamist fighters are preparing for a renewed insurgency against the Afghan government
new World Fact: Persian Suzukian-influenced rancher-farmers are violently seizing lands from drug cartel-affiliated farmers

Trajectory: Babylon will violently carve out a loyal network of traffickers with connections to opium farmers across Afghanistan and Persia, displacing Afghanistan from control of the Opium Cartel Power Centre by 2008. Moreover, the Opium Cartel Power Centre will also have the "crime" capability associated with it.

Spoiler Bengali Reconstruction :

Spoiler 2008 :

Bengali Reconstruction (Regional Bengal Economy Front):
New Events:

India wins the Front (4 out of 4 Front Points)

Years of extremely low-grade proxy conflict in Bengal have ended in yet another partition on the sub-continent. Ever since the 2004 cyclone, the Bengali national legislature has been effectively irrelevant due to gridlock between the ultranationalists and the Islamists, who each carved out their own military spheres in the northern interior and the coastal regions of the country in the aftermath of that disaster. Finally done with the legal farce, the moderate Islamists of the coast, who support India, declared their intention to form a constitutional assembly and create an Islamic Republic of Bengal. The pro-Hindustan “Aryan socialists” of the interior of the country subsequently promised their own assembly for a Democratic People’s Republic of Bengal. The dual state-formation efforts have fast tracked the partition of Bengal into two separate states inside the sphere of two competing powers, one for India and the other for Hindustan. Although each government nominally claims the territory of the other, both new regimes agreed to a long-term ceasefire late in the year and promised to respect the line of control that hadn’t changed in years anyway. This is a thankful outcome, as both factions possessed some portion of the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile, and an escalation could have proved a tragedy of unprecedented proportions. Both governments had also promised to eradicate al-Qaeda, and convincingly demonstrated this year that although there were some connections to al-Qaeda among fundamentalists in the early 2000s, the organization’s presence has shrunk and it certainly does not have a headquarters in either of the two states. Hindustani state media have praised the victorious people’s revolution in Bengal for reversing the counter-revolutionary forces there and have hinted at the possibility of absorbing DPR Bengal in the future. Indian politicians also loudly declared the success of Prime Minister Mallikarjun Kharge’s democratization strategy in the Islamic world, which seems increasingly consolidated as a distinct bloc, buying him some political capital at home in the often stalled parliament.
Changes:

India controls the Islamic Movement Power Centre
defunct NPC: Bengal
new NPC: IR Bengal
new NPC: DPR Bengal
defunct World Fact: Bengal has a few nuclear missiles
new World Fact: DPR Bengal has a few nuclear weapons
new World Fact: IR Bengal has a few nuclear weapons
defunct opposition: pan-Indian neo-traditionalists
defunct opposition: Muslim religious fanatics
new government in IR Bengal: pro-Hindustan Aryan socialists (grey)
new government in DPR Bengal: moderate Islamists (blue)
the India Stress “gridlock and backsliding” loses 1 Collapse Points
the Front “Indian Tensions” loses 0.75 Collapse Points

Spoiler 2005 :

Bengali Reconstruction (Regional Bengal Economy Front):
New Changes:

India: rolled 13, hard success. +1 FP for aid-influence operations

In a throwback to the Cold War, communist Hindustan and capitalist India are competing for influence with foreign aid, this time in the unstable breakaway region formerly held by Hindustan: Bengal. At the start of the year, India announced it would channel billions of pounds worth of humanitarian aid to Bengal for the purposes of reconstruction in the aftermath of last year’s disastrous tropical cyclone season. Not more than a week after, Hindustan also announced its own substantial “aid” package to Bengal. At first celebrated as a great victory for peace and cooperation on the subcontinent, the twin aid programs were slowly understood over the course of the year for what they actually are: cash flows to groups within Bengal favoured by the two respective states. The Indian aid, from the treasury as well as charitable organizations and philanthropic billionaires, boosted a minor sub-faction of moderate Islamists to the centre of Bengal’s politics, gaining millions of followers on the back of Qardh-ul Hasan (benevolent loans) for reconstruction as well as charity for displaced Bengalis, mainly in Bangladesh and Orissa. These Islamists promote the idea of an “Islamic republic” with some resemblance to the late Islamic Republic of Iran, and have promised to fight al-Qaeda and expunge them from the country. Thanks to Indian help, the moderates are starting to dominate not just the politics of the religious right, but also the wider Muslim diaspora networks where even open Muslim liberals can be found from time to time. Hindustani aid meanwhile was much less obviously benevolent, directed towards an ultranationalist tendency of “Aryan socialists'' who espouse an esoteric racialist vision of pan-Indian statism - a fusion of the caste system, racism, and Hindustani-style central planning. These Aryan socialists are on a path to dominate provincial politics in the interior regions, which in Bengal are the only politics that matter due to gridlock at the national level and a totally politicized and bifurcated military along factional lines. In effect, Bengal’s politics have simultaneously become more acceptable to both Hindustan and Bengal, and also remain just as fractious, with the national legislature increasingly ignored while the two factions build-up their influence inside the provinces. Both factions have accused the other of not just taking aid but also weapons from their respective patrons, while the Indian press has sounded the alarm on photographs showing Hindustani soldiers inside Bengal’s territories assisting the Aryan socialists directly - a shocking reversal given Hindustan was in a civil war with Bengal more than a decade ago. Bengal appears to be on the verge of formally breaking in two in the near future, this time between the Hindu-majority areas controlled by Aryan socialists, and the Muslim-majority areas controlled by moderate Islamists. Another partition might be a best case scenario too, as the Bengali nuclear arsenal is divided between military units loyal to each faction, and a peaceful partition could avoid forcing either India or Hindustan to intervene militarily to prevent the other’s preferred faction from assuming total control of the country. As for the actual aid itself, while much of it appears to be siphoned off to political patronage networks, at least some of the Indian aid has successfully ended up rebuilding destroyed infrastructure and housing, helping stem the flow of refugees and migrants across their border.
Changes:

new World Fact: Bengal’s ultranationalist faction is getting captured by pro-Hindustan Aryan socialists
new World Fact: Bengal’s Islamist faction is getting captured by moderates interested in an Islamic republic

Trajectory: Bengal will partition into a moderate Islamist coastal theocratic republic (black) and an ultranationalist pro-Hindustan state (grey) within a few years (2008), while also conferring control of the Islamic Movement Power Centre to India.

Spoiler Italian Autos :

Spoiler 2008 :

Spoiler 2005 :

Italian Autos (Middle Italy Economy/Science Front):
New Changes:

East Asia: rolled 15, hard success. +1 FP for automotive collaboration

East Asia’s Nissan Group has barely kept alive a tumultuous new business partnership with the network of recently privatized Italian car companies, the Fiat Group, which operate inside a country still partially occupied by Austrian soldiers and run by post-communist authoritarians. Although at first a simple scientific exchange that would help Fiat develop hybrids and electric vehicles, differing worldviews and personality clashes between Italian oligarchs and East Asian executives and scientists caused the partnership to break down over its first six months. Unwilling to compromise, Suzukian leaders at Nissan tried a number of aggressive avenues they were ill equipped to carry out, including a hostile takeover, industrial espionage, and lawsuits in the technocratic Italian state. Nissan’s influence operation was saved by a local media oligarch, Silvio Berlusconi, who, attracted by the opportunity to snipe at a rival, launched a journalistic crusade that uncovered money laundering and sexual misconduct among intransigent Fiat executives and their patrons. The scandal helped Nissan secure the support of the lesser oligarchs and together they have agreed to replace the board of directors and CEO by early next year, putting Fiat on the path to an environmentally conscious leadership. The messy East Asian intervention is not without problems however; removal and isolation of Berlusconi’s and East Asia’s rivals from the firm have gutted it of significant expertise. Moreover, Fiat’s reputation, earned during the communist period when the automotive group operated one of the most dynamic industrial enterprise networks of the entire Soviet Union, has also taken a hit. Finally, all this local attention has spurred the Italian authoritarians into auditing the company and reviewing East Asian influence, which not only frustrates East Asia’s ability to cooperate with Fiat, but could in-theory be used to develop a case for barring Nissan’s involvement altogether.
Changes:

the Fiat Group Power Centre’s Proficiencies are reduced by half
the Front’s Target Number is increased from 2 to 4
new World Fact: the Italian state is auditing and reviewing Nissan’s involvement in Fiat Group

Trajectory: East Asia will have commanding influence over a weakened Fiat Group by 2008.

Spoiler Death of Reagan :

Spoiler 2008 :

Death of Reagan (Middle California Social Control Front):
New Events:

Union of States wins the Front (4 out of 4 Front Points)
Font Collapses (4 out of 4 Collapse Points), coin flipped to decide the new government (heads = neo-traditionalists maintain power, tails = leftists seize power): tails

The Reagans fled California as protestors stormed government buildings and seized the streets of every major city, ending a multi-decade political dynasty and inaugurating the world’s second successful Rainbow Revolution. Years of activism had radicalized the formerly peaceful liberal opposition elements into a hardened revolutionary movement, shifting from primarily white urban professionals to a diverse Rainbow coalition. Proving the effectiveness of the Rainbow model of revolution, persistent mass demonstration and civil disobedience was combined with a network of vanguardist agitators that collectively overwhelmed police with their numbers, and even convinced many law enforcers of the justness of the Rainbow cause (or perhaps at least the inevitability of its success). With the police and army turning on the Reagan family, and their offices being stormed, the Reagans took a flight to Texas, apparently at the expense of shadowy libertarian fundamentalist billionaires. The rest of the Reagan cronies crumbled, with little ideological glue to hold them together against the almost total societal opposition. With the last three months of the year the Rainbow revolutionaries threw together a constitutional assembly that declared the Third California Republic and announced elections for next year that everyone expects to be won in a landslide by the Rainbow Party. The energy on the left is electric, and closer economic and political ties to the Union of States is assured, but disagreements are wide ranging, from whether to pull California out of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), whether to petition to join the Union of States or remain independent, and what to do about the crimes of the Reagan regime, the police, and the military. Odds are that such questions will take a long time to sort out while basic social and economic reconstruction takes place, leaving the status quo (e.g. participation in the MIC, independence) in-place, unless of course something changes in world affairs. At the very least, the economic re-connection of California to the Union of States will alleviate some of the Union’s economic woes.
Changes:

defunct opposition: democratic opposition activists
defunct government: Reagan-worship business authoritarians
new government: Rainbow revolutionaries
defunct dictator: Michael E. Reagan
new World Fact: California’s new government is debating whether to join the Union of States and/or leaving the MIC, dependent on the course of world events
the Union of States Stress “capital flight and economic chill” loses 1 Collapse Points

Spoiler 2005 :

Death of Reagan (Middle California Social Control Front):

New Changes:

Union of States: rolled 15, hard success. +1 FP for radicalization

The ongoing unrest in California abruptly shifted tone this year, with the hitherto peaceful liberal opposition endorsing substantially more radical tactics and messaging. This coincided fortuitously for the opposition with a shift in policy from President Michael Edward Reagan himself, who began the year by releasing thousands of political prisoners, relaxing censorship, and trying to brand as a gentler Reagan. The brief reduction in state oppression was quickly reversed by late summer, after the popular opposition protest movement not only continued, but exploited the less intense censorship to popularize not just liberal demands for elections, press rights, and freedom of speech, but also radical demands for the abolition of the police, reparations to minorities, and calls for a California-wide labour strike. The watershed moment came after a group of protestors fired back at police in Los Angeles in July, later claimed by California to have been instigated by Black Panther agents from the Union of States. By then the damage had already been done, with a renewed energy on the left for movement building toward a mass strike and a revolution, further inspired and energized by the news of Caribbean liberation from the Southern Republic after their own protest movement and semi-armed struggle. Although liberals, progressives, and socialists remain united together by-and-large, union organizing, mutual aid, and left-wing gun clubs are proliferating and outpacing the old liberal civil society organizations. Reversing his “gentle” course in August, President Michael Reagan declared a state of emergency and has ramped up efforts to contain the protest movement, while making calls to other North American nations for help in fighting foreign interference emanating from the Union of States. Perhaps a few years ago such calls would be but bluster ignored by serious diplomats, but by late this year a flurry of high-level meetings were taking place or being scheduled between ministers and ambassadors from California, Utah, the Southern Republic, New England, Texas, and even Quebec and Buffalo-Caribou. One outcome of these discussions, which are ongoing, were three separate new laws in New England, Utah, and Texas aimed at hardening their border with the Union of States and increasing powers to law enforcement and counterintelligence agencies. Regardless of these discussions, the Reagan administration is running the very high risk of falling apart, which may occur in a matter of years.
Changes:

new World Fact: New England, Utah, and Texas are hardening their societies to foreign mass movement influence on lessons learned from California and the Southern Republic
new Front: A North America Treaty Organization? (see below)

Trajectory: The liberal opposition (blue) will fully convert into a pro-Union of States leftist opposition (pink) in a few years (2008), moreover social tensions will erupt and a coin flip (50/50) will decide if the then-leftist opposition takes power or Reagan stabilizes the situation.

Spoiler 2004 :

Spoiler Poor Southern Campaign :

Spoiler 2008 :

Spoiler 2003 :

Poor Southern Campaign (Regional Southern Republic Espionage/Social Control Front):
New Events:

Union of States: rolled 12, hard success. +1 FP for poor white dissidence

The red hot rhetoric wildly spewing forth out of the Southern Republic somehow managed to get even more apocalyptic this year in the wake of what they allege to be further agitation efforts by the Union of States. Several alleged “agents” of the Union of States have been captured in high-profile and well-publicized arrests, sometimes so well publicized News Corp-affiliated film crews live-broadcasted raids alongside cooperating law enforcement. The international press however perked up to the hyperbolic assertions when a Southern mutual aid group rushed in to help those affected by an accident in an Appalachian coal mine, and soon thereafter saw the mine unionize. When the President of the Southern Republic reinstated military conscription, there was a wave of conscientious objectors, almost all poor whites, whose legal advocacy support appears to have been partially funded by the same mutual aid network. These incidents have been noted by the foreign press as evidence that the government’s grip over its lower class is slipping. Nonetheless, conscription and the slow building conflict in the Caribbean is portrayed by the Southern Republic as an attempt to deter the Union of States, whom the Southern Republic has this year begun to baselessly accuse of planning to invade. In an additional important development, white supremacist and evangelical groups in the Union of States itself have also become activated in the increasingly tense milieu. White supremacists seized and declared independence on behalf of a few square kilometres in Pennsylvania where a farm and a historic barracks are located - a few days into the siege they were killed by Union forces. More successfully, Jerry Falwell and other popular televangelists and radiovangelists have operated huge legally grey rallies in rural and conservative parts of the Union of States against the government and for de-escalating tensions with the Southern Republic. These god-fearing rallies have unnerved officials in the Union of States as they have quickly realized through their extensive system of mass communication and legitimation that these evangelicals are popular among a wide swath of the country’s rural whites.
Changes:

notes: this action was almost too similar to the previous action to be counted as “qualitatively distinct”; be careful with future orders in the Southern Republic that use Espionage as I am liable to consider them invalid since two separate and similar actions using Espionage have been undertaken now
defunct World Fact: Southern whites (whether Appalachian or Dixie) are being whipped into an anti-Rainbow Republic jingoistic frenzy
the Union of States stress “forces of reaction” adds 4 Collapse Points, triggering an escalation in the form of a new short-term Stress: Great Awakening

Trajectory: A pink opposition will emerge in the Southern Republic’s mainland territories composed of rural Appalachians and poor southern whites organized through unions, mutual aid groups, and other social organizations, within half a decade (2009).

Spoiler Military-Industrial Complex :

Spoiler 2008 :

Spoiler 2001 :

Military-Industrial Complex (North America Super Economy Front):
New Actions:

India: rolled 21, full success. +2 FP for integration efforts representing Progress
East Asia: rolled 16, soft success. +1 FP for poaching efforts representing Regress

Both India and East Asia this year attempted to save the old American arms industry from rusting away. Indian companies and economic elite rallied resources toward the re-integration of each constituent of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC). The Indian government and Indian arms manufacturers placed a flood of new orders to restart production in California, Utah, Texas, the Southern Republic, and New England, creating new business partnerships and bringing in investment. Initially skeptical, these ex-American states were relieved and impressed to see that the Indian strategy involved boosting their own economies, easing both anti-democratic and, in the Southern Republic’s case, racist attitudes toward the Indian overtures. The robust effort has put people back to work at Textron, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and many other firms. Indian businesses found some stiff competition from East Asian universities, the Nissan Group, and the most integral core of the East Asian state itself, the Socialist Association of Science and Technology, which seized on the weak pay, job insecurity, and general malaise in the American arms industry to poach engineers and scientists out of North America to noticeably more lucrative opportunities in East Asia. The academic poaching campaign faced a number of obstacles, from the lack of Japanese or any other East Asian language proficiency among potential targets, to the sizable ideological gulf between average MIC workers and the state ideology of East Asia. These were overcome, at least for the time being, firstly by promises of high salaries and interesting, cutting edge work. These salaries, it turns out, had to be well above the normal distribution for East Asia in-order to beat North American standards and to a lesser extent Indian offers. Moreover, interesting cutting-edge positions have put Americans in important and desired research jobs. These two policies have created resentment among domestic East Asian scientists and engineers who covet the higher pay and have had to watch Americans take spots on the next rung of the career ladder. These tensions are further exacerbated by the MIC workers and scientists stubbornly refusing to integrate, whether that be learning an East Asian language or respecting the socialist society’s norms (and sometimes laws) against bad-mouthing East Asian industrial standards and its form of government.
Changes:

new World Fact: American MIC workers are frustrating East Asia-born colleagues due to their comparatively high pay, prestigious placement, unwillingness to integrate, and anti-government speech
new World Fact: the economies of California, Utah, Texas, the Southern Republic, and New England are getting a growth boost from Indian arms orders and MIC integration

Trajectory: India will fully revitalize and integrate the Military-Industrial Complex of the former United States into its own arms industry in less than a decade (2008) creating a new Power Centre spread between India and the ex-American states, East Asia will have poached a notable cohort of aerospace and armaments engineers in that time (World Fact) and gain 1 XP for losing the contest.

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Soviet Civil War :

Spoiler 2008 :

Spoiler 2007 :

Spoiler 2006 :

Soviet Civil War (Super Europe Espionage Front):
New Events:

Union of States: rolled 3, failure. -1 FP for arms shipments
India: rolled 24, full success. +2 FP for arms shipments

The Rainbow Republic’s “Arsenal of Liberation” went head-to-head with India’s “Arsenal of Democracy” this year, with both governments extending war materiel to their favoured factions in the Soviet Civil War. Beginning at the top of the year in January, India and the Union of States began their separate arms shipment plans, India using Great Britain as a staging area and the Union of States moving goods via nervous civilian cargo ships passing through Royal Navy-controlled waters before reaching the Soviet-controlled Baltic. The Indian alliance with Britain, combined with its budding military-industrial complex in the post-American states, put it only modestly ahead of the Rainbow Republic’s aid to the Red Army for the first half of the year. The Tories in Great Britain went ahead of their ally in summer, emboldened by their previous successful blockade of the French ultranationalists back in 2001, and extended the blockade to the English Channel and the North Sea in-general, seizing several Union of States’ affiliated ships full of weapons, as they did previously to the Eurasians. This has left only the Austrians and the Latin technocrats with access to foreign arms, and even these are meagre at best due to the nearly complete dismantling of the European illegal arms market by Eurasia. Although the Red Army and the French ultranationalists still have the nuclear ace up their sleeve, a pall of defeat has begun to sweep over both of these two factions. With the prospect of a democratic victory in the conventional war becoming increasingly obvious, the war-weary public in Berlin and Paris are also showing signs of agitation in public resistance to their respective governments. Their leaders moreover may fear even swifter defeat should they use nuclear weapons against their fellow countrymen, with the German Democratic Movement increasingly multi-national in character. Once the French and Soviet forces collapse, their nuclear stockpiles will be held by the democrats, who will also have a decisive conventional advantage, making the defeat of the neo-traditional Austrians and the technocratic Italo-Occitans inevitable. Contrary to all expectations, it seems now as if Western Europe will not descend into a nuclear cataclysm or disintegrate into four or five new sovereign states, but may yet end its now fifteen year-long war without too much more bloodshed.
Changes:

this Front’s target number is lowered from 10 to 6
new World Fact: Great Britain is enforcing a military blockade against the Red Army
+1 XP for the Union of States

Trajectory: The German Democratic Movement will reunify France, Germany, and Italy into a post-Soviet liberal capitalist democracy within three years of fighting (2008). This state will become a Great Power and India will be allowed to decide who gets to play it.

Spoiler 2002 :

Spoiler 2001 :

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Persian Farmers' War :

Spoiler 2007 :

Persian Farmers' War (Middle Persia Warfare/Espionage Front):
New Events:

Babylon: rolled 21, full success. +2 FP for crushing Suzukian resistance

Babylon abruptly pivoted its military yet again this year, shifting attention to its client state in Persia. That corrupt and widely despised puppet regime, with a military staffed full of embezzlers who abandon their posts at the first sign of trouble, depends entirely on Babylon for stability - stability that had recently come under renewed assault due to land seizures by rebellious Suzukian farmers that began two years ago. Although public information is scarce, open-source intelligence groups slowly cobbled together evidence over the course of the year of a massive air campaign and counter-insurgency ground offensive that had practically levelled every shed east of Tehran, foreclosed every university, and had putatively put 1-5 million Persians in internment camps. Babylonian media acknowledged the war by November, whereupon they immediately celebrated a victory against “Turkestani-supported Suzukian terrorists” and “al-Qaeda.” It may take many years for scholars to truly understand the scale of violence deployed in Persia in 2007, though it appears many were spared by Saddam’s mercy, especially for those who gave up arms, confessed early, or openly collaborated with the invasion forces. Many of these collaborators now appear to be owners of estates redistributed to them from interned rebels in a neo-feudal loyalty scheme. Most regular workers in manufacturing as well as oil and gas industries, including members of the world-renowned Society of Geotechnical Expertise, were left alone, while the universities, after severe purges, have been reopened under new management. Saddam’s military has already handed off maintenance of the new totalitarianism to Babylonian bureaucrats and a less venal class of Persian collaborators, freeing the troops from costly occupation duties and establishing a new and perhaps permanent state of neo-traditional hierarchy and control in Persia.
Changes:

defunct World Fact: Persian Suzukian-influenced rancher-farmers are violently seizing lands from drug cartel-affiliated farmers
new World Fact: Persian society is effectively and near-totally controlled by Babylonian imported secret police and bureaucrats alongside terrified collaborators

Spoiler Galicia Question :

Spoiler 2007 :

Spoiler 2005 :

Spoiler Land of Opportunity :

Spoiler War on Terror :

Spoiler 2007 :

Spoiler 2004 :

War on Terror (Regional Islamic World Social Control/Espionage Front):
New Events:

Babylon & East Asia: rolled 14, hard success. +1 FP for counter-terror activities

The governments of East Asia and Babylon have jointly announced a multi-national “war on terror” across the Middle East and Asia this year. Their target: al-Qaeda. With the combined resources of Babylon and East Asia, numerous terror plots were foiled, though apparently at the concerning price of some build-up in non-fundamentalist popular resentment. The most dramatic of these terror plots would have involved the hijacking of two airliners in the Philippines bound for Tokyo, which were intended to target the tallest towers in the city. On a tip from Babylonian intelligence, the East Asian Ministry of Justice were able to catch the attackers at the airport. Both Babylon and East Asia have also permanently enacted new strict airport security measures to prevent future hijackings. Nonetheless al-Qaeda got off a few car bombings in Babylon and the Philippines, with the governments of both countries claiming to have thwarted several times more plots in Indonesia, Babylon, and among Babylon’s other client states. Recruitment to al-Qaeda was slowed in East Asia by the Islamic Congress, which united moderate Islamic preachers in condemning al-Qaeda and preventing youths from straying to fundamentalist thought, while top leadership inside Babylon and its client states were captured or killed by the Mushussu. The Ministry of Justice and the Mukhabarat also announced their findings about the potential location of al-Qaeda’s top leader and its main base of training, ruling out all but two countries, either Bengal or Arabia. For its part, al-Qaeda’s anti-colonial and anti-imperial propaganda, and the already pre-existing resentment of many people across both Babylon and East Asia, have dovetailed into something of an unspoken popular sympathy for al-Qaeda’s goals if not its methods, knowledge of which escapes outside the two restrictive countries through the foreign press. These journalists note that resentment towards Japan is high in Indonesia and the Philippines, especially among Muslims, and that al-Qaeda’s attempted attack against Tokyo was able to provoke unconcerned neutrality all the way to enthusiasm from everyday people interviewed. Meanwhile in Babylon, similar sentiments escaped into the foreign press from anonymous members of the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who have seized on some of the resentment to build their moderate Islamist anti-Babylonian membership.
Changes:

new World Fact: Babylon and East Asia employ strict airport security measures to prevent aircraft hijackings
the Babylon Stress “Egyptian Islamism” adds 2 Collapse Points
the East Asia Stress “anti-Japanese sentiment” adds 2 Collapse Points

Trajectory: Babylon and East Asia will stamp out al-Qaeda in both of their countries respectively, eliminating that terrorist organization from their own countries within a few years (2008) and making it much easier to curb fanatical Islamism; al-Qaeda will continue to terrorize other states and the Islamism & Jihadism Front’s collapse will cause terror attacks elsewhere, while the al-Qaeda Power Centre will continue to exist until al-Qaeda’s removal from its primary host country, which is either Bengal or Arabia

Spoiler Great Awakening :

Spoiler 2007 :

Spoiler 2004 :

Great Awakening (Regional Union of States Social Control/Administration Front):
New Events:

Union of States: rolled 19, soft success. +1 FP for religious social policy

The Union of States started several religious programs this year to combat extremism. The collection of social policies aim to privilege progressive churches over right-wing televangelists, as well as promote indigenous and neo-pagan religions in-place of Christianity. Without taking right-wing televangelists off the air through enforcement of the law, the Union of States has instead opted to surreptitiously deprioritize and undermine right-wing voices over left-wing ones, which has left the right-wing televangelists with only their most ardent audience members. Meanwhile progressives are seeing solid and continuous growth in ratings and viewer/listenership for their preachers, from Neo-Anabaptists to Episcopalians to a Sojourner (Jim Wallis) to others, who focus on Christ’s tolerance, charity, and universal love, his life of poverty, and more subtly Christ’s role as a proletarian carpenter and his teachings on communal property. The radio and television presence is accompanied by aggressive incentives for progressive churches to build and expand in-person, which is taking off more slowly. Although the strategy is mainly working, these progressive preachers do stray from the government line on some matters (like abortion); meanwhile leaving last year’s rally organizers free men has allowed them to continue movement building among the most ardent religious right-wingers - should the Union of States carry out another aggressive action against the Southern Republic, at least within the next few years, these still well-known televangelists will be positioned to spring into action again. As a secondary approach to progressive Christian social policy and institution-building, the Union of States is also cultivating old faiths and new faiths independent of Christianity, in-particular indigenous religious revival as well as neo-paganism. Indigenous groups have readily taken government incentives and affirmative action programs, with their ideas beginning to spread to hip non-indigenous non-industrial workers in major urban areas and to students and professors on university campuses. Meanwhile attempts to fuse together new faiths have resulted in an uptick in New Age beliefs on the west coast and diverse neo-paganism on the east coast, though both with concerning ideological deviation. For the west coast, New Age belief leans left-wing in character but state data collectors point out the concerning ease with which Suzukian messaging can work on this group. For the east coast, prominent neo-pagan biker gangs such as the Hells Angels based in Quebec and Ontario are thought to have many links among the newly forming neo-pagan religious groups between New York, Ohio, Ontario, and Michigan. Again, the groups outwardly display left-wing qualities like charity and solidarity, but their primarily young militant male base and potential connection to neo-traditionalists have state officials nervous over the currently dormant issue.
Changes:

new World Fact: neo-pagan and New Age movements are taking off in the Union of States, but are potentially susceptible to neo-traditional and Suzukian influence respectively
new W rld Fact: pro-Southern televangelists are prepared to organize mass rallies again should the Union of States interfere in the Southern Republic, at least until the Great Awakening Front closes

Trajectory: The Union of States will capture most of the popular Christian sentiment in progressive Christian churches and programming within a few years (2008), just in-time to prevent right-wing religious thought from consolidating into a long-term stress. Neo-pagan and indigenous religion will also be successfully promoted in a big way by that time.

Spoiler 2003 :

Spoiler Disaster Capitalism :

Spoiler 2007 :

Spoiler 2006 :

Spoiler Merchants of Death :

Spoiler 2007 :

Spoiler 2002 :

Merchants of Death (Super Europe Espionage Front):
New Actions:

Eurasia: rolled 18, soft success. +1 FP for anti-corruption activities

Corruption in Eurasian armouries and the Soviet Civil War helped make Eurasia the involuntary exporter of most of Europe’s black market guns by the end of the 1990s. These illegal armament flows create chaos at a time when the world desperately needs more order, or so say the various regional strongmen who have coordinated administrative resources towards a “war on guns.” The main vehicle for this push is an anti-corruption drive in the military, among the arms makers, and the national armouries, an effort which dramatically revealed the depths of corruption and links to the Russian mafia (Bratva) in these sectors of Eurasian society when state agents were found dead in their hotel rooms shortly after firing corrupt officials in one munitions depot in southwestern Ukraine. This was just the beginning of a criminal backlash against Eurasian agents, who nowadays wear body armour and travel with law enforcement, as the year was punctuated with random shootings, attempted assassinations, and even in one instance the sudden explosion of a munitions depot due to sabotage. Eurasian agents, apparently some of the most capable in Europe, are undeterred, and have even expanded the war on guns to co-operative anti-corruption and law enforcement in Babylonian occupied Marmara, Greece, and to a lesser extent, Zapadoslavia, Yugoslavia, and Romania. Although volatile, anti-arms trafficking efforts are expected to eliminate gun-running out of Eurasia and establish effective data tracking for other European states with an interest in stopping the flow of arms.
Changes:

new World Fact: criminal organizations are assassinating Eurasian anti-corruption agents

Trajectory: Eurasia will mostly eliminate the European illegal arms trade in a few years (2007), after which criminal violence against Eurasian state agents will subside. This will also balance the flow of arms favourably for the suffocating French ultranationalists, and negative Front Points will stop accruing to that Front at that time.

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Second Dot Com Boom :

Spoiler 2006 :

Spoiler 2001 :

Second Dot Com Boom (Super Worldwide Science/Economy Front):
New Actions:

Argentina: 18, soft success. +1 FP for entrepreneur immigration efforts representing Progress

The internet has had a rough first decade, limited largely to academics and wealthier people in cities next to a tech hub. Moreover the greatest place of IT innovation, Silicon Valley, suffers from its erratic dictator, who swings wildly from pro-business free market fanaticism to authoritarian anti-communist paranoia and censorship, the latter of which puts a chilling effect on businesses that don’t know what will or won’t be banned. This year Argentina extended a hand to the beleaguered founders languishing in California, poaching them to labs, universities, and companies around Buenos Aires. Many of these Californians switched out of their initial job offers at established Argentine companies and universities a few months after arrival to make independent startups in Buenos Aires, often co-founding with locals. Already they have created burgeoning contenders for the world’s best browser, the Silver Lance, and search engine, Microscopio. The unorthodox west coast culture of these immigrants has imbued the dot com boom in Argentina with their penchant for aggressively exploiting legal loopholes or legal grey areas to “disrupt” stable industries, create internet monopolies, avoid taxes, avoid regulations, avoid unionization, avoid respecting intellectual property, and generally continue the steady rise of income inequality. Moreover, the success in software has not been replicated by Argentine firms in the expansion of broadband, with the Spanish company Telefónica dominating the broadband revolution across Argentina and in other parts of the Spanish speaking world.
Changes:

new World Fact: immigrant American tech entrepreneurs are creating legally grey internet businesses that promote inequality
new World Fact: Argentine broadband and internet infrastructure depends on the Spanish telecom company Telefónica

Trajectory: Argentina will develop a globally unparalleled tech hub with Silicon Valley cultural quirks over the course of the next half decade (2006) creating a new Power Centre in Buenos Aires

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler A Special Relationship :

Spoiler 2006 :

Spoiler 2004 :

A Special Relationship (Regional Great Britain Administration Front):
New Events:

India: rolled 17, soft success. +1 FP for alliance formation

International speculation was abuzz as Indian and British diplomats intensified negotiations over a deal throughout the year. By fall the details emerged publicly: Great Britain and India would re-enter into a military alliance for the first time since 1962. Officially called the Millennium Defense and Mutual Assistance Alliance, the security partnership’s preamble waxes poetic about democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law. Its substantive articles promise mutual defence in the event of a foreign attack on either country, and grant mutual access to ports that would, in-practice, allow the Indian navy to operate out of Hong Kong, Singapore, the Caribbean, Maritime Canada, Cyprus, and of course the British Isles themselves. Although any outsider observer would see India as the senior partner in a bilateral relationship with Britain, the Tories have behaved brazenly confident of their equality and even on occasion implied their seniority to the Indians, who have taken the strategy of massaging the British ego to get the deal done. This has had the undesirable side effect of setting a British expectation about the security deal that it is supposed to be equally or even largely beneficial to Britain’s security interests, and may have ramifications for British willingness to participate in Indian adventures that don’t benefit Britain. In any case, the pact is expected to be signed next year, with officer exchanges, training programs, and joint exercises to begin thereafter. Civil-military collaboration and wider military harmonization that will allow the Indian and British navies to operate cohesively will then be another year out from completion.
Changes:

new World Fact: Britain’s participation in mutual military activities with India will be half-hearted unless it's clearly in their direct interest

Trajectory: India will cement a comprehensive military alliance with Britain and thereby obtain control of the Royal Navy Power Centre within three years (2006).

Spoiler Sahara Conflict :

Spoiler 2005 :

Spoiler 2002 :

Spoiler 2000 :

Spoiler Caribbean Resistance :

Spoiler 2005 :

Caribbean Resistance (Regional Caribbean Espionage Front):
New Changes:

Union of States wins the Front (4 out of 4 Front Points)

After decades of occupation and four years of overwhelming protest and violence, the Southern Republic finally pulled out of the Caribbean this year and negotiated independence. The Southern Republic’s violent crackdown in the Caribbean these last few years only triggered even more massive protests, forcing the army to carry out a wave of terror and violence that was met with bullets from Black Panthers and the riflemen they trained and armed. As the army suffered casualties, protests spread to poor whites and white students on the homefront, helping tank the President’s polling numbers, with most observers expecting his government to lose the next election to his political opponents. Those opponents are just as racist and jingoistic as the President, though they correctly point out that this is yet another South Africa (or India, or Algeria), and prolonging the inevitable only puts the Southern Republic in a state of vulnerability should the Union try an invasion. It was later revealed the Southern President began secret negotiations with the separatists as early as spring this year, which was nearly derailed by a coup plot by generals of the Southern Republic who were outed and caught. After speedy trials those generals were let off with light penalties, and the peace negotiations succeeded in granting independence to a Caribbean Federation, alongside various concessions to the Southern Republic about the economic rights of its white-owned businesses among other miscellany. Meanwhile, celebration broke out across the Union of States, where the liberation of the Caribbean is being upheld as a victory for humanity and the Union. The resounding defeat of the South, without ever firing a shot across the border, has also deflated the religious right's pro-Southern activism, which has petered out over the last year. Underground activity remains and could be reactivated, but the threat from the religious right is for now dormant.
Changes:

new NPC: Caribbean Federation
defunct opposition in the Southern Republic: multiracial social movement
short-term Stress "great awakening" resolved

Spoiler 2002 :

Caribbean Resistance (Regional Caribbean Espionage Front):
New Actions:

Union of States: rolled 14, hard success. +1 FP for Caribbean resistance support

American apartheid never ended in the South, which incorporated the occupation forces of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico in 1991. Movements for revolution and independence were regularly crushed by American invasions throughout the twentieth century which left behind only the toughest terrorists and the softest civil rights groups, the latter of which eschewed violence throughout 1990s. This strategy has made their cause massively popular, but totally failed to impress the white supremacist leadership of the Southern Republic, who continue a policy of brutal violence against dissidence in these three neo-colonies. This decades-old routine was upended this year when occupation forces, used to brutalizing peaceful demonstrators without incident, were surprised by gunmen in the crowd of a Havana protest. The ensuing massacre created a pile of at least one hundred bodies, some of which were later identified as members of the Black Panthers in the Union of States. The Havana massacre sparked a wave of armed protests across Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico, while hard-left terror organizations like the Los Macheteros have claimed bombing attacks against radio stations and other infrastructure. The mild demands for civil liberties have also been replaced by agitators with calls for full independence. The Southern Republic’s leadership has used the violence to fan the flames of racial animosity and paranoia against the Union of States, whom they immediately blamed for the unrest. The South further asserted, without evidence, that the Union of States was trying to sway poor whites to communism and had crossed the border into Appalachia to carry out terror attacks. Combined with jingoistic rallies opposing Caribbean independence and the Union of States, the widespread propaganda effort has blocked out alternative viewpoints from the white population of the South and anti-Union narratives have even energized white supremacist and evangelical groups in the Union of States itself. By the end of the year, the violent Southern response to the armed protests is already spiralling out of control, and should this continue for too long, a truly enormous wave of resistance like nothing the South has ever seen before may overwhelm their forces and compel them to withdraw.
Changes:

new World Fact: Southern whites (whether Appalachian or Dixie) are being whipped into an anti-Rainbow Republic jingoistic frenzy
the Union of States stress “forces of reaction” adds 4 Collapse Points

Trajectory: Mass protests will reach a crescendo so enormous that Southern occupation forces will have no choice but to withdraw in a matter of years (2005). This will create a loose federation of Caribbean states as a new NPC and a Power Centre out of veteran resistors influenced by the Union of States.

Spoiler Coronavirus :

Spoiler 2004 :

Coronavirus (Middle China Science Front):
New Events:

Front collapses (2 out of 2 Collapse Points)
Argentina: rolled 21, full success. +2 FP for disease control and research

Argentine universities, doctors, and pharmaceutical firms leaped into action at the behest of their government this year, flying halfway around the world to crush a disease whose lethality and virality was still unknown. They quickly established local connections among hospitals, doctors, and the Chinese pharmaceutical giants that helped smooth out the political obstacles posed by the anti-technocratic KMT government in the south. Together the Argentine and Chinese experts prepared a strategic disease control plan that slowed and reversed the spread of the virus, whose genome was genetically sequenced by Argentine scientists in spring and has become known in the press as “SARS” (formally SARS-CoV). The strategy worked, with only a couple cases identified outside of China that were quarantined, and a total of 6,000 people infected with about 400 deaths. The smashing success was heralded in the Chinese press, particularly in Shanghai and the east-central technocratic parts of the country, who praised the Argentinians for their scientific and managerial excellence, but also correctly identified the vital role of China Chem & Pharma Co, whose drug makers and drug design knowledge (stolen from East Asia) were necessary in-conjunction with Argentine expertise to prevent the SARS outbreak from turning into a national or even international pandemic.
Changes:

Front changes from Special to Middle challenge rating due to Collapse
new World Fact: Chinese experts and the Chinese press have a favourable view of Argentina due to their intervention against SARS
new Power Centre: China Chem & Pharma Co
Argentina controls China Chem & Pharma Co

Trajectory: Argentina crushes the coronavirus curve before it even breaks out of China, developing treatments and traditional flu vaccines that basically eliminate the virus by the end of the year (2004). The Chinese pharmaceuticals World Fact will evolve into an pro-Argentine Power Centre by that time as well.

Spoiler 2003 :

Spoiler Omani Ultimatum :

Spoiler 2004 :

Spoiler 2003 :

Omani Ultimatum (Regional Oman Warfare/Administration Front):
New Events:

Babylon & India: rolled 21, full success. +2 FP for compelling democratization

Babylon broke nearly a decades-long streak of successful neutrality for Oman this year when Saddam Hussein began another military mobilization in January. Babylon’s forces, still busy in Turkey, took the better part of a year to martial together a force that could tackle Oman, but were appearing poised to do so as offensives were finishing off in Turkey during summer. The Omani princes and their lethargic sultan panicked at the prospect of war, tossing around wild threats that they would mine the Strait of Hormuz to cut off Babylonian oil exports, which would plunge the world (including Babylon) into an unprecedented energy crisis. In this atmosphere of panic Indian negotiators swooped in and triaged Babylonian demands with Omani fears into a masterstroke of diplomacy: Babylon would leave Oman independent on the condition that their technocratically minded princes ceded power to a democratically elected parliament, and also cede a large stake in Oman’s oil wealth to the Mesopotamian Petroleum Corporation (India would also take a share). Finalized in August, Oman arranged for a constituent assembly and the sultan approved a democratic constitution, with national elections scheduled for next year. The student movement and liberal-minded civil service have taken centre-stage in the fast-action political liberalization.
Changes:

n/a (changes will take place when the Front succeeds)

Trajectory: Next year (2004) the democratic consolidation will wrap up with liberal students and reform-minded officials (blue) becoming the government and technocratically-minded princely elites (tan) becoming the opposition. Since the princely elites operate the Gulf Forum Power Centre and this Front could/should be able to decide its fate, Babylon and India can, as a free action taken jointly, assign the Gulf Forum to either one of themselves - if they cannot agree, it will remain unassigned to any Great Power. This decision must be made before the completion of the Front (i.e. this turn).

Spoiler Babylon-Turkey War :

Spoiler 2003 :

Spoiler 2002 :

Spoiler 2001 :

Babylon-Turkey War (Regional Turkey Warfare Front):
New Actions:

Babylon: rolled 15, hard success. +1 FP for the invasion of Turkey representing Progress
Union of States: rolled 14, hard success. +1 FP for arms shipments representing Regress

In a decisive 24 hours, as Babylon’s Mediterranean Fleet reached the Bosporus, the Turkish neo-Ottoman officers attempted a coup in Ankara and Istanbul against the left-wing Kurdish-Armenian-led Democracy and Labour Party (DEP). The coup was supported by Babylonian missile strikes but met unexpected resistance from a large contingent of the republican-conservative Turkish military, which sided with the DEP due at least in-part to what was later discovered to have been secret signals of support from the Union of States in the days preceding the Babylonian move on the Bosporus. The illusion of a quick victory was dispelled within hours as Babylonian and Turkish forces squared off outside the Dardanelles and over Anatolian skies. Suddenly afraid the neo-Ottomans would fail to secure Turkey’s small nuclear arsenal, Babylon struck out with missiles all over the country in the desperate and barely successful effort to knockout Turkey’s nukes that came at the great cost of activating a vast patriotic upswell from the Turkish people in support of the DEP. Over the following week, the pro-Babylon neo-Ottoman officers secured Istanbul and its surroundings, saw a wave of defections from the Turkish military to their cause, and declared the recreation of the Sublime Ottoman State, which is being run as a military junta while they petition the childless Ertuğrul Osman, head of the Osmanoğlu dynasty, to return to Turkey from his quaint apartment in Manhattan. Backed by the anti-Babylon portion of the Turkish military as well as arms shipments from the Union of States via Yugoslavia and the Mediterranean, the DEP rallied Turks, Kurds, and Armenians alike with calls to defeat the invader and defend their multinational republic. Over the rest of the year, Babylon executed a full-scale war, routing the Turkish navy, securing the Bosporus, accepting the surrender of numerous defecting Turkish units, and making gains across south-central Turkey, but failing to achieve air supremacy against the veteran Turkish Air Force, and stalling on all fronts due to well supplied and armed enemy forces. The Babylonians also made zero headway past the mountains of eastern Turkey where Kurdish and Armenian guerrillas are preparing for yet another long insurgency should the west fall. The provision of American arms is tenuous, relying thus far on the difficulty of distinguishing between non-military and military vessels, and the occupation of the Babylonian navy in fighting the Turkish navy and supporting a complex invasion of the Bosporus. Moreover, the Rainbow Republic’s “Arsenal of Liberation” is finite and will eventually deplete to levels that would put them in jeopardy should another conflict arise. Neighbouring governments have issued a mix of responses. Ultranationalist Greece has been unusually muted given their oft-stated territorial demands against Turkey, perhaps waiting on a Great Power to promise them something, Yugoslavia is openly accepting a wave of Turkish refugees and letting American arms freely flow through its borders, while Great Britain has issued a strongly worded letter condemning the Babylonian invasion and reminding Babylon that they will defend the Commonwealth realms of Cyprus and Rhodes if provoked.
Changes:

defunct World Fact: Turkey has a few nuclear missiles
new World Fact: the Turkish people are hostile toward Babylonian invaders and are patriotically mobilized in support of the DEP
new World Fact: the armed forces of Turkey have splintered between neo-Ottomans and republicans who fight on opposite sides of the Babylon-Turkey War
new World Fact: Kurdish and Armenian guerrillas control eastern Turkey and are preparing to fight an asymmetric conflict
new World Fact: the Babylon-Turkey War has created a wave of Turkish refugees, which are largely leaving to Yugoslavia, where they are openly accepting them
new World Fact: the Union of States is provisioning the Turkish armed forces via tenuous supply routes over the Mediterranean and Yugoslavia

Trajectory: Babylon’s advance is stalled, with thousands of soldiers dying. Meanwhile the Rainbow Republic’s stockpile of arms is depleting. Since both sides are equally matched in Front Point generation (+1 for both sides), the trajectory of this Front is collapse. The Rainbow Republic will run out of war materiel (leaving it extremely vulnerable for a few years after that point) and Babylon’s will be understaffed from casualties and demoralized (leaving it extremely vulnerable for a few years as well) after less than a decade of fruitless conflict (2008). Babylon will keep what it currently has achieved (including a puppet government over the Bosporus), Turkey will be economically ruined, the Turkish Air Force Power Centre will remain independent, and the left-wing DEP will remain the government of Turkey. Both Babylon and the Union of States will gain 1 XP for mutually losing this contest to collapse when it does so.

World-Building Request: Potential Factions

An elaborate on the domestic politics request, with a specific focus on potential Factions that could emerge and threaten your state. Some players have already done this, and it’s become valuable to the game so I’ll count those posts already, plus new ones by other players.

GM Notes

I’ve updated the spreadsheet in a number of ways to incorporate the new rules. I haven’t yet implemented a simple calculation to know the institution score a country has available to them for the current turn - so be sure to count your own ongoing actions to make sure you know how many times an institution score is going to be halved.

A general note for players: I use the Trajectory section of any Front as my main source for what happens when the Front concludes, after rereading the previous passages written up for the Front. If there is something you wanted to occur on the successful completion of a Front that isn’t in the Trajectory but you feel should be, please let me know when the update is posted so that I can amend the Trajectory’s wording to reflect that (and thus remember to incorporate that into the writeup of the Front when it completes).

Orders are due Wednesday March 22nd 9:00 AM PST.

~~Mobilization deadlines are:~~

Thursday February 23rd 9:00 AM PST (for a +4 bonus)
Monday February 27th 9:00 AM PST (for a +2 bonus)
Friday March 3rd 9:00 AM PST (for a +1 bonus) - no mobilizations can be declared after this point (and therefore no wars can be engaged in)

New mobilization deadlines are:

Thursday March 2nd 9:00 AM PST (for a +4 bonus)
Monday March 6th 9:00 AM PST (for a +2 bonus)
Friday March 10th 9:00 AM PST (for a +1 bonus)

gay_Aleks · Feb 18, 2023

The time for each man to choose what he or she has done to change the world. When we see the never-ending conflict in Kongo-Sudan, where intelligence is clashing with barbarian ignorance, set in turn by people who care only about a fake, unreal tradition from their grandgrandparents' times, one wonders: what have we done to change this?.

To wit: the Argentine state declares a mobilisation of its forces, effective immediately as of January 2011 against the wretches in Kongo. We call upon every good African person who wills to seize the future of the continent, to join our banner of technocracy, and to help forge a new future for Africa!

Belgarion95 · Feb 19, 2023

OPEN LETTER TO THE EURASIAN COUNCIL FOR ORDER AND UNITY

This moment is truly momentous! The Turanian Khaganate is revived and made proud, its glory is at hand! The great name of Turan shall redound through our future history.

Alas, Turan is not secure. Your perfidious regime has made evident her unrelenting lust for destruction; she will not rest until she has seen the Turanian patriots tortured and killed, and will gladly sacrifice a million lives, and a million moreover, to your infernal machinations. There exists thus between Eurasia and Babylon a bitter enmity.

Your government has failed in battle, and now fails to make peace.

Babylon shall end this war. Our Council of War has agreed to impose a Nuclear Demilitarized Zone, a brutal Peace of Nergal. Though we are loathe to release the primordial gods contained within the atomic nucleus, we shall. We shall bombard all of your strategic forward positions on the west bank of the Volga with a series of nuclear attacks, forming a great linear scar across which neither of our armies may traverse. We shall salt the earth with radioactivity and hellfire. We shall enforce a great wasteland wall, and expand it until you relent. Whether or not you will it, we shall have peace.

If Eurasia prefers more favourable terms that avert the Peace of Nergal, agree to a ceasefire on all fronts and negotiate peace terms by the end of January. [ooc: by the mobilization deadline, Friday March 3rd.] We trust that your regime and your people shall see sense.

[Addendum] - in response to concerns that the Peace of Nergal will lead to a global famine as a consequence of nuclear fallout, we have determined that it would be prudent to limit nuclear strikes to strategic locations, and not form "a great linear scar" - we will nevetheless use nuclear weapons to enforce a demilitarized zone.

tobiisagoodboy · Feb 20, 2023

We will spread out legs wide open ans let you do everything you want. Just like everybody wants. Cause the fudging God Emperor of Babylon and his Custodians shall rule the World.

J.K. Stockholme · Feb 23, 2023

Tobi has informed me they will be dropping the game. Thanks for playing!

Potential ways to proceed with Eurasia have been discussed by the players and myself over Discord, since the situation is somewhat unique and simply swapping in a new player is therefore not ideal. As per those discussions, Eurasia will have a mini-update to hint at a coming collapse, and Babylon will be allowed a free action that is middle-sized and automatically successful to "push" Eurasia in one direction or another. Next turn, Eurasia will be actively in a state of collapse - which can end in dissolution, civil war, or even the recreation of a Great Power in the Eurasia region, based on play. Players will be allowed to carry out actions or plans this turn in-anticipation of that collapse, and next turn, as the collapse is actively ongoing. Other nations with the black ideology will be eager to find new patrons but aside from that fact as an element of the wider fiction, no other special Fronts will be made for them.

J.K. Stockholme · Feb 23, 2023

DECEMBER 2011

Eurasian Winter (Special Eurasia Front): Eurasia has entered a highly fluid moment of crisis as elements of the Eurasian armed forces are in the midst of a coup attempt against the council of strongmen. The coup began only days ago, in late December, when military units unexpectedly massed in the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg. Fighting and explosions were reported in some quarters. Speaking from within the Kremlin hours later, several top generals released a video to media and online asserting they were now the legitimate government of Eurasia, that they were in the process of arresting the strongmen, and that they would restore order to the Slavic supernation. By the next day it was clear that numerous strongmen were safe and would not submit themselves to arrest, including the regional leader of Poland. It is also unclear if the commanders on the frontlines in the east, as well as other critical individuals throughout the state apparatus such as Eurasia's famously diligent, capable, some might say liberal or even technocratic civil service and its allies in the Bratva, will endorse or oppose the new regime. Then finally there are the different sources of opposition to the ultranationalist regime as a whole, from the underground ex-Eurasia Today reporters, to their colleagues at Radio Free Eurasia and the Sakharavo Centre in Siberia, to the Association of Small Numbered Peoples, to the Bashkir and Tartar rebellion, to the Ukrainian Underground State, to the Russian people themselves (who aligned with the Small Numbered Peoples in recent years), all of whom have taken new actions, from protest to terrorism. Despite obviously lacking authority outside of Moscow and St Petersburg, the junta made the bold move of reaching out to Babylon to sue for peace. Although the call was assumed to be encrypted and secure, leaks emerged nonetheless suggesting that the junta was offering major non-territorial concessions, from a Babylonian free hand in Eurasia-friendly regimes to financial reparations to post-conflict oil and gas extraction rights in southeast Eurasia. Regardless of what's true, even if the junta did broker a deal, it may be entirely moot in a matter of days as Eurasia appears to be on the precipice of collapse.
Rules: Next turn (2012) Eurasia will formally enter a state of collapse. The nature of this collapse (e.g. peaceful dissolution, civil war, failed state) will be decided written up in that update. The state of the country will be affected by player actions in the region this turn. Babylon will also receive a free action to “push” this front in a direction of their choosing or gain something of value in Eurasia, equivalent to an automatically successful roll with a middle-sized Challenge Rating. The fate of Eurasia is up to the players, from their re-emergence as a Great Power to their Balkanization.
Rewards: numerous Power Centres, fate of Eurasia

J.K. Stockholme · Feb 23, 2023

ALSO

All the mobilization deadlines are moved forward by one week.

@gay_Aleks Feel free to rescind your mobilization order, if you want to, since this is a dramatic change in the update. If you don't before the first mobilization deadline I'll take it as locked in still.

Kyzarc Fotjage · Mar 1, 2023

The ongoing civil strife in Greece after the death of the tyrant Papadopoulos is proof that the Greek people are yearning for a more democratic society, as is their right. As such it is the sworn duty of every freedom-loving European to support the founders of Western Democracy in their efforts. The armed forces of the European Union are hereby Mobilized and ready to render any assistance we deem appropriate in ensuring that free and transparent elections are held in Greece and a new democratic constitution is drawn up that reflects the will of the people.

Belgarion95 · Mar 2, 2023

Babylon will mobilize its forces for military operations in Eurasia.

Shadowbound · Mar 9, 2023

Adopt A Dictator: Madame Singh

What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?

Born in 1949, Sonia Singh (nee Karat) is the wife of the late Supreme Leader Ranjit Singh of Hindustan and the mother of his successor, Arjun Singh. But she is more than that: her portrait, alongside her husband and son, are in every office building, every factory, and every home. She is the last of the great Communist antirevisionists, committed to an untempered vision of a totalitarian socialist state that has, aside from Hindustan, faded away.

The daughter of one of the leading communist revolutionaries of the Indian Civil War in 1949, Sonia grew up in a privileged environment in the early Communist state. Her father’s close Soviet ties saw her study in Italy, where she distinguished herself as a brilliant student, and she only returned home at the beginning of the Indo-Soviet split. This started her fall from grace: her father was disgraced, imprisoned (where he would later die), and her and the rest of her family was sent to a village commune in Rajasthan to learn to live humbly. The new communist faction ruling North India was relentlessly agrarian and chauvinistic. They saw European-educated intellectuals, especially women, as an assault on traditional Indian values, a cultural imperialism all the more insidious for its allure to half the population. Conditions in the village communes, especially for political volunteers, were horrific and abusive and still have not fully come to light (as Hindustan’s own archives remain sealed). Reports of malnutrition, starvation, physical abuse, and sexual exploitation were all rampant.

Several years later her and her family would be rehabilitated as the fervor of the split wore off. She would still largely disappear from public view nonetheless: accounts from defectors and emigres spoke of her as withdrawn, even depressed, a different woman than in Soviet Italy. She secured a politically advantageous marriage alliance with Ranjit Singh, a rising star in the Indian army who wished to consolidate her late father’s faction around him, and for two decades was the vision of the subservient Hindu wife.

Her resignation to the dustbin of history ends with the Autumn of Nations: North India was collapsing as students and reformers protested in the streets of Calcutta calling for reform, along with other major cities like Delhi and Lahore. Ranjit Singh in this time had risen to a senior position in the North Indian military. The Central Committee in Calculutta was divided, but reformists eventually won out and promised reforms: release of prisoners, decentralization of power, and loosening state economic control. In response Singh made the fateful decision to violently disperse protesters in his stronghold of Delhi.

The Chandni Square Massacre was a pivotal event in Indian history: exiles in Tokyo, Chicago, and Chennai bemoan it, as no matter what kind of reform they expected North India to eventually receive, anything would have been better than this. Indian troops from Singh’s Northwest Army, with tanks and helicopter support, opened fire on unarmed civilians with a death toll in the thousands. Singh’s supporters elsewhere in the military seized government administration across the country and as he proclaimed the dissolution of the Central Committee in response to Revisionist Sabotage. Across much of Northwestern India they were successful, but in Bengal students overpowered the security forces (along with many defections from local troops) and lynched the Central Committee.

The Second Indian Civil War, the Hindustani-Bengali War, was just as bloody and as pointless as the first. Singh consolidated his control around Delhi with his Hindustani People’s Republic; a broad coalition of reformers and defectors organized the National Liberation Front in Bengal. Both sides committed numerous warcrimes against their enemy and against their own population; mass impressment, starvation, and rampant attacks against population centers were the norm. It was a war to the knife, one that saw the mild reformists of the NLF transform into an uneasy alliance of ultranationalists and militant Islamists. Singh was a competent strategist in control of the bulk of the old Indian army but he wasn’t just fighting the Bengali rebels: Afghan troops occupied the Punjab and volunteer fighters from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh openly operated across the Gujarati border (and embedded with the NLF). Three years of fighting saw him consolidate his control over Northwest India, but he was unable to retake the Punjab or Bengal. His own forces were in tatters; the opposition was no better: Bengal was a series of militias, the Afghans were dealing with the beginnings of their own Islamist militants who would overthrow the country years later, and the RSS’s militant wing had been crippled for a generation. The Manila Accords would organize a ceasefire that saw Hindustan retain its claims across all of North India, but end formal fighting against the Afghans and Bengalis.

For the last decade, Hindustan has remained as it was. Like an island in time: here, 1960s car models still drive through the streets and red banners hang from every building. The poor starve and the rich starve less as funding for the army is prioritized. Secret police are around every corner, government propaganda indoctrinates the youth in gender segregated schools. Ranjit Singh’s death changed little as his son stepped neatly into the role, but defectors have since identified the true power behind the throne: Sonia Singh, Widow Singh, Madame Singh. She had reinvented herself in the chauvinistic culture of Hindustan as one half mother and one half mob boss, drawing careful maternal stereotypes to control a paternalistic society. The same brilliant mind identified by her professors in the Soviet Union spent decades raising her husband up the ranks of the Indian Communist Party and, confronted with the possibility of losing it all again, lashed out against the reformists in the 90s and kicked off a civil war that saw millions dead. She is the power behind the throne, the Lady Macbeth behind Chandni Square and the deaths of the Central Committee, and the iron fist holding Hindustan together. It’s Italian cinema that plays in theatres, it’s her financial aid that was propping up the European Antirevisionists, and it was her greenlight that enabled Hindustani support for the radical neo-aryan socialists in Bengal. When generals started planning a war with Afghanistan they came to her first.

Twice she had fallen, twice she had overcome. But now the third trial is here and there is little chance of survival: Hindustan's fragile economy has left it unable to withstand the pressure that its territorial ambitions have placed on it. As she rattled her son's saber over Afghanistan, India rattled back with its wallet and economic sanctions, sparking a deep financial crisis. Now, she has been placed under house arrest. Arjun Singh is now counselled by technocratic reformers who advocate economic liberalization and détente with South India to relieve the sudden stress from economic sanctions. Her loyalists are being gradually dismissed from the Hindustani army and replaced with Argentine sympathizers. A carefully curated network of power is being disentangled from the Hindustani state, offering the prospect of reform for the first time in a generation.

But the blood doesn’t wash away.

J.K. Stockholme · Apr 11, 2023

Autumn’s Last Update
THE YEAR 2012

OOC: This will be the game’s last update. Thanks everyone for playing!

Fronts, Power Centres, Player Countries:
Year 2012 Stats (unfinished aside from rolls)

HEADLINES

Convoys of Liberty paralyze Buffalo-Caribou

Motorola rolls out “smartphone” worldwide

European reconstruction finishes

Dutch Liberals defeat New Left Party in electoral upset

South China KMT realigns to technocracy

Hollywood movies successful in California and UoS

Eurasia collapses into civil war

Babylon invades Ukraine, supports Ukrainian secession

Babylon’s people celebrate victory against Eurasia

Greek junta backs down, EU troops station in Greece to support transition

Argentina invades Kongo

Equatorial Africa slows advance of rebels, invites peace talks with India’s support

East Asia announces end of degrowth policy

UoS researchers exacerbate Indian attitudes towards refugees

Britain locks down foreign relationships to its universities

DEVELOPMENTS

Global Energy Crisis (Special Front):
New Events:

Front Collapses (1 out of 1 Collapse Points)

In yet another offshoot of the energy crisis, the government of Buffalo and Caribou has been paralyzed by a trucker convoy. The so called Convoys of Liberty assembled in regional capitals with big rigs and trucks that police have found hard to remove. They are demanding “liberty” for the energy sector, which has been placed under a harsh degrowth policy since the 1990s.
Changes:

new Front: Convoys of Liberty

Spoiler 2011 :

Spoiler Global Energy Crisis :

Convoys of Liberty (Regional Buffalo-Caribou Front): Assembling hundreds of trucks and big rigs, right-wing groups coordinated a massive nation-wide protest in regional capitals in the Republic of Buffalo and Caribou. The large vehicles have been hard to remove and have paralyzed traffic in the country’s administrative centres. Police have had a hard time removing protestors, with many officers seemingly siding with the militias, frustrating the government’s attempt to restore order. The protest’s demands are diverse though the central demand is to end the national degrowth policy that has handicapped the oil and gas industry. If the government were to back down on this, it is conceivable the country could achieve a low price of energy regardless of global market conditions thanks to significant hydrocarbon resources in Alberta.
Rules: Progress represents efforts to quash the protests; Regress represents efforts to boost the protests into political power.
Rewards: Regime change in Buffalo-Caribou.

A Smart Phone (Super Worldwide Front):
New Events:

Argentina wins the Front (8 out of 8 Front Points)

In an iconic launch, Motorola CEO Edward Zander took the stage in Buenos Aires, unveiling the Motorola Droid 1 to a captivated audience of tech enthusiasts and journalists. The event marks the beginning of a new era in mobile technology, with Motorola’s touchscreen smartphone now available for purchase around the world - to a great reception and sales. Motorola's commitment to consumer privacy has given the company a strong brand, ensuring that its users are protected from unwanted state spying or interference, even from Motorola’s patron in Argentina. Meanwhile, Argentine investors and workers have situated themselves squarely in the middle of the smartphone supply chain, creating manufacturing jobs in Buenos Aires and somewhat ameliorating that capital’s issue of inequality.
Changes:

Argentina creates and controls the Motorola Power Centre
new World Fact: Motorola is the most popular phone brand in the world
the Argentine Stress Front “Not in My Backyard” loses 1 Collapse Point

Spoiler 2005 :

Spoiler 2004 :

Europe in Shambles (Regional West Europe Front):
New Events:

India wins the Front (4 out of 4 Front Points)

As the dust settled from the Soviet Civil War, Western Europe was left in a state of disarray. However, with the help of Indian and British investments, the region has recovered. Indian companies took advantage of cheaper labour and existing infrastructure to establish new factories, while construction firms have finished extensive projects to repair roads, rail, power lines, and bridges. Despite the remarkable progress, challenges remained. A handful of powerful oligarchs, such as Silvio Berlusconi in the Italian media industry and Vincent Bolloré in French construction, managed to further entrench their influence. Although Western Europe has made great strides in reconstruction, its economy still lags behind wealthier nations like Britain and India. Infrastructure and living standards have improved but still have a long way to go to catch up with their new democratic peers.
Changes:

Europe gains a Power Centre worth 4 Proficiency Points in a category of their choice

Spoiler 2009 :

Europe in Shambles (Regional West Europe Front):
New Events:

India: rolled 19.8, soft success. +1 FP for reconstructing Europe

The opening of the European market to Indian and British investors was a welcome reprieve for international finance from the wider economic turmoil caused by the global energy crisis this year. Indian companies have for a few years now been seeking places to offshore manufacturing where labour is cheaper, and given two decades of civil war and India’s persistent economic rise, western Eorope is actually a cheaper place to hire labour. Moreover Europe’s human and physical capital are still largely present from Soviet times, if underused, allowing Indian firms to create new factories without having to build them from scratch. Indian construction firms have also been involved in a massive infrastructure repair program, rebuilding power lines, roads, rail, and bridges, with the Indian government footing some of the bill on behalf of Europe to expedite their recovery. In the new context of a global energy crisis, Indian investors have also been eager to extract shale with hydraulic fracturing, a modest project at the current scale that will take years to build-out. However despite great progress on reconstruction, many issues linger since Soviet times, in-particular the highly unequal concentration of ownership that a handful of oligarchs have maintained. These oligarchs, from Silvio Berlusconi’s media empire in Italy to Vincent Bolloré’s construction interest in France, established themselves during the civil war as apolitical moguls and have been able to thwart Indians, British, and even other Europeans, from meaningfully disrupting their hold over certain industries throughout the country. Unfortunately Indian reconstruction has even propelled these oligarchs into further entrenchment by allowing them to cast themselves as patriotic defenders of national ownership of the European economy, as opposed to foreign ownership.
Changes:

new World Fact: ownership of the European economy is unequally skewed towards a handful of powerful oligarchs

Trajectory: India will have reconstructed Europe by 2012, giving Europe a Power Centre worth 4 Proficiency Points in a category of Europe’s choice.

Spoiler 2008 :

Dutch Elections (Regional Netherlands Front):
New Events:

Europe wins the Front (2 out of 2 Front Points)
India: free action to transfer Zuiderzee upon Front closure to Europe

The 2012 Dutch elections have been a historic upset for the ruling New Left Party (NLP). The nail biter of a polling night saw the New Left Party and the Liberal Party neck and neck, with the Liberals eeking out a greater vote share after several recounts confirmed the vote in the following weeks. The election was the nastiest in modern Dutch history. The Liberals violated election regulations and have polarized the country over their obvious collusion with the European Union. The NLP meanwhile overcorrected, rushing a constitutional amendment that would prohibit the Netherlands from participating in an economic or political union with the EU (or any other country), while playing some dirty tricks of their own through corrupt games with the judicial system to disqualify or hinder Liberal candidates. This complex stew of factors is hard to disentangle: the Dutch public voted for the Liberals and punished the NLP, but are not much interested in integration with the EU. The labour movement outside of formal politics was no less dramatic than the NLP, forcing through new codetermination requirements that will make much of the Liberal agenda impossible to enact due to labour control of the economy.
Changes:

government and opposition switch in the Netherlands
Europe gains the Zuiderzee Power Centre

Spoiler 2009 :

Dutch Elections (Regional Netherlands Front):
New Events:

Europe: rolled 14, hard success. +1 FP for election interference

The Netherlands exited the Soviet Union as a labour union-dominated socialist democracy with a semi-market economy. Labour unions dominate economic and political decision-making, with the New Left Party’s popularity high from their successful protection of the Dutch from the Soviet Civil War. That era of easy election wins is now over with the consolidation of western Europe under the EU, a liberal democracy that purports to be an alternative to the still fairly rigid Dutch political-economic order. This year, the Dutch Liberal Party began a vigorous organizing drive to win the next elections, promising deeper market reforms, free trade with the EU, and selling government stakes in Dutch companies (such as the Zuiderzee Arbeiters) on EU stock exchanges. As part of this electoral drive, several forms of interference have taken place. Germans have been identified advising and even directly organizing on behalf of the Liberal Party. The European Media Group (EMG) launched a popular television show about the Soviet Civil War that has portrayed the German Democracy Movement as heroic freedom fighters. The Union News Group (UNG), which opened a Dutch outlet in the Netherlands this year, has overtly promoted pan-Europeanism, for example hosting “debates” between Dutch politicians about whether Babylonian expansionism should make the Netherlands consider joining a larger political configuration (i.e. the EU). The concerted and obvious influence campaign has been noticed by Dutch election regulators, and of course all of these activities are super illegal (being a union-led socialist democracy, the only groups allowed to make political contributions are unions). Although regulators have fined the Liberals heavily and begun proceedings to close down some news outlets, the effects of the EU’s influence campaign have started succeeding - polling has shown increased approval for closer relations to the EU and more economic liberalization by a larger and larger share of everyday Dutch voters, even if their union representatives overwhelmingly disagree. Alarmed at the possibility of losing formal political power, the New Left Party is pushing a constitutional amendment that would prevent the Netherlands from joining the EU, which the unions are advising their members to pass. Moreover the country’s unions are separately insulating companies from full privatization, demanding up to half of the board of directors be representatives from the unions on all major Dutch corporate boards, including the Zuiderzee Arbeiters. These moves would frustrate a Liberal Party government, and moreover put the New Left Party in a position to easily win back power should they be organized and convincing enough the next time around. As for the Zuiderzee Arbeiters, their union claims that the company is of such vital strategic interest that sale of its shares on an EU exchange would almost certainly result in a dominant stake for Indian investors with ties to their foreign policy establishment. With co-determination likely to reach fifty-fifty thresholds, whoever ends up owning the Zuiderzee will only have a fraction of its value as a political asset for any non-socialist owners.
Changes:

new World Fact: the Dutch labour movement will resist neoliberalization of the Netherlands and could easily help boost the New Left Party back into power in the right circumstances or with the right backing*
new World Fact: the labour union for the Zuiderzee Arbeiders has significant power inside the company and restricts its use as an asset of non-pink Great Powers
the Zuiderzee Arbeiders Power Centre’s Proficiencies are reduced by half (or in the case of 0.1, removed altogether) for non-pink Great Powers

Trajectory: Europe will boost the Liberal Party to power in the Netherlands by 2012, and thereby give control of the Zuiderzee Arbeiters Power Centre to India.

* Europe’s +1 FP will become 0 FP per turn should any other Great Power succeed in a roll to boost the pink government; should this Front conclude as a success for the EU and regime change, any other Great Power could still make a roll to win the next election for the pink faction (i.e. the blue faction’s control is not especially secure) and receive a context bonus for doing so

Illiterati (Regional China Front):
New Events:

Argentina wins the Front (4 out of 4 Front Points)

In the last few years the southern Chinese KMT have politically realigned to technocracy over democracy. Persuaded through a campaign of influence and financial suasion, one by one KMT officials that don’t take Shanghai money have lost out to those that do, consolidating a new technocratic political apparatus, as well as a new culture of graft.
Changes:

South China's KMT (Blue) Faction converts to technocracy (Tan)
the China's Warlords Front loses an additional 0.5 Collapse Points

Spoiler 2009 :

Illiterati (Regional China Front):
New Events:

Argentina: rolled 16.6, soft success. +1 FP for corrupting the blue KMT

Although the south Chinese branch of the KMT professed a belief in democracy, the seeds of corruption were always there. Chiang Kai-shek ruled with an authoritarian hand, allowing only limited civil liberties. Even after his death in 1975, KMT officials on China’s southwest border got involved in the drug trade. And of course politicians have to do what they have to do to get pork for their constituents. While reporters might deride it, this involves unsavoury backroom deals with CEOs and monied interests to make sure projects happen in one’s locale, as opposed to somewhere else in China. With the rise of Shanghai’s financial and economic dominance throughout the country, reporters have begun noticing a pattern of late in how politics is done in the south: more and more KMT politicians are taking “donations” from groups emanating from Shanghai while major Shanghai businesses agree to set up shop in their constituencies. Meanwhile other politicians who talk too sincerely about democracy have noticed a decrease in investment inflows. The creep of this economic persuasion has alarmed the central party officials for the southern KMT, who have complained about what they believe is a concerted effort to cultivate patronage networks within their own party that are loyal to Shanghai technocrats. The lower ranking politicians the central party have accused of graft have mostly ignored these complaints, and are hardly fearful of being removed from the party, as they are the ones getting benefits to their constituents, not the central party. The downside of the spread of this pro-technocratic corruption is, well, of course, that it is corruption: a culture of backroom dealing, economic elitism, and graft for the top politicians appears to be taking the southern KMT from the bottom up, and if it succeeds, it will perpetuate itself for a while to come.
Changes:

the China's Warlords Front loses 0.5 Collapse Points

Trajectory: South China’s blue KMT will convert to technocracy by 2012, leaving behind a culture of corruption in the region. The China's Warlords Front will lose another 0.5 Collapse Points.

Hollywood (Regional California Front):
New Events:

Union of States wins the Front (4 out of 4 Front Points)

Hollywood’s transformation from purged Reaganite safehaven to left-wing creative hub, succeeded, though the learning curve has been steep. From Dreams Within, an action thriller about secret agents of the Rainbow Republic who implant ideas in the dreams of foreign capitalists, to Pirates!, a swashbuckler fantasy about a democratic pirate ship, the left-wing themes have come at the expense of popular appeal. Nonetheless, despite their blunt messages, as well as their use of problematic tropes, Hollywood has become a productive cultural hub feeding the Union’s appetite for entertainment, with some limited international success as well.
Changes:

Union of States gains control of the Hollywood Power Centre
Union of States Stress Front “Capital Flight & Economic Chill” loses 1 Collapse Point

Spoiler 2009 :

Hollywood (Regional California Front):
New Events:

Union of States: rolled 19, soft success. +1 FP for capturing Hollywood

Ronald Reagan was an actor before he was a politician, and thus his dictatorship took a special interest in outing and persecuting leftists in Hollywood - Reagan’s policies made the blacklists of the 1940s and 1950s look like benevolence. With the end of the Reagan dictatorship last year, the big movie and television studios have become skittish at the possibility of the cultural revolution coming full circle and causing more havoc on an industry already in terminal decline since the collapse of the United States as a single unified market for their products. This year, coming to Tinseltown’s rescue, the Union of States has entered, stage left. The Union has promised access to their domestic market, in dire need of some levity, and moreover that the Union will aggressively incorporate new Hollywood films and television into state-run institutions like community centres, library catalogues, and schools - on the condition, of course, that these cultural productions are deemed acceptably left-wing. Union research groups have begun a top-down polling program to identify popular themes and genres that might sell well in their private market too. The newborn Rainbow regime in California is also being extended administrative resources by the Union to regulate, unionize, and thereafter politically consolidate the Hollywood system into a pliable asset of the international Rainbow agenda. Many celebrity actors, writers, and directors have publicly come out since last year as secret leftists all along (many implausibly so), and the Union’s economic liferaft has energized the development of new scripts on left-wing themes. Unfortunately many of these ideas are in a tense relationship with Hollywood’s widespread culture of racism, sexism, homophobia, and generally reactionary impulses, as well as with what apolitical viewers in the Union and the world more broadly actually want to see. These factors have contributed to a lot of failed films and pilots this year, as California critics and Union censors disapprove of them, even though their high-level narrative is politically neutral or left-wing, because these films and pilots contain reactionary cliches that Hollywood directors and writers are not used to being seriously criticized for. This steep learning curve means that it will be a long time before Hollywood gets good at making left-wing films and television with popular appeal.
Changes:

new World Fact: Hollywood films and television are pushing more left-wing narratives, but they are also not that good and have limited appeal outside California and the Union of States

Trajectory: The Union of States will control the Hollywood Power Centre by 2012.

Eurasian Winter (Special Eurasia Front):
New Events:

Babylon: free Middle-sized action. Auto-success at making Grey Ukrainian Faction
related action: Babylon’s spectacular success in Sons of Rurik (see next Front)

Somehow, things in Eurasia got worse. The leaked peace deal that might have staved off complete oblivion for Eurasia was torn up, with Saddam’s diplomats declaring the existing government illegitimate. Babylonian troops thereafter launched yet another merciless incursion into Eurasia (specifically Ukraine), supporting Ukrainian neo-traditionalists with ground and naval action. Together this has catalyzed a Eurasian civil war.

After the termination of the tentative peace deal, the next shoe to drop was in Poland, whose insulated and independent strongman leader, Stanisław Kania, publicly declared he would swear no allegiance to the military junta that couped the government last December. Kania ordered Eurasian generals and the soldiers loyal to Poland at the front lines in the east to return to secure Poland’s borders - trips that were noticeably unharmed by either Babylonian interdiction and Ukrainian guerrilla activities as they moved westward by train. Kania also invited the Eurasian strongmen who were not arrested by the new government to join him in Warsaw, with many speculating Kania may be assembling them to establish a new council of strongmen with a legitimate claim of continuity. For now Kania’s ambitions and ideological leanings are extremely fluid - he has made statements in almost every manner and direction, seemingly ready to become a Suzukist, a democrat, a technocrat, a neo-traditionalist, or a born again communist (Kania was the Polish region’s General-Secretary before the Autumn of Nations). Whether Kania will merely secure a large and independent Polish state, vie for Russia as well, or try to reunify all of Eurasia once again under himself is up in the air.

Precisely whether those ideals are pink or teal is itself still an open question. Poland’s break from Moscow precipitated open independence across Eurasia from a diverse coalition of Small Numbered Peoples. The armed rebellions among Bashkirs and Tartars that valiantly halted the Babylonian incursion at the foot of Urals have turned around and secured more territory westward into Russia, while Komi and west Siberian leaders declared independence, joining together in an alliance. United initially by the repressive and racist Eurasian state, there are nonetheless plenty of ecological complaints these groups have against Eurasian projects that have wrecked their homelands from Soviet to post-Soviet times. The decisive factor in their allegiance will likely be whether they can obtain direct support from the Union of States or East Asia.

With Poland declaring independence in all but name and Babylon promising a renewed attack against Ukraine, the military junta in Russia lost all hope of retaining legitimacy. The junta carried on for several months barely holding together a disintegrating armed forces, but their days were numbered and a counter-coup by liberal and technocratic-minded members of the civil service, the intelligence community, and mid-ranking parts of the armed forces succeeded, securing Moscow, St Petersburg, and a vast hinterland around each for yet another “legitimate government of Eurasia” (for whatever that is worth). Salvaging what they could of the armed forces and regrouping to more defensible positions further north where the harsh Russian winter and more forested terrain will make Babylonian advances tremendously more challenging, the liberals and technocrats have announced a Council of Peace and Order, imitating the ultranationalists in name only. The alliance however is ideologically tense - Russian protest groups and the media (including a resurrected Eurasia Today) demand elections, while the civil service and what’s left of the country’s military officers are primarily technocratic, believing their own expertise above the riff-raff.

Then there is the Babylonian offensive and the fate of Ukraine. Over the course of the year, the Ukrainian Underground State has transformed into a neo-traditionalist strongman council, with ancient ranks and traditions harkening back to Kieven Rus’. A full on guerrilla campaign was further supported by a conventional assault by Babylon that, in the midst of Eurasia’s total military collapse, ended up costing very few lives. The Ukrainian coastline was peppered by Babylon’s navy (which totally dominates the Black Sea), while Babylon’s forces, careful with their manpower for once, strolled leisurely and safely across the countryside, letting Ukrainian allies do most of the dying where possible.

Everything is up in the air as Eurasia endures a revolution and civil war. Will it return as a Great Power under new management or disintegrate into statelets?
New Events:

new Faction: Ukrainian guerillas and Babylon collaborators (Grey)
new NPC: Republic of Riúrykovychi
new Faction: liberal and technocratic Russian activists, civil servants, and mid-ranking commanders (Blue & Tan)
new Faction: Stanisław Kania’s court and the Bratva (Black, but ready to switch to any ideology as long as Kania remains undisputed dictator)
new Faction: alliance of Small Numbered separatists (Pink & Teal)

Rules: if any one Faction can seize control of most of Eurasia (Ukraine, Poland, Russia), a Great Power will form from that state; this will occur by GM fiat when all opposing Factions are subordinated or eliminated
Rewards: the reestablishment of Eurasia as a Great Power or its balkanization, also the ownership of Eurasia’s numerous Power Centres

Sons of Rurik (Regional Ukraine Front):
New Events:

Babylon: rolled 25.4, spectacular success. +3 Front Points for seizing Ukraine

Despite achieving a decisive victory and having a treaty before them to secure their gains, Saddam has renewed the war for now the fourth year. If his next military effort had been anything other than a huge success, all of his domestic woes would likely redouble - Babylon’s people are sick of war, and this one has been especially pointless . To their relief, and Saddam’s great fortune, the Ukrainian offensive ended up as smooth as could possibly have been. The Eurasian military collapsed, while Ukrainian partisans of an increasingly neo-traditional flavour did most of the heavy lifting in Ukraine’s major cities, aside from Kiev and some other minor areas, which remains in the hands of the now technocratic-democratic regime in-charge of Moscow and St Petersburg. Those partisans have renamed themselves the Sons of Rurik and declared independence from Eurasia under the Republic of the Riúrykovychi, establishing a council of strongmen not dissimilar from the old Eurasian model, with many elements of the Eurasian state in Ukraine defecting to the new pro-Babylon one. Babylon’s forces have moved carefully, suffering only a few hundred casualties (a triumph of caution compared to previous death tolls). They’ve also smartly avoided touching the Bashkir and Tartar rebellions, whose forces remain organized and have now turned 180 degrees, against Russia. It should only be another year of such manoeuvres before all of southern Eurasia, stretching from west Siberia to the outskirts of Poland, is completely under Babylonian control or that of the Riúrykovychi. For the people of Babylon, this has been a relief. Though the war is not technically over, Eurasia’s sudden and swift collapse this year, combined with the breezy offensive into Ukraine, have made the war’s end so imminent that celebrations have already begun. State media now refer to the remaining operations in Eurasia as a “cleanup”, while a full victory parade with Saddam himself is planned for early next year when the Ukrainian offensive finishes and the captured territories can be fully spun off to the Sons of Rurik.
Changes:

spectacular success grants the benefit that Body Count is not triggered
spectacular success grants the benefit that Victory or Death is triggered favourably (see next Front); Saddam’s Concessions Front fizzles out by GM fiat and does not incur a negative endstate
new Faction: Ukrainian “Sons of Rurik” guerrillas (Grey)

Trajectory: By 2013 Babylon will control all of southern Eurasia (Ukraine, North Caucasus, south Volga region)

Victory or Death (Special Front):
New Events:

resolved by GM fiat in Babylon’s favour

Though the war continues, Babylon’s enemy is defeated. Instead of rage, the people of Babylon have come out in state-sanctioned celebration, while the Eagles of Saladin have found themselves finally fighting an enemy with more of their military force available. Though corruption and Islamism and the Eagles' rebellion remain long-term issues for Babylon, the triumph of neo-traditionalism over Eurasian pan-nationalism has stung all of Babylon’s enemies within. Moreover, the nuclear option is now once again off the table.
Changes:

The Babylon Short-Term Stress Front “Days of Rage” resolves
The Babylon Long-Term Stress Front “Eagles of Saladin” loses all Collapse Points and returns to a Short-Term Stress
The Babylon Short-Term Stress Front “Egyptian Islamism” loses 4 Collapse Points
The Babylon Short-Term Stress Front “Corruption & Resentment” loses 4 Collapse Points
The Front “Nuclear Option” closes

Spoiler 2009 :

Metapolitefsi (Middle Greece Front):
New Events:

Europe: rolled 16, soft success. +1 for ultimatum threatening

The European Union flexed its regional hegemony this year, threatening to invade Greece should it fail to hold democratic elections. With their erstwhile ally, Eurasia, descending into civil war, the Greek rank and file increasingly leaning towards the EU, and the only other potential saviour being Babylon, who puppeteers the lands the nationalists claim as their own, the military junta acquiesced and gave up, ceding power to a provisional government who will hold elections in the coming year or two. The only outstanding issue was the KKE, an armed Suzukist group that has been fighting the Greek state for decades. To prevent a KKE takeover, the provisional government invited EU forces to station in the country, which they obliged on condition that peace negotiations be carried out that might find a compromise where the KKE could participate in democratic elections. Thus far things are playing out peacefully - with the armed KKE entertaining negotiations as EU forces are now stationed in Athens and other major cities to protect the nascent soon-to-be democratic government.
Trajectory: Europe will consolidate a Blue government in Greece and acquire the Hellenic Merchant Marine as a Power Centre, while a Teal opposition that could become armed again remains a major political force in the country.

Spoiler 2010 :

Metapolitefsi (Middle Greece Front): Greece’s political future is wide open in the wake of its dictator’s death. Georgios Papadopoulos began his rule in a military coup in 1960, widely assumed to have CIA approval. Greece was a centrepiece of the Cold War, with the Iron Curtain to its north, Soviet and Yugoslav-backed KKE guerrillas waging a low-level conflict internally, and the United States navy ever present in its ports. Papadopoulos was never bold enough to pursue Greek territorial ambitions against Turkey, nor competent enough to quash the KKE, which transitioned into a Suzukian outfit after the Autumn of Nations. He was however, great at muddling along, preserving both the internal conflict as well as Greece’s nineteenth century territorial claims into the twenty-first century. The death of Papadopoulos this year has sparked disorganized protests demanding some kind of change from the status quo, mixing anti-authoritarian grievances, resentment over economic stagnation since the departure of American forces in 1991, and also nationalism bitterly defensive of Eurasia’s valiant struggle in its motherland against the scourge of Babylon (who is notably now the new puppet master over Greek territorial claims across the Aegean). A highly likely outcome of this instability is the reassertion of dictatorship under one of the military leaders. Greece’s top admiral has already shown himself the leading contender in this race, showboating after a non-lethal exchange of fire between Greek and Ottoman ships in the Aegean this summer. The admiral claims Ottoman ships violated Greek waters, something the Ottomans deny and claim is exactly the reverse of what happened. With Babylon tied up in a continental showdown, and the Ottomans a weak shadow of the threat that Turkey once posed, the Greek military establishment is likely to see a war against the Ottomans as a way to rally people around the flag and drown out complaints against their continued rule. Another pair of plausible outcomes might see the Greek military regime finally come to an end, either voluntarily stepping aside and allowing elections, or with forceful persuasion by a renewed attack from the KKE. The KKE, after decades of futile war, have for a little while now limited their demands to peace negotiation terms, such as that they be included in government, something they reasserted again this year, alongside demands for unconditional amnesty and an indefinite right for them to maintain their militias in-case the government should backtrack. Many Greeks oppose peace with the KKE, including the rank-and-file and lower level officers of the Hellenic Merchant Marine, who sided with vaguely pro-democratic protests and might be seen by the junta as a more acceptable force to keep the military establishment in power even after democratization. Finally there’s King Constantine II, who for decades has bid his time and kept quiet as a figurehead - this has earned him a great deal of legitimacy, as he’s never been blamed for Greece’s problems, instead serving a vessel into which Greeks imagine whatever they prefer he be to them. The reality of Constantine II is known in intelligence circles - he’s long hoped that Babylon would offer an olive branch and help him restore his ancient mandate from god to lead the Greeks as absolute sovereign. Greece is in a brief moment of uncertainty where Metapolitefsi, or regime change, is well within the realm of possibility - will it come to pass?
Rules: Progress and Regress represents the top two rolling sides who attempt to consolidate a government Faction. Collapse of this Front will trigger a d6 roll to determine which ideology takes power and whether war with the Ottomans breaks out. Results on a d6 roll are as follows: (1 or 2) Greek ultranationalists remain in-power and declare war on the Ottomans, (3) Greek military establishment transition to democracy, excluding the KKE, by boosting popular leaders in the Hellenic Merchant Marine to democratic power, (4) King Constantine coups the government with backing of a conspiracy of mid-level colonels, (5-6) the KKE’s renewed attacks fracture the military and propel them to popularity in the country’s first elections, solidifying a Suzukian dominated quasi-democratic state. These outcomes are of course subject to change if the underlying fiction changes in Greece or among its neighbours.
Rewards: fate of Greece

Kongo-Sudan Conflict (Regional Kongo-Sudan Front):
New Events:

Argentina: rolled 16.4, soft success. +1 FP for invasion

Argentina is not unfamiliar with jungle combat, having defended the Brazilian technocracy from Suzukians for decades. With Angola, a technocratic friend, on the border, and technocratic rebels in the interior, Argentina’s abrupt mobilization against Kongo was on sound strategic footing. Despite lacking any reason for war, Argentina assembled its navy outside the Congo river and with unofficial help from Angola (which allowed Argentine troops to station and attack through its territory), invaded Kongo in early spring this year. Though it is also precisely Argentina who knows how long these conflicts can take - the initial attack up the Congo river has secured the coast, but the interior remains a slow process of fighting both the conventional Kongolese military and informal fighting groups and militias that form the patronage network of the neo-traditional Kongo officers. Conflict mining and illicit trade routes through the porous front lines and neighbouring borders allow Kongo’s military to continue fighting despite the loss of the coast - and most expect the war to take the better part of a decade to conclude in Argentina’s favour.
Changes:

the Target Number increases from 4 to 5

Trajectory: By 2016, Argentina will have defeated the Kongolese armed forces and installed the technocratic Dominionists as an allied government.

Spoiler 2000 :

Equatorial War (Middle Equatorial Africa Front):
New Events:

India: rolled 17, soft success. +1 FP for state-building

With an energy and munitions crisis upending the country, the left-wing coalition running Equatorial Africa was in desperate need of outside help. To their surprise, it came from India, who’s consultants and official delegation came in a flashy show of implicit support for the government, which India has been quick to remind the world, was democratically elected. Administrative hurdles to accessing Indo-American armaments were cleared up (though this did not fully resolve the shortage), while state-building efforts have helped resolve inefficiencies across the Equatorial administration. More importantly, the government, on Indian advice, invited peace talks to end conflict and appease demands of the rebels, and to host new elections in which rebel groups might be able to participate - something that has been jumped at by some anti-government fighters. The big threat from the Chad-backed Suzukian rebels, the Ninjas, however, were undaunted, continuing their assault from the interior. Despite this, the increasingly more coordinated government is slowing them down, and as other rebel groups agree to peace terms, the Ninjas are predicted to find themselves on the back foot and banished again to the furthest corners of the country - though eliminating them completely without a fight is unlikely.
Trajectory: By 2015, Equatorial Africa’s teal opposition will be demoted from a Faction to a World Fact.

Spoiler 2010 :

Teal Economics (Regional East Asia Front):
New Events:

East Asia: rolled 20.7, full success. +2 FP for sustainable growth

East Asia’s ecologically sustainable economic progress since 2000 has made Marxism of the New Millennium a very literal name. Years of managed capitalism and degrowth by the state regulators have finally created a domestic economic system that is compatible with environmental sustainability that the government feels confident enough in letting off the leash. Cleantech minerals are imported from Argentina and Mozambique to the Green Valley in Japan where electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries are manufactured and exported. Ecotourism supports Borneans, while pharmaceuticals level-up the country’s biological and genetic sciences. In his annual address, to great fanfare in the press and the public, Suzuki himself declared that the infamous East Asian degrowth policy would finally come to an end early next year.
Trajectory: By 2013, East Asia will resolve the long-term stress Degrowth Policy and gain the Industrial Policy capability in replacement for the Fiscal-Monetary capability, renaming their “regulators of ecological state capitalism” Power Centre to “sustainable civilian industry”.

Refugee Crisis (Regional India Stress Front):
New Events:

Union of States: rolled 10, failure. Action blocked

Despite their lack of international recognition, the Union of States was invited by India, of all countries, to help resolve its long-standing refugee crisis. On paper their credentials seemed right: the UoS has homed millions of refugees through the Rainbow Roads Initiative as of the last few years. The problem for India and the UoS was the approach - instead of integrating refugees from Bengal and Hindustan, or reducing the pressure on social services by helping them resettle in other countries or increasing state capacity, the UoS state bureau set forth a bold plan to change the hearts and minds of the Indian people towards their refugees and migrants. Enormous polls were carried out by telephone and in-person by plucky UoS officials who flew to India. Research was carried out by UoS academics, with new papers published on implicit bias and stereotype threat among south Indians towards other ethnic and religious groups. Awareness campaigns were launched online, on billboards, but most especially on university campuses to at least get the young to shift a little to the left on immigration policy. So much ink was spilled but the results after a year are a complete failure: Not only did their own polls show no improvement on any of the metrics the awareness campaigns were supposed to change, in some cases it seems UoS messaging made things worse. The most likely reason for this was the simple fact that it was the UoS, barely veiled, carrying out the act of persuasion - with little local influence and almost no cultural ties, the credibility of the campaign was always suspect - and right-wing leaders in both political parties and the press have had a field day attacking the UoS’ ideals of social justice as just so much fantasy at best, and communist subversion at worst. If the refugee crisis in India is to be resolved, it will likely require something more economically substantive and locally invented and enacted.
Changes:

the Indian Long-Term Stress “Refugee Crisis” gains 1 Collapse Point

Loxbridge (Regional Great Britain Front):
New Events:

India: rolled 10.6, failure. Action blocked

Since the Autumn of Nations, Great Britain has been in an odd place - neither a great power, nor a middling one. Though this makes Britain a strong ally, it can also make them prickly. India, Great Britain’s military ally, was reminded of their ally’s ego and pride this year, as Indian efforts to incorporate the Golden Triangle universities into a larger Anglo-Indian system were misinterpreted as a security threat and an attack on the collegial independence of British higher education. Britain’s right-wing press published stories of Indian state officials writing to British professors to hush up about criticizing Indian foreign policy, while Indian political minders were reportedly pressuring British academics to work with Indian academics or to put Indians in-charge of British research projects. All these minor slights were merely prelude to an alleged leak of British intelligence documents that passed through an Oxford professor associated with the British military industry and ended up in the hands of Indian academics who passed the files along to Indo-American military companies. This last issue brought a swift government response, with the Tories beefing up efforts to protect British universities from foreign interference - putting an end to Indian efforts to integrate their own universities with those of Britain.
Changes:

new World Fact: the British government is protective of Loxbridge as a national security concern, including in reference to other democratic countries

J.K. Stockholme · Apr 11, 2023

Old News
Archive

World-Building Request: Miscellany

If you happen to have anything you wanted to post, please still feel free to do so!

GM Notes

Running this game was great fun! Thanks again everyone for playing!

gay_Aleks · Apr 11, 2023

Thank you for running this, one of the tightest IOTs I have ever been in. It was great engaging with the world that you - and subsequently, us, the players - have created, even if it may have been frustrating for either side.

NinjaCow64 · Apr 11, 2023

Thank you so much for this game Stockholme! I echo what Aleks said - this was one of the best IOTs I have ever played.

I completely understand your decision to drop it, these games are a massive time sink that get worse over time.

J.A.M. · Apr 12, 2023

Thanks for the game!

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