December World - game thread

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Update 5: October 1, 1893 - December 31, 1893

South-East Asia

Spoiler :
Fast-developing, newly modernized region, equally strong in all economic, educational, and demographic aspects.


Q4 1893: Under Gregor Duroc’s diplomatic leadership, the Free Boer Republic has started to slowly and carefully rebuild political and financial ties severed during the brief Burmo-Boer naval conflict, mostly at Portobrazilian expense. (Free Boer Republic gains +0.85% Regional Influence, Portugal-Brazil loses -0.85% Regional Influence, Free Boer Republic losses: -1.7 HC, -2.76 IC, -3.85 EC, -0.94 MC)

Mueang factory princes
Spoiler :
1890: For centuries, Northern Burma consisted of an amalgam of princedoms and city-states, known as mueangs. Ruled by semi-independent nobles known as khuns, these tiny kingdoms were organized in a confederacy through the Mandala system of collective hierarchy. When the Third Burmese Empire started its meteoric rise to power and modernization, Shan khuns turned out to be the only political force capable of benefiting from initial accumulation of capital, besides the dynastic clans adjacent to the ruling Konbaung dynasty. Now the Shan states are quickly turning into the densest industrial clusters of all Asia, with so called “factory princes” growing to become the only non-dynastic cartel capable of carrying significant economic and political influence. Now it’s up to rulers of Burma (or other nations) how to use it to their own means.

1891: The Burmese emperor decided that instead of helping loyal luuhcu clan oligarchy outcompete Shan khuns, the latter ones should be incorporated into the clan structure of the realm. Autonomous positions within the imperial administration started being offered to mueang factory princes in exchange for their dynastic intermarriage with luuhcu clans. The integration process may take a while, but at least it’s going in the right direction. (Regional quest progress: 15.86%, Third Burmese Empire losses: -1.05 HC, -1.51 IC, -2.48 EC, -0.63 MC)


Cast-iron stupas
Spoiler :
1890: As the most recent Burmese conquest, Siam is still a vast country not fully integrated into the Third Burmese Empire. However, as Burmese economic practices, combined with a strange mix of Western sciences gradually penetrate Siamese lands, one unbroken local power seems to be emerging as the biggest beneficiary of this industrialization. Spared of destruction and marauding during the Burmese invasion, Buddhist monasteries are the only organized holders of significant capital in their land, and now they seem to be transforming themselves into the main drivers of local manufacture. Red-robed monks united by the principle of sangha (or “disciplined association”) are proving to be a superior labor force, and lack of access to most modern Western technology is compensated by ingenuity and resourcefulness of these new religious entrepreneurs. However, many Burmese royal advisors are afraid that the Siamese monasteries are gaining a bit too much influence and power and may help to crystallize the dormant Siamese nationalist movement.

1891: Despite the fact that most of capital in Burma is concentrated in the hands of royal retainers and high nobles, it appears that the Emperor is in favor of a rather meritocratic approach to social dynamics in higher circles of the society. That was reflected in the decision to award Siamese Buddhist clergy with positions inside the royal administration, perhaps in recognition of their economic success. Despite a long way before complete assimilation, this effort is seen as potentially very beneficial for economic and social development of the region. (Regional quest progress: 14.64%, Third Burmese Empire losses: -0.79 HC, -1.13 IC, -1.86 EC, -0.47 HC)



Great Myanmar Railway
Spoiler :
1891: In a true spirit of modernization, the Konbaung dynasty has started an ambitious new project aimed at connecting Burmese heartland to Siam and the Shan highlands. The project has been plagued by extremely harsh climate conditions, with monsoon season almost putting the construction to a halt. Yet, despite all of the challenges, the Great Myanmar Railway promises to provide a huge boost to the region’s economy. (Regional quest progress: 17.66%, Third Burmese Empire losses: -2.29 HC, -0.56 IC, -5.97 EC, -4.61 MC)


Q4 1893: After two years of neglect, the Great Myanmar Railway project was resurrected and brought back to life as soon as the monsoon season of 1893 ended on November 1st. This time, luuhcu-owned construction companies tasked with its completion received enough of funds, people, and equipment, which reflected well on the progress, showcased by a single fact: in the last quarter of 1893 alone, Burmese builders constructed more kilometers of railway than in the entirety of 1891. (Regional quest progress: 62.64%, Third Burmese Empire losses: -3.81 HC, -0.94 IC, -10.52 EC, -7.39 MC)


One Emperor to rule them all
Q4 1893: Barely a year has passed since the informal agreement between the Third Burmese Empire and Tokugawa Shogunate was signed, establishing a state of political equilibrium between the two powers in Dai Viet. Now, however, it seems that the Konbaung dynasty is moving to replace that cautious stance with a more assertive one, promoting ideas of Trans-Indochinese solidarity and pan-nationalism across the lands of Myanmar, Shan, Siam, Cambodia, Laos, and independent Dai Viet. Capitalist clan structure of the Konbaung dynasty’s state apparatus made promotion of such egalitarian principles relatively hard, especially considering the fact that the Shan States and Siam proper are still controlled by local princes and monasteries bound to the Burmese rulers via ties of semi-feudal vassalage, making general population significantly aloof to any national identities. In Dai Viet, in addition, there was another inertia element to overcome: religion. Most of the Burmese population follow a conservative Theravada school of Buddhism, while Vietnamese population mostly adheres to the Mahayana tradition, widening the gap any pan-nationalists would have to overcome before uniting all Indochina under the banner of the Konbaung Dynasty. (Regional quest progress: 9.48%, Third Burmese Empire losses: -2.79 HC, -4.01 IC, -6.59 EC, -1.68 MC)


Foes or allies?
Q4 1893: The Third Burmese Empire has a long history of rivaling the British for control over South-East Asia and Assam. In 1893, however, it briefly found itself allying the Royal Commonwealth in efforts to contain Boer Indian Ocean expansion. Now that the East-Asian Spice Trading Company is effectively ruined and the Free Boer Republic is no longer a common enemy for the two powers, the Konbaung dynasty’s ambition again yearns eastward. Royal plenipotentiaries have started negotiating with luuhcu clan patriarchs and the kingdom’s nobility, getting them all on board with yet another geopolitical realignment and anti-British stance. As for commoners, setting them against the British proved to be an easy task, although much still needs to be done to develop complete unity of geopolitical views among the state’s political and economic elites. (Regional quest progress: 25.43%, Third Burmese Empire losses: -2.14 HC, -3.06 IC, -5.04 EC, -1.28 MC)




Chosama Island
Q4 1893: Temporary purchase of the Chotham Island by the Tokugawa Shogunate from the Third Burmese Empire was a minor concession, easing Japanese navy’s access to the Indian Ocean. However, the Japanese wouldn’t be themselves had they just rested on that minor gain. A series of jitsugyōka-sponsored public works started almost immediately across the entire landmass, renamed “Chosama” by the Japanese. The navy and the army, trying to not let the industrialists claim the territory solely for their commercial needs, hurried to establish modern port facilities and barracks across the island as well, turning it into a humble, but orderly naval station by the end of the year and tying neighboring Andaman and Nicobar islands closer to the Shogunate, being the closest center of commerce and trade for naturally isolated islands under Burmese suzerainty. (Regional quest completed with success, region South-East Asia gains +5 HC, +5 EC, Tokugawa Shogunate gains +0.5% Regional Influence, Third Burmese Empire loses -0.5% Regional Influence, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -1.12 HC, -0.51 IC, -2.02 EC, -2.25 MC)


Black Waters
Q4 1893: Known for their remote geographical location and brutal tropical climate, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were long used by the British Empire as a universal exile destination for dangerous criminals and political prisoners of will. After the rise of the Third Burmese Empire, this practice didn’t go away, although the conditions of prisoners were much improved thanks to a construction of the so-called Cellular Jail on the Chotham island. Nicknamed Kala Pani (or “Black Waters”) by Bengali migrant construction workers, the Cellular Prison is a compound that for a long time was used to keep rebellious Siamese and Laotian princes in somewhat humane, but still very regimented and isolated conditions. Now that the Chotham Island is leased to the Japanese, the status of the Black Waters prison is being questioned not only at the court of the Konbaung Emperor, but also among many of his vassal nobles.


Torpedo nets
Q4 1893: The Burmese Royal Navy had no experience of dealing with torpedo attacks during its brief and mostly bloodless Indian Ocean campaign, but Burmese observers familiar with the state of asymmetric naval warfare in the Atlantic Ocean point out that torpedoes indeed possess a potential to completely change the balance of powers in modern naval combat. While much still needs to be learned and understood, for now the Burmese decided to come up with their own simple torpedo defense measure: torpedo nets. Such is a name of passive ship defensive devices, hung out from the defending ship, when it’s moored or otherwise stationary in the water, on multiple horizontal booms. Simple and cheap to produce, torpedo nets are starting to become a common sight in Burmese naval bases. (Technology quest completed, Third Burmese Empire adopts “Torpedo nets” for no additional cost, Third Burmese Empire losses: -1.22 HC, -0.3 IC, -3.37 EC, -2.36 MC)




Canton-Yunnan
Spoiler :
Booming, but ethnically complex region with huge labor market and giant rural production and craftsmanship.


Q4 1893: Hopeful of the new state of market-friendly stability in Southern China, the Boers have returned to the Pear River delta, this time making sure to dissociated themselves from the infamous EAST-C, while simultaneously targeting British Hong Kong bankers and traders in their competition. (Free Boer Republic gains +0.53% Regional Influence, British Royal Commonwealth loses -0.53% Regional Influence, -0.99 HC, -1.61 IC, -2.24 EC, -0.55 MC)

God Worshipping Society
Spoiler :
1890: The original founder of the Taiping movement, Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan may dead, but the original cult he formed some fifty years ago is still alive and as zealous as ever in Guangxi. In fact, recently the members of the God Worshipping Society have been complaining that the original purity of the movement has declined over the past twenty five years, with the council of Kings-Under-Heaven paying only the necessary lip service to the divine image of the Heavenly King who has joined his Father in Heaven. Outraged by decomposition of people’s morals (some men actually live with their wives!) and the practical, but impure policies of the government, these fanatics have started following Taiping bureaucrats and prefects, shaming them and shouting curses at them. Knowing the violent and rebellious nature of Hong Xiuquan’s devotees, it won’t be too long before some blood will be spilled.

Q3 1893: The House of Merciful Vigilance could no longer ignore the problem of increased radicalization of the source cult of the Taiping ideology. Their approach to combatting the God Worshipping Society’s discontent was two-pronged and deeply rooted in Chinese philosophical traditions. From the legalistic perspective, any action against state-enacted public order was viewed as a crime that had to be properly punished. On the other hand, from the utilitarian point of view, the God Worshipping Society’s actions (when they didn’t cross a certain line) could be used for ideological purposes. As a manifestation of the latter approach, a few more cooperative zealots were offered to become political propaganda workers on a few factories or in less well-developed villages. It seems like, at current rate the God Worshipping Society will be fully “domesticated” by the end of the year 1893. (Regional quest progress: 85.14%, Taiping Mandate losses: -1.71 HC, -1.76 IC, -2.64 EC, -0.46 MC)


Q4 1893: Taping authorities continued working on not just punishing, but primarily converting or “re-educating” regular God Worshipping Society members to more mainstream Hongite ideology. With some of the more radical preachers either arrested or recruited to become pro-state agitators, the rank-and-file soon followed the case, eventually more or less dissolving in the growing pool of the mainstream Taiping flock. (Regional quest completed with success, region Canton-Yunnan gains +10 HC, +5 IC, +5 EC, Taiping Mandate losses: -0.76 HC, -0.68 IC, -0.95 EC, -0.16 MC)


Guangzhou-Changsha-Wuhan Railroad
Q4 1893: The Heavenly Chancellery is keen to link Wuhan to the Pearl River Delta. Such a railroad, as argued by the Southern King’s people in the bureaucracy, would serve to stitch the country together and allow the fruits of the two greatest industrial hubs of China to be exchanged. Fabric and raw materials from Asia would flow from the Pearl River and be exchanged for the consumer goods produced in Wuhan. Furthermore, by routing it through Chengzhou, Hengyang and Changsha, the Heavenly Kingdom’s economic planners hope to spread the fruit of China’s great transformation into the interior. Workers from these impoverished areas would hopefully flood into the factories, providing the nation with ever more labor to be put to productive uses, and their wages would help improve the livelihoods of those living in some of the poorest parts of Taiping China. Partially with the help of foreign engineering advisors from France and North America, and partially through their own industrial ingenuity, Chinese construction collectives have already accomplished approximately one third of the planned length of this ambitious infrastructure project, promising to finish it before Christmas of 1894 (Regional quest progress: 40.93%, Taiping Mandate losses: -3.33 HC, -0.75 IC, -7.48 EC, -4.86 MC)


Stone in the shoe
Spoiler :
1891: The Miao ethnicity is infamous of being an eternal problem of Chinese imperial bureaucracy, known for their resistance to assimilation and lean toward political autonomy. In order to mitigate this problem, 18th century Qing officials even tried to resettle a group of Miao peasants and mercenaries to the island of Hainan, where a position of kiatong was created for Miao self-governance. Now, however, the Miao seem to be somebody else’s problem. Tokugawa colonial authorities of Kainan are complaining that the warlike Miao communities residing in the mountains disrespect the authority of Bakufu officials and keep insisting on being ruled indirectly, through the kiatong government. Some experts don’t see any problem with some delegation of authority to otherwise non-hostile natives, but military and naval officers see the Miao as just another foe to be utterly crushed.



Pre-calculated firing tables
Spoiler :
1892: An ambitious new project has been announced by the Heavenly Kingdom’s high command. They plan to use Chinese analytical and difference engines to create a complete array of firing artillery tables for all locations across entire theaters of future operations, containing lists of angles of elevation a particular artillery gun barrel would need to be set to, to strike a target at a particular distance with a projectile of a particular weight using a propellant cartridge of a particular weight. Dozens of geological expeditions have been sent to different regions of China and its immediate borders, collecting vast arrays of data for the Heavenly Engine. The data-gathering effort may take quite a while, according to the experts familiar with the project, but in the end it could greatly improve the speed of target engagement by Taiping artillerymen.(Technology quest progress: 11.9%, Taiping Mandate losses: -3.46 HC, -0.75 IC, -7.55 EC, -5.1 MC)

Q1-Q2 1893: With the world slowly turning toward another series of ground-shaking conflicts, Chinese geologists continued busily mapping China and its border regions, only to feed that data arrays into the Heavenly Engine. (Technology quest progress: 19.95%, Taiping Mandate losses: -2.63 HC, -0.59 IC, -5.83 EC, -3.85 MC)

Q3 1893: The Heavenly Engine continues grinding through huge arrays of data for pre-calculated firing tables of Taiping artillery corps, but the progress is underwhelmingly slow. Experts point out that more resources should be allocated to the project, if the leadership wishes to see new tables distributed among artillery officers anytime soon. (Technology quest progress: 25.14%, Taiping Mandate losses: -3.16 HC, -0.71 IC, -7 EC, -4.62 MC)


Q4 1893: As a war on its north-western borders has been averted, the Heavenly Kingdom was happy to keep the pre-calculated artillery tables project financed at its minimum. However, its slow progress seems to be becoming a problem of its own. Due to China’s economic boom, hill levelling, canal digging, and railroad construction are starting to change the landscape so significantly that Chinese topographers had to recompile data arrays for previously inspected territories and feed them to the Divine and Heavenly Engines once again. People at the head of the project now urge the Heavenly Chancellery to assign more people and assets to this project, least it becomes an exercise in futility. (Technology quest progress: 18.24%, Taiping Mandate losses: -4.21 HC, -0.95 IC, -9.45 EC, -6.13 MC)


Xīn yǔ, newspeak, and totalitarian linguistics
Q4 1893: Ideologues of Hongite Christianity have recently become known for their willingness to change not only the way their flock acts, but also the way it thinks and perceives the world. But in the late 1893, a first clumsy step was taken toward complete eradication of “impure” thought through changing the way people talk. The Changsha Scholastic School of Popular Linguistics was tasked by the Kings-Under-Heaven to start developing a radically new, synthetic linguistic system, designed to reinforce and promote ideological purity of its speakers. Dubbed xīn yǔ (or “newspeak”), this variation of Mandarine is expected to be censoring speech of its users on the most basic level, defining their world perception via word use and grammar. As witty (albeit, rather dark) as that idea is, it still stands very far away from any sort of practical implementation, as all attempts to introduce the newspeak even to the students of the Changsha Scholastic School of Popular Linguistics has led to nothing but a quiet disobedience and mockery. (Technology quest progress: -1.07%, Taiping Mandate losses: -6.32 HC, -5.67 IC, -7.91 EC, -1.37 MC)




Yangtze Region
Spoiler :
Booming heart of China, with powerful agriculture and demographics and strong riverine trade.

Heaven and Earth Society
Spoiler :
1890: Ever since the Taiping takeover, smoking of opium has been strictly banned in Chinese cities. However, it appears that opium still gets smuggled into China by the semi-criminal anti-Taiping organization known as the Heaven And Earth Society, popularly nicknamed the Triad. Founded as a nationalist organization resisting the Manchu rule over China, the Triads now have shifted their focus to resisting the Taiping dominion, and they willingly use crime of all sorts to finance their activities.



Kings-Under-Heavens
Spoiler :
1890: Regional Kings-Under-Heaven are a second generation of higher bureaucrats that inherited the Taiping Mandate after the departure of the Heavenly King and a subsequent brief period of intrigues between his lieutenants. Now it appears that the Kings-Under-Heaven agree between each other that the “live and let live” approach to co-rulership is the best for now. What they don’t agree is what path should the Taiping state take now in its foreign policy. The Northern King demands that the Qing remnants are finished. The Western King wants to return Inner Mongolia to China, followed, maybe by Tibet. The Southern King’s ambitions lie in Dai Viet, already experiencing some Communard agitation, somewhat similar to the egalitarian ideas of the Taiping. The King of the Long River proposes what he calls Glorious Solitude, emphasizing inner development and limited foreign entanglements. Finally, the King of the Yellow River wants Taiping China to rival the Tokugawa Shogunate in the Pacific Ocean. Regardless of which faction wins, it appears that a lot of efforts would have to be put into placating the other four.

1891: This year was expected to become the year of Great Reconciliation between the Kings-Under-Heaven, as they and their factions of the Heavenly Chancellery were attempting to come to a series of geopolitical compromises and mutually supportive foreign policy goals. However, all coordination went to nothing when a foreign power tried to infiltrate the state bureaucracy, possibly for the purposes of political espionage, but also for disconcerting negotiations between the Kings-Under-Heavens. The cabinet war that resulted from this ended inconclusively, with the Heavenly Chancellery still functional, but in some disarray. (Regional quest progress: 1.24%, Taiping Mandate losses: -0.82 HC, -1.03 IC, -1.77 EC, -0.35 MC, ??? losses: -0.6 HC, -0.88 IC, -1.45 EC, -0.01 MC)

1892: Dismayed over the last year’s cabinet war, the House of Merciful Vigilance of the Heavenly Kingdom chose to send its agents to investigate foreign penetration of the Heavenly Chancellery. To Taiping luck, in July their forces captured Harbin, and with it most of the remainders of the Qing Dynasty’s intelligence archive, indicating that it was the Qing court that was attempting to set off the Kings-Under-Heaven against each other. Once the full roster of Qing agents was found, the retribution was swift and violent. Now that the seeds of betrayal seem to be taken out, it may be the time to continue political consolidation of Taping elites. (Regional quest progress: 11.74%, Taiping Mandate losses: -3.86 HC, -4.89 IC, -8.39 EC, -1.67 MC)

Q1-Q2 1893: Work continued on realigning the Kings-Under-Heaven and their semi-independent bureaucracies into a decentralized, but unified joint administration, tied by a series of domestic and geopolitical compromises. Conquest of Manchuria went a long way at ensuring happiness of the Northern King, while the Southern King is happy to busy himself with pacification of Panthay and various mercantile opportunities in the Pearl River delta. The most frustrated of all is the King of the Yellow River, who sees Chinese sale of the Trans-Wusuli region and Taiping non-intervention in the Japanese conquest in Korea as a sign of maritime weakness that threatens to bar China from Pacific power projection for years. (Regional quest progress: 33.45%, Taiping Mandate losses: -2.4 HC, -3.25 IC, -5.02 EC, -0.87 MC)

Q3 1893: The King of the Yellow River’s earlier frustration was dealt with this year, as the Heavenly Council approved Chinese intervention against the Boers and thus made an important (however small) step toward maritime power projection in the region. Meanwhile, the Southern King’s negative view of siding with the Burmese was somewhat compensated with a permission to ransack offices of the Boer East Asian Spice Trading Company. An aggressive pro-Han foreign policy in Outer Mongolia placated the Northern King, and booming economic growth made the King of the Long River quite content. This semblance of internal equilibrium was what allowed the Heavenly Chancellery to step in with its long-planned efforts to organize more permanent and hierarchical ministries for various aspects of the state. The work is still ongoing, with the Chancellery cadres doing their best to maneuver around the Kings-Under-Heavens and their perceptions of desired power balance, but the qualitative change it promises to bring to the Taiping state apparatus can be huge. (Regional quest progress: 61.64%, Taiping Mandate losses: -4.06 HC, -4.17 IC, -6.26 EC, -1.08 MC)


Q4 1893: The lease of four Indonesian ports from the troubled Dutch East Indies Company marked the highest point of the Long River King’s ambitions, while a major infrastructure projects at home and diplomatic outreach to other Asian countries as a part of the Thale Noi Lake Treaty helped to placate the Southern King and the King of the Yellow River. Despite the Northern King’s frustrations over the outcome of the Taiping-Ma ultimatum, the triumvirate of the other Kings-Under-Heaven was enough to stabilize the government for long enough to enable completion of its bureaucratic reforms. By the end of the year, various departments and ministries created on an ad-hoc basis throughout decades of the Taiping rule were joined into an organized central apparatus, giving the Heavenly Kingdom a better grasp on its internal policies. (Regional quest completed with success, region Yangtze Region gains +35 IC, Taiping Mandate gains +1.5% Regional Influence, Communard France loses -0.75% Regional Influence, Union of North America loses -0.75% Regional Influence, region Canton-Yunnan: Taiping Mandate gains +1.5% Regional Influence, Communard France loses -0.75% Regional Influence, Union of North America loses -0.75% Regional Influence, region Huanhe Region: Taiping Mandate gains +1.5% Regional Influence, Communard France loses -0.75% Regional Influence, Union of North America loses -0.75% Regional Influence, region Korea-Manchuria: Taiping Mandate gains +0.25% Regional Influence, Pacific Directory loses -0.25% Regional Influence, Union of North America loses -0.75% Regional Influence, Taiping Mandate losses: -5.05 HC, -4.54 IC, -6.33 EC, -1.09 MC)


Chinese archaeology
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: China is considered the oldest uninterrupted civilization on Earth by some scholars, and it’s no wonder that its history is now attracting the attention of its Taiping rulers. One of the first Kings-Under-Heavens to express his interest to researching his country’s distant past was the King of the Long River. Now, he is looking to put together archaeological groups who could start exploring ancient sites around the Downstream Plan and Sichuan Basin - not the earliest cradles of Bronze Age Chinese kingdoms, but important regions of Chinese history nonetheless. And who knows, perhaps, looking at his successes, other Kings-Under-Heavens could join the suit.



Divinity Engine
Q4 1893: Encouraged by successes of fixing issues with the Heavenly Engine, Chinese bureaucrats have given a go to construction of yet another analytical engine, this one specifically hardwired to specialize on economic and industrial development and planning. Due to a specialized nature of this computing machine, it found relatively few applications outside its main field, but, nonetheless, construction of such a computing giant in mere months was a big step for Chinese cyberneticists, raising the country’s prestige abroad and also placating the King of the Long River in his endless competition with fellow Kings-Under-Heaven. (Regional quest completed with success, region Yangtze Region gains +10 IC, +5 EC, +5 MC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +0.5%, Taiping Mandate losses: -0.7 HC, -0.16 IC, -1.58 EC, -1.02 MC)


Beijing-Nanjing-Wuhan Railroad
Q4 1893: The Heavenly Chancellery seems to be of the opinion that linking the great agricultural breadbasket of northern China to the industrial and agricultural hubs of central China and the capital of Nanjing offers similar economic benefits to the Guangzhou-Changsha-Wuhan Railroad currently constructed in the domain of the Southern King. A double row of iron tracks linking the length of the country could also be a potential political declaration of the Heavenly Kingdom’s intention to modernise. Besides, the Taiping general staff has argued that it would also allow the army to move troops rapidly around China in case of a sea blockade. With that in mind, the construction of the Beijing-Nanjing stretch of the railroad has started along the Nanjing-Jining-Jinan-Shijiazhuang-Beijing route, well away from the coast. By the end of the year, the military-critical sections of the railroad were completed, leaving the rest of the infrastructure project to be completed in 1894. (Regional quest progress: 38.27%, Taiping Mandate losses: -4.03 HC, -0.91 IC, -9.06 EC, -5.88 MC)




Huanhe Region
Spoiler :
Booming core Chinese region with huge demographic and agricultural capacity.

The Scourge of the Han People
Spoiler :
1890: The Yellow River was nicknamed “the Scourge of the Han People” for regularly going over its level and flooding nearby fields. With the number of peasants greater than ever thanks to the Taiping agriculturalist practices, now these floods are becoming ever more devastating. So far, major famines have been prevented thanks to redistribution of food by local authorities, but more and more people demand that the King-Under-Heaven does something to remedy the disaster, even if it means praying more to the Heavenly King and his Father.

1891: The Taiping administration has embarked on a progressive and well-planned out agricultural modernization campaign, with simple, low-scope technological improvements being introduced in selected communities across the country and flood dams being built along the Huanhe river. However, the plan that was good on paper suffered from poor implementation, partially due to bad decision-making by lower-tier managers, and partially from the resistance of peasants to changes (especially considering how many such changes have already occurred in their life over the past few decades). Another flooding of the Huanhe valley only added to this arrange of woes and challenges. Experts point out that the plan adopted by the Heavenly Chancellery is still very sane, but requires a larger concentration of economic efforts and/or significant improvements in technology and practices used in Chinese state enterprises. (Regional quest progress: -3.21%, Taiping Mandate losses: -4.32 HC, -0.94 IC, -9.44 EC, -6.38 MC)

1892: The King of the Yellow River seems to have learned the right lessons from the last year’s disasters. In order to award more progressive peasants, he has persuaded other Kings-Under-Heaven to let him ease religious requirements of gender segregation for most productive village workers, allowing them to live with their husbands and wives, under the assumption that such good workers have already proven to be good Christians, foreign to any caral temptations. Meanwhile, the first generation of trusted cadres was trained and thinly distributed across the country to supervise high-priority rural projects that are expected to showcase the successes of Taiping “modern agriculturalism” to passive peasantry. This indeed helped to recover the Huanhe valley from the last year’s flood, and first model villages are starting to draw envy and admiration of regular commoners, although a lot is still to be done before the changes become widespread enough to affect the whole region. (Regional quest progress: 6.67%, Taiping Mandate losses: -4.3 HC, -3.18 IC, -9.38 EC, -4.12 MC)

Q1-Q2 1893: For now, construction of dams and canals to protect farmers from Huanhe floods has stopped. Instead, the government concentrated on making sure that peasant communes and even rare single farmsteads could effectively recover from such events and earn money while doing so. The All-China Pricing Board helped with the latter effort, opening a futures trading opportunity for top suppliers and providing countless villages with a steady, predictable flow of humble wealth. That effort was largely helpful, and in upcoming years could transform agriculture in the Huanhe river valley. (Regional quest progress: 42.76%, Taiping Mandate losses: -3.35 HC, -2.57 IC, -7.24 EC, -3.15 MC)

Q3 1893: Agricultural reforms and modernization programs sweeping through the Central Plains continued rolling at a healthy pace, as was proven by a great harvest this fall. However, some of the more cautious observers (or alarmists, as some call them) point out that this is the last chance for the Heavenly Chancellery and the King of the Yellow River to do something about the Huanhe River’s annual floods and addressing their consequences. Come spring, they say, the newly enriched peasantry may lose everything they have earned over three years of struggle. (Regional quest progress: 96%, Taiping Mandate losses: -3.38 HC, -1.79 IC, -6.65 EC, -3.42 MC)


Q4 1893: Quite happy with the success of its pricing board, the Heavenly Chancellery made sure to throw amassed resources of its state construction companies to building modern dams along the flow of the Huanhe River before the spring flood came. The effort was successful, and by the end of the year statisticians of the Heavenly Kingdom started to notice significant regional economic growth, especially in the sphere of agricultural production. (Regional quest completed with full success, region Huanhe Region gains +35 EC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +2.25%, Regional Growth Trend +0.25%, Taiping Mandate losses: -2.8 HC, -0.63 IC, -6.3 EC, -4.09 MC)


House caves of the Yellow Earth Plateau
Q4 1893: The Huangtu (“Yellow Earth”) Plateau covering most of the Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces also features the largest agglomeration of earth dwellings in the world. Known as yaodong (“house caves”), these buildings are literally dug in hillsides, with only facades and front-facing courtyards featuring any sort of erected structures. Naturally well-insulated and cheap, yaodongs are primarily dwellings of choice for poor villagers, but architectural planners from the Heavenly Chancellery suggest that they might be perfect blueprints for the future of Chinese rural and even urban architecture across the country: cheap, quick to build, and ecologically sustainable. Meanwhile, critics point out that yaodongs, for all their virtues, have several flaws. They provide citizens with too much privacy (“who knows what kind of sin may be taking place in a windowless cave!”) and also can easily become mortal traps in case of fire or an earthquake (after all, it was the prevalence of yaodongs that caused 830 thousand deaths during the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake). Now the Chancellery’s bureaucrats need to decide how they wish to handle the housing issue that’s been plaguing the most populous nation in the world for centuries.


Cadres for the Heavenly Kingdom
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: The Heavenly Chancellery has rightfully recognized that improving education standards for the entirety of Chinese population could take decades of work and an abyss of funding. Therefore, for now it wants to concentrate on training a corps of well-motivated consultants, experts, and social agitators, named in formal papers simply as “the cadres.” The program for training just such jacks-of-all-trades was initiated this winter in the Henan province, with its branch schools opening throughout the entire region. Political experts also point out that the program’s origination in the Huanhe River region, despite its all-Chinese reach, could elevate the King of the Yellow River among other Kings-Under-Heaven. (Regional quest progress: 10.81%, Taiping Mandate losses: -2.72 HC, -3.69 IC, -5.69 EC, -0.98 MC)

Q3 1893: Correctly realizing that ruling China is a great balancing act of some sorts, the Heavenly Chancellery pushed for a greater dispersal of cadre preparation schools throughout all China. Not only did it help to limit elevation of the ing of the Yellow River, but it also produced stunning results, perhaps because it allowed the program to tap into other regions’ subclass of educated and enthusiastic experts, ripe for joining the state apparatus. Observing instructors point out that same level of success may be hard to keep throughout the entire training program, as enrollment is projected to drop once the most enthusiastic volunteers join the cadres in full force, but they still admit, that most of the staffing problems faced by the Heavenly Chancellery may be resolved relatively soon. (Regional quest progress: 52.71%, Taiping Mandate losses: -2.13 HC, -2.2 IC, -3.30 EC, -0.57 MC)


Q4 1893: Wishing to establish a proper educational pipeline for preparing qualified cadres for the Heavenly Chancellery, Taiping authorities reached out to village schools and child labor unions, looking for strong-willed, capable, and loyal youth that could become the second generation of Taiping low-level leaders. This finished the creation of a holistic system that promises to supply Chinese regime with magistrates for years and decades to come. (Regional quest completed with success, region Huanhe Region gains +15 IC, region Yangtze Region agins +10 IC, region Canton-Yunnan +10 IC, region Korea-Manchuria gains +5 IC, Taiping Mandate losses: -5.31 HC, -4.76 IC, -6.64 EC, -1.15 MC)


Henan Wooden Clappers
Q4 1894: Henan Bangzi (“Wooden Clappers of Henan”) is a type of Chinese opera genre, loved among common people for its traditional simplicity. Most of Henan bangzi performances require no makeup and very little (if any) musical arrangement, making it a perfect version of popular art. During the Qing Dynasty era, it was known as Yuju opera and often was looked down upon by rich donors. The Taiping War and institution of the Heavenly Kingdom barely changed the status of Henan Bangzi: just like many other displays of natural human emotion and joy, musical theater was seen negatively by the first generation of Hongite purists. Now, as the nation is moving away from Hongite orthodoxy of the early days of the Rebellion, some voices are heard suggesting that the Wooden Clappers of Henan deserve bureaucracy’s attention and even promotion among the common folk as a Taiping-friendly version of traditional Chinese art.


Heavenly Engine
Spoiler :
1890: The construction of the first Chinese analytical engine in Zhengzhou five years ago did not only uplift Taiping China to its major power status, but also was a pinnacle of the Northern King’s influence in Taiping internal politics. Today, this giant machine is helping the nation with its economic boom, resolving problems ranging from engineering to popular census to manufacture administration. However, it seems like too many things in China still are being done the old way, and the Heavenly Engine, as it was nicknamed, doesn’t get nearly enough work to keep it running all the time. All engineers agree that keeping the machine dormant even for short periods of time may wear it out, so they suggest finding to find at least some way of keeping the machine busy. Now the question is what sort of programmes should be used to occupy the Heavenly Engine with the most effectiveness.

1891: Taiping authorities chose to abandon mathematical metaphysics and concentrate the engine’s resources on balancing out national planned economy. The new set of statistical programmes have started giving rather encouraging results, already having prevented coal shortages during an industrialization effort in the province of Hunan. (Regional quest progress: 34.29%, Taiping Mandate losses: -1.51 HC, -0.33 IC, -3.30 EC, -2.23 MC)

While newly written programmes were still being tested in a prototype run, it became obvious that the Heavenly Engine was malfunctioning intermittently. To the horror of anointed inspectors sent by the Table of Kings-Under-Heaven, it appears that some dark forces have been trying to sabotage the analytical machine. Had it not been for the agriculture programme project and the selfless, thorough work done by the quality assurance engineers assigned to it, the Heavenly Engine could have been completely and utterly ruined! Even now, it may be the matter of paramount importance for the Taiping secret service to ensure the mysterious saboteurs don’t finish what they’ve started. (Regional quest progress: -108.36%, ??? losses: -1.27 HC, -1.61 IC, -2.70 EC, -0.88 MC)

1892: Fixing last year’s sabotage of the Heavenly Engine has proven to be a heavy task for Taiping engineers, and their reports indicate that, besides simple mechanical damage, some advanced engine-clacking techniques unknown in China were used to the perpetrators to infect the main analytical modus with running errors. Luckily, no more sabotage attempts took place throughout the year, allowing Taiping programme typists to work undisturbed. (Regional quest progress: -50.05%, Taiping Mandate losses: -1.3 HC, -0.28 IC, -2.83 EC, -1.91 MC)

Q1-Q2 1893: Defect fixing efforts surrounding the sabotage of the Heavenly Engine have continued this year, with maintenance windows scheduled on a monthly basis, in between necessary workloads. Official reports show that growing sophistication of Chinese programme encoding techniques is helping with defect resolution, although Taiping quality assurance engineers familiar with this highly sensitive project point out that the connection could be the opposite one: by encountering more sophisticated engine-clacking techniques used by foreign saboteurs, Chinese encoders have no chance but to improve their own.(Regional quest progress: 7.64%, Taiping Mandate losses: -1.28 HC, -1.73 IC, -2.68 EC, -0.46 MC)

Q3 1893: Now that the earlier damage done to the Heavenly Engine has been dealt with, Taiping government has started to invest into developing its programme modules that could help with optimization of infrastructure network and planned economy, with special attention being granted to the new industrial project outfitted in Wuhan. The progress was stunning, and only last-minute redirection of qualified cadres to anti-Boer nationalization efforts in Canton didn’t let the Heavenly Engine’s engineers and statisticians finish their work by October. (Regional quest progress: 79.5%, Taiping Mandate losses: -0.88 HC, -0.2 IC, -1.94 EC, -1.28 MC)


Q4 1893: After all the struggle with repair and security of the Heavenly Engine, the project was finally completed and signed off this year, synergizing nicely with the construction of a brand new Divinity Engine built in Wuhan. (Regional quest completed with success, region Huanhe Region gains +15 IC, +0.5% Regional Growth Fluctuation, Taiping Mandate losses: -1.4 HC, -0.32 IC, -3.15 EC, -2.04 MC)


Muscular Christianity
Q4 1893: Brother Hong’s version of Christianity lying in the foundation of the Taiping ideology is in many ways heterodox and even alien to Europeans. Yet, Christian undertones of the new Chinese popular philosophy, as well as gradual modernization of the country, attract a number of European and American missionaries to China. There they carefully proselytize among locals, hoping to not contradict any major formulas of Hongite faith directly. One resulting trend that has taken a hold in the Central Plains of China is known as “muscular Christianity.” In essence, it’s simply promotion of athleticism, physical education, and amateur sports in their Western fashion. The trainers (who just happen to also be Protestant preachers, usually from Deseret or the North-American Union) explain to their trainees that it’s a duty to God (and, of course, to Brother Hong) to keep one’s body in His image. The “muscular Christianity” athletic clubs attract quite a lot of following recently, but also cause discontent among more tradition-minded locals, who’d rather have Taiping citizens follow the ancient Chinese “boxing” practices.


Alternating current
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Despite the sheer size of the Chinese economy, that part of Asia is rarely associated with industrial innovation. That perception may change soon, as extensive Single Daughters’ Wuhan factories are starting to experiment with an emerging form of electric power generation based on the flow of electrical charge carriers that periodically reverses direction. That approach is different from the mainstream source of electricity, known as the direct current. Foreign sceptics already call Chinese experiments laughably useless and quite dangerous, but first industrial tests show great potential of the new power generation method. (Technology quest progress: 37.71%, Taiping Mandate losses: -2.45 HC, -0.55 IC, -5.44 EC, -3.6 MC)


Q4 1893: Despite all the scepticism of the world engineering community, the alternating current research ongoing in Wuhan attracted interest of some of the world leaders in power generation. Teams of researchers and engineers from Japan and North Germany reached an agreement with South-Chinese single daughters and the Southern King himself to come to Canton and participate in the development of that promising new technology. Significant progress indeed was achieved, and experts expect first AC generators to become industrially available by spring of the next year. Meanwhile, some ideologic hardliners in the Heavenly Kingdom question the Southern King’s decision, as it opened the door for the nation’s competitors to its technological knowledge bank in this potentially game-changing field. (Technology quest progress: 95.88%, Taiping Mandate losses: -1.23 HC, -0.28 IC, -2.76 EC, -1.79 MC, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -1.22HC, -0.27 IC, -3 EC, -2.29 MC, North German Federation losses: -0.95 HC, -0.22 IC, -2.63 EC, -2.14 MC)

 
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Update 5: October 1, 1893 - December 31, 1893

Tibet-Tarim Basin

Spoiler :
Stagnant backwaters of Asia with largely unexplored resource potential and a possibility to connect Eastern Asia to the Middle East via a land route.


Prime-minister by birthright
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: For over a century, the mountain kingdom of Nepal was ruled by the Gorkha dynasty that unified the country in the 18th century and reformed its army into a surprisingly well-ordered force. For a brief period of time, Nepalese rulers were even formal suzerains of the Dalay-Lama himself, but that string of successes was cut short by a defeat in the Anglo-Nepalese war of 1814-1816. Since then, Nepal remained in a strange position, subordinate to the British East India Company (and later to the Protectorate Ward), but still distinct from the Indian princely states it was surrounded with in the south. The decline of the Gorkha dynasts resulted in a coup d'état of 1885, when one Jung Bahadur Rana overthrew the last Shri Teen of the Gorkha line and became the first ruler from the Rana dynasty. What’s peculiar, Jung Bahadur didn’t take the kingly title to himself or his successors, but instead chose to declare the position of prime-minister (Shri Panch) a hereditary one, staying in the shade of a de-facto empty throne. The British colonial office was quite happy of this development, seeing weaker central authority of Nepalese rulers as a guarantee that they would need British protection to retain their position. Yet, in recent years many old-school monarchists still loyal to the ancient house of Gorkha voice their support of Sikh expansionism in hopes that the Punjabi Maharaja could bestow his attention on the troubled mountain kingdom, freeing it from the Brits and placing it under its protective shield.


Q4 1893: A clandestine pro-Gorkha insurrection is brewing in Nepali countryside. Having started as a series of monarchist cabal gatherings, it gradually devolved into a much more organized movement that is starting to threaten troops loyal to Shri Panch Jung Bahadur Rana. It is rumoured that secret routes and trails exist leading across the Himalayas all the way to Tibet, via which pro-Gorkha partisans receive supplies, weapons, funding, and military instructors familiar with modern guerilla warfare. At this rate, the Rana dynasty may be facing a foreign plot too complex to be handled without British assistance. (Regional quest progress: 66.67%, ??? losses: -4.2? HC, -3.7? IC, -6.4? EC, -1.6? MC)

Country of Seven Cities
Spoiler :
1890: In the early days of the Dungan Rebellion that freed the peoples of the Tarim Basin from the power of the Qing, seven cities formed an urban confederation known as Yettishar. Now that the Tarim Basin up to Kashgaria has bowed to the resurgent Ma Dynasty, the Seven Cities remain a proud autonomy within the otherwise traditionally Chinese (albeit, Islamic) Ma kingdom. So far, no significant conflicts have taken places between Yettishar and Ma Dynasty’s ambahns (supervisors), but the peoples of the Seven Cities remain a proudly distinct entity in the body of the new kingdom.



Dzungar revenge
Spoiler :
1890: In the middle of the 18th century, the Qing court followed its conquest of Dzungaria by committing a slaughter known today as the Dzungarian genocide, all with a goal to repopulate their “New Territory” (or Xinjiang) with Han settlers. Now, more than a century later, the sins of their ancestors haunt the descendants of Han colonists as Dzingarians avenge their forefathers without mercy. To the Ma Emperor, this represents a challenge. He is very popular among the kingdom’s Muslims (including the Dzungarians), who brought him to power in the first place. But a huge number of his subjects are Han, and placating them is crucial if the Ma Dynasty were to ever hope to gain the Heavenly Mandate over the rest of China. While considerations are being weighted, Han villages continue to burn.

Q1-Q2 1893: As settling of old scores continued throughout Dzungaria, some Han villages started to form so-called “New Territory militias,” fighting back lynching mobs with surprising level of military organization and cohesion. While Ma agents were busy handling a wave of Han discontent in Outer Mongolia, the Emperor could do nothing beyond once again expressing his wishes for the chaos to stop and harmony to ensue. Meanwhile, French and North-American journalists residing in Taiping China were sent to Dzungaria, their trips paid for by the Heavenly Chancellery, in hopes to attract the world’s attention to atrocities of local intercommunal warfare. At that they succeeded, although their interpretations of events were somewhat different from wishes of the Heavenly Kingdom’s idealogues. French articles concentrated more on the collective aspect of Han resistance, depicting “New Territory militias” as vastly superior in knowledge of warfare and morale and thus not helping to establish them as helpless victims of a genocide. As for the North-American observers, they chose to concentrate on the old history of interethnic and inter-religious struggle in the region, moralizing toward the need of establishing a constitutional, progressive government akin to the North-American Union in this region, an image that only neighboring Siberian Popular Assembly somewhat satisfied. (Regional quest progress: 18.86%, ??? losses: -2.8? HC, -3.9? IC, -6.?? EC, -1.?? MC)

Q3 1893: While all of the Ma Dynasty’s police and army forces were busy containing the Jindandao revolt and border incidents in Outer Manchuria, Dzungaria became a hotbed of terrorism. Attacks on administrative offices and atrocities against Dzungar minorities became commonplace, as a sort of a quick revenge for the earlier Dzungar persecution of Han settlers. As the only bright spot for the Ma loyalists, success of the anti-insurgency campaign in Outer Manchuria allowed the army and the police to stop a constant influx of Han volunteers from mainland China, depriving the New Territory militias of their most valuable source of experienced reinforcements. Still, the situation is dire for the Ma regime, and if things are allowed to proceed at the same pace, Dzungaria may flare up into a full-scale Han rebellion soon. (Regional quest progress: 82.67%, ??? losses: -2.9? HC, -3.?? IC, -4.6? EC, -0.8? MC)


Q4 1893: To the Northern King’s disappointment, the Taiping-Ma ultimatum was resolved through a series of three-sided negotiations between the Sikh, Taiping, and Ma leadership. However, the Heavenly Kingdom’s assertiveness and the Sikh Maharaja’s defeatism did force the Ma Emperor agree to a number of concessions, which included a mild tax reform (as opposed to complete abolition of jizya, originally demanded by the Chinese), establishment of limited municipal autonomies for the Han, and dropping of any claims on mainland China. However, it seems like the New Territory militas’ interpretation of that agreement was completely different from the one signed by the three parties. Arms trade continued, with the militias not only refusing to disarm, but now featuring better equipment than their “oppressors.” New local governments were formed with almost demonstrative independence from Ma authorities, turning autonomy into de-facto independence. Representatives of such governments hurried to make public announcements of made-up concessions made by the Ma regime, going as far as promising redistribution of land from Uyghur landowners to the the farmers. Instead of sparking anger among the Dzungar and Uyghur population, which was already familiar with a completely different interpretation of the agreement from Ma mouthpieces, this encouraged some of the less disciplined Hans go ahead and take that was truly theirs by force. After all, the Ma Emperor and his lackeys had their arms tied, and the Egyptians weren’t going to arrive for at least eight weeks - and even after their arrival, how many peacekeepers could there be? That, however, was a heavy miscalculation. (Regional quest progress: 85.1%, ??? losses: -3.7? HC, -3.4? IC, -4.7? EC, -0.8? MC)

When the regulatory agreement was signed, a neutral peacemaking army was requested from a trusted third power, the Khedivate of Egypt, in order to enforce peace and quiet. The transfer of soldiers to distant Dzungaria through the newly completed Transhimalayan Railway took the most of the remainder of the year, letting the situation in Dzungaria to deteriorate some more, putting the region on the brink of a full-scale ethnic warfare. However, eventually the Egyptians did arrive in numbers unforeseen by the New Territory militias, making any aggressive deviation from the treaty challenging at best. Several attempts to take “rightfully farmers’” land from Uyghur landlords has led to several riots put down by Egyptian soldiers with little regard for human life. Armament transfer from the east was largely shut down, and the new “autonomous” governments were forced to pay their share of taxes to the Ma treasury (even with the jizya temporarily put on hold). Manipulating Egyptian commanders and soldiers into taking Han side in various disputes proved to be almost impossible, as they naturally sympathized with fellow Muslims (their orders from Al-Kahira required impartiality, but that went only as far as obeying the formal rules of conduct). By the year’s end, it became clear that the New Territory militias and Dzungar rioters had no choice but to tone down their rhetorics and actions, although the Egyptian army presence is likely to be needed for quite some time for the tensions to completely dissipate. (Regional quest progress: 29.86%, Egypt losses: -6.9 HC, -1.9 IC, -4.83 EC, -2.4 MC)




Greater Mongolia
Spoiler :
Stagnant, vast region on the edge of the larger Chinese civilization, with inconsistent economic and demographic development.

Congress of clans
Spoiler :
1890: Ever since the Ma Dynasty incorporated Mongolian steppes into its fold, the Emperor has had to maneuver between traditional Chinese authoritarianism and the Mongolian tradition of feudal parliamentarism. Known as chigulgan, that assembly of steppe clan leaders seems to be deeply suspicious of Western technologies and what they can do to the Mongolian nomadic way of life. Dependent on the chigulgan’s support to control the vast steppe in the north of his kingdom, the Ma Emperor now has to constantly trade favors with Mongolian clan leaders in order to gain their support for his agenda.



Jindandao incident
Spoiler :
1890: A secret society of Han nationalists known as Jindandao was formed in the years that directly followed the collapse of the Qing imperial authority in Inner Mongolia. For a few decades, it remained just a small cabal, since even local Han settlers were acceptive of the relative stability and protection offered to them by the Ma imperial regime. However, as soon as rumors of the massacres of Han settlers in Dzungaria started reaching Inner Mongolia, Jindandao started to swell with thousands of new joiners. This year, the volcano of popular paranoia has finally erupted, as Jindandao conspirators started attacking and massacring local Mongol population, inflaming ethnic tensions across the Ma kingdom.

Q1-Q2 1893: Jindandao terrorism spiked earlier this year, surpassing a threat level of a violent protest and becoming an open insurgency. Swelling ranks of Jindandao fighters and improving quality of their training and especially armaments (at times not available even to regular Ma soldiers) hinted that the Han nationalists are being helped by a major power from without. Despite this, Jindandao insurgents themselves were surprised to face a powerful backlash from local Mongol population that fought them at every step, supported by underfunded and badly trained, but loyal and dedicated Ma dynasty’s own agents. (Regional quest progress: 18.86%, ??? losses: -13.?? HC, -4.5? IC, -7.5? EC, -2.6? MC, Ma Dynasty losses: -3.57 HC, -5.09 IC, -8.55 EC, -0.04 MC)

Q3 1893: The Jindandao crisis continued escalating this year, as Ma police prefects, tax collectors, and municipal magistrates became victims of bold and violent attacks and often assassinations, with very little losses on the part of the attackers. This wave of unrestricted terrorism forced the Ma Emperor to authorize deployment of the nation’s entire army to the border region of Outer Mongolia, in an effort to restore the order. This coincided with a drastic rise in the number and sophistication of Jindandao militias, which moved from cautious partisan warfare to more direct action against Ma military garrisons. This triggered a very well-executed anti-insurgency campaign, in which Ma forces showed that their outdated equipment and training could still be compensated by their morale and logistical superiority, especially when they deal only with a partisan force lacking heavy weaponry and numbers of a conventional army. A good number of partisan forces was encircled and destroyed, with quite a few prisoners of war turning out to be ex-Taiping soldiers and even officers. Some Jindandao militias still managed to survive the onslaught and continue to fight on, while a few desperate troops even escaped into the Heavenly Kingdom, apparently without resistance from Taiping border patrols. (Regional quest progress: 10.86%, ??? losses: 22.5? HC, -7.2? IC, -11.8? EC, -4.3? MC, Ma Dynasty losses: -13.25 HC, -4.48 IC, -7.52 EC, -0.03 MC)


Q4 1893: Just like in Dzungaria, Jindandao operatives proceeded to celebrate the avertion of a Taiping-Ma war like a complete capitulation of the Ma regime rather than an mutual compromise they had to respect. The main difference was not in the attitude, but its quantification: Han defiance was much stronger in Inner Mongolia. For a few brief weeks, it looked like the region was going to completely slip out of Ma control... (Regional quest progress: 66.14%, ??? losses: -4.5? HC, -4.?? IC, -5.7? EC, -0.9? MC)

...until the arrival of a large Egyptian peace corps. Just like in Dzungaria, the Egyptians arrived in numbers and quickly saw what sorts of abuses of power were taking place in the countryside. Several Jindandao cells (rebranded as autonomous municipalities) were forced to disarm, often after testing Egyptian determination in a short shootout. Eventually, Inner Mongolia started to stabilize, with both sides of the ethnic conflict being discouraged from troublemaking by a mere sight of Egyptian zamburak patrols with camel-mounted machine guns. (Regional quest progress: 39.29%, Egypt losses: -6.54 HC, -1.8 IC, -4.57 EC, -2.27 MC)

Seekers of White Waters
Spoiler :
1890: The Tuvan sub-state of Tannu Uriankhai has been formally independent for five hundred years, ever since they Sino-Mongolian Yuan dynasty fell apart. In truth, however, it’s been a protectorate of the Siberian Popular Assembly for the past twenty years, with its rulers being puppets of Siberian artels (or guilds). However, outside of Russian trading posts, Tannu Uriankhai had no foreign population in its lands. Recently this changed, as columns of religious exodites started settling in this wild, mountain region. Known as the Seekers of White Waters, these Russian settlers are followers of a local branch of Old Believers (who, in turn, are a splinter, heretical faction of the Russian Orthodox church). Inter-racial clashes have so far been rare, but the ruler of Tannu Uriankhai is not happy, as the newcomers appear to be very hard to negotiate with in terms of choosing the lands for them to settle. After all, the Seekers believe that they’re searching for a hidden bliss-giving creek, a mixture between a Siberian Eldorado and the Biblical Holy Land.



Korea-Manchuria
Spoiler :
Slowly-developing, recently devastated region with a wide, but stagnant labor market, and big, but not fully utilized resource potential.


Gates to the Heavenly Ford
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: The city of Tianjin is lies at a place of sedimentation of several rivers (including the Huanhe River) entering the Bohai Gulf of the Yellow Sea. It is viewed as one of the key ports for Chinese agricultural and coal export, and also an obstacle for any navy wishing to enter the Yellow River itself. Thus, the city of Tianjin lies well within the realm of the King of the Yellow River and wouldn’t become a subject of any internal political debates, had it not been, surprisingly, for the Taiping conquest of Inner Manchuria. The nature of the conflict is simple: the King of the Yellow River wishes to safeguard his precious Heavenly Ford from any potential naval attacks, be they directed by the Japanese, North-German, or Russian fleets. In order to do so, he wishes to found a powerful modern coastal fort and a naval base in the town of Lüshunkou which lies on the tip of the newly conquered Liaodong Peninsula of Southern Manchuria. These lands, however, are considered to be a domain of the Northern King, who has little interest in giving anything up to the already powerful (“Too powerful,” he says) King of the Yellow River. Meanwhile, Northern King himself is an old cavalryman, who fails to see any value in naval affairs and refuses to embark on a costly infrastructure project for the benefit of calming down his southern neighbor’s paranoia. Now the Heavenly Kingdom may need to find a way to resolve its strongmen’s dispute without compromising its security and naval power projection.



Taming the River of Foxes
Spoiler :
1892: The Wusuli river (also known to the Manchus as Usuri Ula, or the River of Foxes) is crossing the Outer Manchuria south to north, eventually merging with the Heilongjiang (Amur) river at the Pacific Directory border. Due to harsh winters and very contrasting thawing season, this river is infamous for its heavy floods, due to which its shores were never densely settled. However, now that the Taiping authority is coming to Outer Manchuria, it’s becoming apparent to many that the Wusuli is a great economic asset, being rich in high-valued types of fish, ranging from sturgeon to several types of salmon. Now anyone brave enough to invest into this region could tap into the Wusuli river valley natural reserves.



From freedom fighters to hoodlums
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Japanese organized crime, or Yakuza, traditionally recruits its members from discriminated social classes of people engaged in ritually “impure” professions, as well as other sorts of outcasts. With expansion of the Japanese colonial empire and economic influence well beyond the limits of the Home Islands, these groups of misfits were joined by ethnic aliens, ranging from displaced Polynesian and Ainu natives to work migrants from South Africa, British India, and the Confederate States of America. A special niche, however, belongs to Koreans who just recently were forced to become the Shogunate’s subjects. As ideologically-motivated proto-socialist bands of Donghak peasants and Nokrimdang “noble bandits” were cracked down and destroyed, some of the survivors formed powerful city gangs known as the Kkangpae. Near-complete moral and ideological flexibility makes kkangpae gangs quite capable of either competing with overly expansionist yakuza clans or forming temporary alliances with them for the sake of resisting their common foe: the Shogunate police.





Transural
Spoiler :
Fast-developing region, awash with natural resources and a good potential for industrial development.

Mistress of the Mountain
Spoiler :
1890: The boom of mineral excavation and mining in the Ural Mountains has uplifted many entrepreneurial individuals to wealth and prosperity. One of them, residing in Ust-Sysolsk, is drawing the ire of competitors. Not only is that person non-Russian, but that person is an unmarried, forty-year-old woman of Komi origin! In the tolerant Siberian society, a rich, powerful widow is not much of a scandal, but her Russian and North-German competitors seem to be launching a newspaper campaign aimed to tarnish her reputation and drive her out of business, thus opening a possibility for themselves to enter the local market. It remains to be seen if these efforts would succeed.



Stroganov salt
Spoiler :
1890: For centuries, the Stroganov family has been owning the immensely profitable saltworks in Solikamsk, along with other mining businesses across the Urals and Siberia. It seems like by now the immensely rich family has ascended to a new level, de-facto exercising unquestionable influence over the otherwise decentralized Popular Assembly. While the Stroganovs are firm supporters of keeping Siberia’s status of dominion with Russia, their patriarch pushes for a more centralized approach to administration and law-making, as well as greater Siberian participation in Russia’s foreign policies and wars. The younger generation, however, argues that Siberia should continue being the paradize of liberty and deregulation, even if it comes at the cost some security risks and geopolitical aloofness.

Q1-Q2 1893: A major patriotic press campaign started in Siberia, financed openly by prominent Russian oligarchs, such as Alexei Putilov, and aimed at supporting the Aleksandr Stroganov, the patriarch of the Stroganov family, in his pro-Russian, interventionist political stance. That helped t sway Siberian political alignment significantly toward centralization and openly pro-Russian foreign diplomacy, although Aleksandr’s nephew, the “diamond prince” Pavel Stroganov, remains a strong vote in the Siberian Popular Assembly, capable of putting on quite a fight before the political shift is complete. (Regional quest progress: 63.21%, Directorial Russia losses: -1.94 HC, -3.38 IC, -5.1 EC, -1.26 MC)

Q3 1893: Russian directorial press and pro-Russian political lobby in Siberia continued encouraging young Pavel to side with his family patriarch on political matter. Ever a fighter and a true Stroganov in his stubbornness, “the Diamond Prince” couldn’t miss such a chance for a good, fair fight and rallied all libertarian and isolationist press to his side, going even as far as supporting some underdog mayors and governors in municipal elections, looking to woo their support in the Popular Assembly on critical questions. The political campaign in press and public discourse was very civil, and, despite all efforts put forward by Pavel Stroganov, it seems like the Pan-Russian side is winning. (Regional quest progress: 83.36%, Directorial Russia losses: -2.97 HC, -4.89 IC, -7.18 EC, -1.81 MC, Siberian Popular Assembly losses: -5.58 HC, -11.44 IC, -18 EC, -1.6 MC)


Q4 1893: As calls of Pan-Russian unity and reintegration with the greater Russian transnational entity continued to be heard all across Siberia (mostly being sponsored by the Directorial Assembly in Moscow), Pavel Stroganov and his lackey gradually found themselves isolated and outdone. Eventually, it became clear even to the ambitious “Diamond Prince” that, perhaps, it was time to cut one’s losses and negotiate with Prolocutor Milyukov about his own, Pavel Stroganov’s position inside the greater transcorporate world of Russian high politics. As expected, his own pro-Russian father and a mastodon of Russian politics, vodka magnate Pyotr Smirnoff were happy to mediate these negotiations, gradually putting an end to the short history of Siberian geopolitical defiance. By New Year’s Eve, toasts all across Siberia were made for unity of all the free Russias. (Regional quest completed with success, region Transural gains +5 IC, Directorial Russia gains +3% Regional Influence, Siberian Popular Assembly loses -3% Regional Influence, region Central Siberia: Directorial Russia gains +3% Regional Influence, Siberian Popular Assembly loses -3% Regional Influence, region Volga-Don Region: Siberian Popular Assembly gains +1% Regional Influence, Directorial Russia loses -1% Regional Influence, region Northern Russia: Siberian Popular Assembly gains +1% Regional Influence, Directorial Russia loses -1% Regional Influence, Directorial Russia losses: -4.77 HC, -7.9 IC, -13.1 EC, -3.21 MC, Siberian Popular Assembly losses: -11.32 HC, -23.04 IC, -36.5 EC, -3.06 MC)


A city and a city
Q4 1893: Town of Izhevsk was founded in the 18th century around a major iron- and bronze-producing zavod (factory), developed in the distant Transural region specifically in with a master plan to feed its manufacturing capacities with easily acquired timber from a neighboring forest and then deliver its output to the Russian heartland via the Izh River. Since then, the city of Izhevsk has greatly grown in its size and significance, becoming known as one of the biggest manufacturing centers of the Ural region, featuring a multitude of armories, gun and ammunition plants, forestries, distilleries, as well as brick and cement factories. However, hyper-libertarian laws of the Siberian Popular Assembly have a down side. With few regulations and safety nets in place, urban income inequality is rampant, showcased particularly well by Izhevsk, but not limited only to it. Factory owners, merchants, well-off businessmen, higher clergy, qualified artel craftsmen, and well-educated workers mostly settle in the Nagornaya volost, a lovely gated community of red brick houses located on a hill overlooking the factory town. Meanwhile, all sorts of have-not’s are forced to spend their off-work hours putting together wooden izbas (small cottages) down in the swampy and flood-prone valley of Zareka. As law enforcement in Siberia is also traditionally (and proudly) minimalist, this has led to long history of petty violence and mutual animosity between inhabitants of both neighborhoods. As Directorial Russia is starting to up its involvement with its Siberian satellite state, it may want to start looking into the issues that tear its eastern brothers apart.


Chicago beyond the Urals
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: The city of Chelyabinsk was originally founded in 1736 in place of a Bashkir village Siläbe in the Southern Urals to protect surrounding trade routes from outlaw steppe raiders. For over a century its significance was limited to a role of an entrepot for Russian Siberian explorers. However, the completion of the westernmost part of the Transsiberian railway has turned it into a key hub for relocation of goods, materials, and people to and from Siberia. As commodity turnover with Taiping China and Sikh Punjab via Siberia is starting to pick up, Chelyabinsk has also become an important customs office location, as well as a host of numerous tea-packing factories. The sheer human and commodity traffic going through the town is creating a demographic boom unseen anywhere in the world, with the exception of some American “railway towns,” which has led some North-German journalists to nicknaming it “Chicago Beyond The Urals.” The remaining question is how this boom can be exploited - for Russia’s and Siberia’s benefit or against it.


Q4 1893: Regional value of Chelyabinsk was recognized in Moscow, as the directorial government initiated a multitude of investment projects aimed at transforming “Chicago Beyond The Urals” from yet another railway boomtown into a major infrastructure and cultural hub of Pan-Russian commonwealth. All areas of urban development saw a huge increase in Russian subsidies, ranging from education to law enforcement to cultural and economic sphere. Not only did it turn Chelyabinsk of an unofficial capital of the Ural region, but also tied its economy and society closer to the metropoly. (Regional quest completed with success, region Transural gains +5 HC, +5 IC, +5 EC, +5 MC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +0.5%, Directorial Russia gains +1.5% Regional Influence, North German Federation loses -1.5% Regional Influence, Directorial Russia losses: -1.39 HC, -0.31 IC, -3.5 EC, -3.2 MC)


Land of ancestors and prisoners
Q4 1893: Yugra is a region in the far north of Eastern Urals, populated with Finno-Ugrian peoples of Khanty and Mansi. Besides everything else, it’s considered to be an ancestral land of ancient Hungarians, along with so-called Magna Hungaria on the western side of the Urals. Throughout the 15th century, Yugra was dominated by a pagan Pelymian Khanate, but since then it has been thoroughly incorporated into the Russian Siberian culture, partially thanks to decisive demographic advantages that Russian settlers had over the locals. Christianization of the Khanty and Mansi has been ongoing and lasting since the 18th century, and by now the region of Yugra would be a complete backwater of all the Russias, has it not been for the War of Hungarian Containment. Thousands of Hungarian prisoners now have found their way to Russian POW camps, costing the Russian taxpayers quite a dime to supply. Some fringe politicians and radical technocrats in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg recently suggested that Hungarian prisoners of war should be given a chance to earn their daily ratio - or even more, become rich! - by being put to work in dedicated colonies in distant Yugra, a region rich with minerals, timber, and fur animals, and suffering from a single limitation: lack of people. These politicians even suggest that such Hungarian colonies should follow the spirit of Russian “volya” (free will), meaning that the prisoners of war relocated to Yugra or Magna Hungaria would be given Russian or Siberian citizenship and full freedom of enterprise. Needless to say, many people doubt that the plan would be accepted in its current form, but some implementation of this bold venture may be closer than many observers think.




Central Siberia
Spoiler :
Fast-developing, very resource-rich region, suffering from low population density, weak infrastructure, and unevenly spread population centers.


Life beyond the Arctic Circle
Spoiler :
1890: A North-German company is proposing to establish a series of Polar cities centered around mines tapping into the rich mineral resources of that region. Several experimental mining camps have been established and are showing to be profitable, but the burnout rate among the miners is horrific. Even stoic Siberians find living in the toxic tundra extremely difficult, with heart and lung disease, frostbites, alcoholism, depression, and insomnia taking a horrible toll on their health. However, as long as the revenues are great, people keep flocking to the Polar cities, attracted partially by wages and partially by the challenge itself.



Cheldon mavericks
Spoiler :
1890: Cheldons are the descendants of the first Russian settlers in Siberia, intermixed with local Altaic, Tatar, and Turkic population. They are infamous for their stubbornness and independence, perceiving any sort of law authority as a burden and annoyance. Under the Tsars, they used to move farther and farther from civilization each time civilization would catch up with them, but in newly independent Siberia they feel like the should no longer run, but instead stand their ground. As slim as it is, the Siberian government still has to collect taxes and enforce laws, which often leads to dramatic armed standoffs with grim and determined Cheldon foresters.



Clean waters and full wallets
Spoiler :
1890: The Buddhist ulus of Buryatia is enjoying a big degree of independence under the protectorate of the Siberian Popular Assembly. Partially thanks to the religious ties with other Buddhist countries, this rich mountainous land is becoming an unlikely entrypoint for Burmese economic penetration of Siberia. In general, Russian Siberians have nothing against the Burmese businesses, but recently Russian settlers from Irkutsk were complaining about big amounts of industrial waste and even oil leaks reaching the clear waters of the Baikal lake from the Buryatian side. It appears that Burmese enterprises take advantage of loose Siberian laws to save money on waste disposal. Both side - Russian Siberians and Buryats - suffer from the ecologic impact, but the Buryats, at least, get some Burmese money in exchange, and it’s threatening to become a big regional issue soon.


 
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Update 5: October 1, 1893 - December 31, 1893

Asian Pacific Isles

Spoiler :
Slowly-developing, populous, colonially exploited region with big maritime significance as a naval hub between the Indian and Pacific oceans.


Q4 1893: The Dutch East Indies was one of the rare regional players that retained positive relations with the Free Boer Republic even at the height of the Burmo-Boer naval war, allowing the FBR’s traders, bankers, and political lobbyists to quietly carve a small niche for their nation’s foreign market. (Free Boer Republic gains +0.73% Regional Influence, Netherlands loses -0.73% Regional Influence, Free Boer Republic losses: -1.84 HC, -2.99 IC, -4.17 EC, -1.02 MC)

Cultivation system
Spoiler :
1890: First introduced as an economic policy of the Dutch East India Company, the Cultivation system is a tax, contributed by colonial peasants to the Company in the form of specified crops and spices. As simplistic as it is, this system contributes greatly to the profitability of the biggest Dutch colony. It also puts a lot of hardship on local underclass, leading to frequent famines and crippling poverty. While the colonial office seems to prosper, the locals are fuming with contempt at their Western overlords.



Mardijker guilds
Spoiler :
1890: The Dutch word Mardijker is used to describe people of mixed Porto-Indonesian descent living in small groups across the East Indies. With the return of Portugal to the region in the early 19th century, the Mardijker population has grown significantly, partially due to Portuguese tolerance to mixed marriages and acceptance of extramarital affairs with slaves. Not fully Portobrazilian citizens, but at the same time enjoying greater degrees of freedom than slaves, now the Mardijkers inhabit most of Portobrazilian East Indies, and they’re starting to create bustling expatriate communities in the Dutch and British colonies as well. Industrious and tolerant, they’re starting to become a new underclass of regional entrepreneurs, traders, and mercenaries. This naturally worries European colonial authorities who enjoy the economic benefits the Mardijkers bring to their lands, but also are afraid that these people are too independence-minded and free-spirited and give a bad example to the suppressed locals.



Spices of the Malacca Strait
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: The Boer East Asian Spice Trading Company has dramatically expanded its business to the Dutch and Portobrazilian colonies surrounding the Malacca Strait, a marine region critical for Trans-Indian Ocean commerce. In the Dutch Riau region, local rulers are starting to be persuaded to deal with the Boers, although the sultans of Riau and Aceh try to play it safe, probing the Dutch colonial authorities for permissions. In the Portobrazilian Pattani region, the company simply applied for establishment of its offices, playing on its status of friends of the Twin Crowns. As for the British Malaya, the EAST-C wisely chose to steer clear of the peninsula for its own safety. The expansion promised to be a huge commercial success, up until the disaster at Burmese Tavoy put the entirety of Boer Trans-Malaccan trade under question. Now it is up to the EAST-C board of directors if the situation could still be saved. (Regional quest progress: 54%, Free Boer Republic losses: -1.69 HC, -1.59 IC, -4.07 EC, -2.31 MC)

Q3 1893: Acting well within the reach of their communication lanes, Burmese naval squadrons started active patrolling of the Malacca Strait and seas surrounding the Indonesian Archipelago. Perhaps, seeing the futility of attempting to challenge the Burmese in their home waters, the Republican Navy of Boerika didn’t attempt to break the blockade, and the few adventurous EAST-C trader ships that tried to sneak past Burmese patrol boats while flying other nations’ flags were in their majority boarded, searched, and seized. EAST-C emporiums in Portobrazilian Malacca still manage to keep their doors open, but their cash is running low, and the company’s Malaccan branch is nearing its bankruptcy. (Regional quest progress: -41.71%, Third Burmese Empire losses: -3.69 HC, -2.34 IC, -4.83 EC, -8.38 MC)





Japanese Isles
Spoiler :
Fast-developing, well-consolidated “rising dragon” of Asian economy, education, and demographics with little access to natural resources.


Q4 1893: Boer bankers’ and traders’ return to the Japanese Isles was a very cautious one, with a highlighted sense of obedience to local laws and respect for traditions, helping the Free Republic to gain a tiny foothold on Japan’s booming market. (Free Boer Republic gains +0.32% Regional Influence, Confederate States of America loses -0.32% Regional Influence, Free Boer Republic losses: -0.85 HC, -1.38 IC, -1.92 EC, -0.47 MC)


Pachinko and mechanical arcades
Spoiler :
1891: A new craze is spreading through the overpopulated cities of Japan: pachinko machines and other mechanical arcades that help displaced Japanese commoners to kill time, gamble, and forget their burden as long as a pearl bounces bounces between shining gears, springs, and levers. A few state-sponsored companies have already started picking up on the new trend, building gambling machines that foreigners only marvel at. (Technology quest progress: 19.71%, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -1.22 HC, -0.30 IC, -2.85 EC, -2.16 MC)



Expel the Emperor, revere the barbarians
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: During the Bakumatsu (“tent-government”) period that preceded Japanese modernization and the Boshin War, “Sonnō jōi” (Revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians”) was a popular motto of Japanese traditionalists. After the unexpected reversal of fortunes during the Boshin War, a victorious and rejuvenated Tokugawa Shogunate saw to it that the new motto of the pen-and-sword bureaucracy changed to “Fukoku kyōhei” (“Enrich the state, strengthen the military”), placating militarists and chauvinists in the Japanese society. However, recent openness in foreign politics, courtly gestures to the American and South-African “barbarians,” and decreasing value of the army and fleet in the affairs of the state have alienated many Japanese chauvinists, so much that even the Korean “parade” could hardly satisfy them. As the nation’s industry and technocratic elites become ever more dominant, the martial values of the old seem to be shifting out of the nation’s focus, making traditionalists exchange a bitter, sarcastic take on the old motto: “Expel the Emperor, rever the barbarians.”



Dikasi quarter
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: As a part of the blooming cultural exchange between the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Confederate States of America, a new legation quarter started to form in the outskirts of Edo, right beside the trade post of the Boer East Asian Spice Trading Company. Known to Confederate expats simply as Dixie-town (and butchered by locals as “Dikasi”), this cluster of Louisiana-style buildings is yet far from the glamor of the Chrysanthemum district of New Orleans, but with time and investments it could truly become a unique place in this generally self-isolated and xenophobic nation.



Disloyal Ainu
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Tribal peoples known as the Ainu are descendants of the first wave of human settlers who arrived to the Japanese islands in the primordial times from archipelagos of the Pacific Ocean. For centuries, they were fighting back against proto-Japanese settlers who came to the land of Yamato from China and the Korean peninsula, ultimately losing their fight at every step and being pushed farther and farther north. By now, indigenous Ainu settlements remain only on the islands of Ezochi (also known as the Hokkaido, or “the Northern Sea Circuit”), Karafuto (known as Sakhalin to the Russians) and the Chishima (or Kuril) archipelago. Despite being horribly backward, these semi-nomadic villages of hunters and gatherers provide a lot of competition to new arrivals from the Japanese heartlands, easily outcompeting them in fishing and hunting, the most lucrative local businesses. That has led to frequent outbursts of public outrage by the colonists, who not only refuse to help the Ainu when the latter deal with epidemics of disease brought by the Wajin (ethnic Japanese), but some villages even end up being sold into slavery when they become unable to sustain themselves due to demographic crises. The poor plight of the Ainu has naturally made it so the natives try to evade dealing with Japanese settlers altogether, while selling their goods to Transpacific Russian merchants who are famous for their tolerance and even sympathy to the natives of Pacific Siberia.


Q4 1893: In a rare display of tolerance to indigenous cultures of colonised territories, Japanese authorities all across the Ainu-populated lands have made quite an effort to remedy the state of affairs across Ezochi, Karafuto, and the Chishima islands. First and foremost, state-run medical commissions were established, dealing with pandemics among the locals and improving the state of healthcare across the region in general. Slave trade and other acts of savage exploitation were simultaneously put an end to (sometimes, even with a monetary compensation to the victims - an unusual display of respect for individual for the Orient, indeed). On a few cases, Wajin riots against the natives were put down by the garrison of Shogunate infantry and marines (with violence being for the most part non-lethal), which in turn led to a gradual demise of such open conflicts, although arbitration-dependent judicial cases (often ruled in favor of the better educated and connected Wajin settlers) became prevalent. Perhaps, the most positive factor in the positive resolution of the ethnic problem became the economic effort by Japanese zaibatsus, leading to an establishment of a number of tanning, fur-processing, and fish-canning facilities on the islands, creating a foundation for a strong local industry that could both employ better educated and more urbanized ethnic Japanese and draw at least part of its supply from Ainu hunting and gathering communities. (Regional quest completed with success, region Japanese Isles gains +5 HC, +20 EC, +5 MC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +0.75%, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -3.01 HC, -1.49 IC, -3.72 EC, -2.77 MC)


Industrial associations
Q4 1893: Now that one of the key pillars of Japanese new capitalism-friendly regime - zaibatsu corporations - is firmly in its place, Bakufu samurai-savants have started lingering on filling in another socioeconomic gap that differentiates Japanese society from its European tutors. Pen-and-sword magistrates note that labor unions and cooperatively-owned enterprises alike to Russian artels create a healthy layer of small and medium businesses that keep Western economies and societies stable and adaptive, while also providing an economic outlet for enterprising low and middle class members. A recent romance between the Boer East Asian Spice Trading Company and various bakuto and tekiya factions of major port cities has suggested to Shogun’s analysts that the Japanese society was already standing on the verge of a natural boom of such grassroot associations, and the biggest fear the Bugyō bureaucrats had was that they’d form spontaneously and grassroot-like, thus compromising the social hierarchy of the Tokugawa regime. In an attempt to jump ahead of that trend, they have determined that the state needs to be the first one to artificially create controlled, obedient, and loyal “industrial associations” (), led by state-appointed overmen. Once the plan was approved, these surrogate cooperatives started popping up across the Japanese Isles, comprised mostly of nō (serf farmers and generally unskilled laborers), kō (urban craftsmen), and poor shō (merchants). Due to their artificial nature and dedication to reinforcing the social hierarchy rather than improve vertical mobility, the first sangyō soshiki have proved to be not quite as effective (or attractive to new joiners) as their Western counterparts, effectively copying pyramidal structures of larger zaibatsu corporations on a smaller scale. At the current state, it appears that Japan’s industrial associations are likely to provide an only humble boon to the nation’s vibrant economy, but they can become an important brick in the wall of the Shogunate’s social stability and rigidity. (Regional quest progress: 54.81%, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -2.88 HC, -2.57 IC, -6.78 EC, -3.43 MC)


Petty factionalism
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Competition for state influence between various clans and factions is deeply rooted into the Japanese history, being shaped by a series of feudal wars fought for control over central institutions that de-facto never seized to exist. As the Tokugawa Shogunate rises to new heights of modernization and industrialization, new factions of samurai-savans and pen-and-sword bureaucrats naturally started to take shape out of this mentality of petty factionalism. Loyalty to one’s superior and, more broadly, to the single institution he represents continues guiding many decisions in the Bakufu administration, leading to unnecessary rivalry and constant infighting. Some observers point out that it pushes individuals to strive for excellency in order not to be overtaken by rivaling factions, but proponents of a more conventional, centralized-state approach still view this culture of factional contention as a weakness of the modern Japanese state.



Peddlers’ enemies
Q4 1893: Just when it seemed like the East-Asian Spice Trading Company found a perfect (albeit, shallow) haven in Japanese Isles, events again made a turn for the worse. The Kempeitai (Military Police Corps) were ordered by the Shogun to seize all illegal EAST-C operations across the Isles and other Japanese-controlled regions of the Western Pacific. This, of course, meant that almost every operation run by the Boers was somehow connected to local yakuza, or tekiya and bakuto factions and was thus compromised. While the police investigation and raids were still going on, state-supported shell companies were created to seamlessly absorb EAST-C branches using a variety of economic raiding techniques, effectively passing them over to the Bakufu regime and its allies with no damage done to the local economy. The operation was performed brilliantly, but had one major flaw. Infamous Japanese inter-faction rivalry meant that the army and the navy wanted to also have some major role in the dispersal of the EAST-C, leading to some ham-handed army raids of bakuto quarters, to which local underclasses responded with riots and brutality typical for this warlike nation. The navy’s attempts to intercept Boer smugglers (mostly, contractor captains of questionable ethics) also led to a number of incidents and created somewhat negative reputation for the Japanese Isles among other commercial companies - a reputation that isn’t likely to last, but that still did some damage to the Japanese economy and international standing. One way or another, the Shogunate has cleansed its home market from Boer influence and now has a chance to reflect on its internal factionalism. (Regional quest completed with mixed results, region Japanese Isles gains -5 HC, -5 EC, Regional Growth Fluctuation -0.25%, Tokugawa Shogunate gains +3% Regional Influence, Free Boer Republic loses -3% Regional Influence, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -1.66 HC, -0.71 IC, -2.18 EC, -2.52 MC)


Akito Oil Refinery
Q4 1893: The Tokugawa Shogunate and its industrialist elites seem to have developed a taste for small-scope, precise economic development projects, performed by major zaibatsu corporations under the government’s aegis. One of such projects was a construction of a major oil refinery in Akito by the Atorasu-Mitsu concern, aimed at providing quality gasoline and diesel fuel for the nation’s growing automotive industry. Lacking major oil reserves in the home islands, Japanese jitsugyōkas opted in for importing oil from the Ottoman Empire based on a newly signed trade treaty (thus giving Sublime Porte’s capital some small fraction of influence on the Japanese home market), while a long term plan exists for developing humble, but conveniently placed fossil fuel assets in Kurokawa, Kyushu. The refinery construction was completed in record terms with no delays (something that Japanese engineers are becoming known for), providing mild, but timely boost for the nation’s economy. (Regional quest completed with success, region Japanese Isles gains +10 EC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +0.25%, Sublime Porte gains +0.25% Regional Influence, Tokugawa Shogunate loses -0.25% Regional Influence, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -1.22 HC, -0.27 IC, -3 EC, -2.29 MC)


Japanese electrified manufacturing
Q4 1893: Electrification of the Japanese industry is a gradual process, but the Bakufu leadership has expressed its intentions to speed it up in a traditional Tokugawa manner of targeted state intervention. Industry-critical factories and plants across the Japanese Isles have been identified and issued loans with the incentive to increase speed of adopting electrified manufacturing techniques, using the power produced by a new generation of Japanese coal and hydropower plants. Despite all efforts to keep the scope of the project narrow, it quickly became obvious that Japan’s sprawling industry had too many major economic players to accomplish the transition to full electrification of production in mere three months. Besides, many economic advisers point out that the nation’s leadership is wasting money and resources trying to speed up what was going to happen organically and thus with a better insight anyway. Yet, the upcoming year will show what results for the booming Japanese industry this push will generate. (Regional quest progress: 69%, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -2.74 HC, -0.6 IC, -6.75 EC, -5.16 MC)


Osaka Imperial Medical College
Q4 1893: Bakufu bureaucracy’s taste for micromanagement is well-known, and late 1893 showcased a series of such targeted state interventions on a highly limited scope and, predictably, with highly limited gains. Improvement and expansion of the Osaka Imperial Medical College was one of such endeavors. The school was originally created as a Rangaku (Dutch studies) school opened by Ogata Kōan in 1838, and it gained its university status in 1869. Hoping to elevate it to an “imperial university” status established by a newly signed University Ordinance Act, samurai-savants concentrated on bringing the educational facility up to date on modern medical knowledge, as well as promoting some of the more controversial (but in Japan!) postulates of state-favored eugenics. Results predictably have been mild, but the class of 1893 still provided the nation with a number of qualified doctors and medical researchers, which had a positive impact on public hygiene, healthcare, and epidemiologic response across the country. (Regional quest completed with success, region Japanese Isles gains +5 HC, +5 IC, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -0.76 HC, -0.17 IC, -1.88 EC, -1.43 MC)


Edo Imperial Music College
Q4 1893: A development of Edo Ongaku Gakkō (musical conservatory) was another example of Bakufu administration’s obsession with details - an obsession that in this particular case brought few results. The intention was rather reasonable: to underline the ongoing trend of optimistic ultra-nationalism by developing musical theater and opera performances at home, while also establishing modern musical venues and halls across the islands. The only weakness of the plan was that the people tasked with this effort were mostly clerks and economists rather than cultural activists. As a result, the book-keeping and bureaucratic turnaround across Japanese musical education and performance scene have improved, but it had no impact on the artistic and cultural side of things, leaving the Edo Musical College a smoothly run husk that starves for talent. (Regional quest progress: 46.14%, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -1.06 HC, -0.23 IC, -2.63 EC, -2.01 MC)


Hydroelectric plants
Q4 1893: Research cooperation around the globe has reached new heights in the late months of 1893, with many nations coming together to solve technological problems in mutually beneficial way. One of such international projects took place in the world capital of electricity production, Tokugawa Japan. Industrial engineering teams from Turkey, China and Confederate America arrived to the Japanese Isles in October 1893, to help their Japanese colleagues with building facilities for generation of electric power via conversion of mechanical energy from water current. The progress done was great, but the project remained unfinished due to the fact that a Mexican team failed to reach Japan, being busy with President Diaz’s pet projects at home. One way or another, hydroelectricity promises to become a new source of power generation in the upcoming year. (Technology quest progress: 89.63%, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -0.46 HC, -0.1 IC, -1.13 EC, -0.86 MC, Confederate States of America losses: -0.57 HC, -0.13 IC, -1.54 EC, -1.24 MC, Taiping Mandate losses: -0.7 HC, -0.16 IC, -1.58 EC, -1.02 MC, Sublime Porte losses: -0.66 HC, -0.15 IC, -1.75 EC, -1.18 MC)




Pacific Siberia
Spoiler :
Fast-developing, strategically important region saturated with natural resources, access to which is limited due to bad infrastructure, low demographic capacity, and extreme climate.



The Green Wedge
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Historical migrations of Ukrainian settlers are closely tied with the establishment of Cossack Hosts on the frontiers of Russia. Known as klyns (lit. “wedges”), these “new Ukraines” are spread throughout all historical territories conquered or colonized by Russia since the 15th century. The Yellow Wedge exists in the Volga valley, the Crimson Wedge in the Kuban, the Gray Wedge in Northern Kazakhstan, and, eastward of all, there lies the Green Wedge of Transkathay, stretching all the way along the Amur river and up to the Ayan Bay in the north. Now that the Manchu population has been properly assimilated into the increasingly Asianized Transpacific nation, the Ukrainian settlers of the Green Wedge represent the biggest and most enterprising, yet also rather unruly ethnic minority of the Siberian part of the Directory. Gold miners, river traders, fishers, free farmers, and horse breeders, these freedom-loving people are well-connected to their Eastern European homeland and can become a valuable part of the growing nation, should the Board of Directors find a way to channel their energy in the right direction.



Pacific Europe
Spoiler :
1892: Wide range of cultural exchanges and migration to Pacific Siberia from the Baltic, Scandinavia, Moravia, and Italy is forming a unique blend of Russo-European culture on the western shores of the Pacific Ocean. While the American part of the Pacific Directory is experiencing an immigration wave from China and Japan, Siberian towns are developing a much different cultural and intellectual tradition, and even the dialects of Russian Americans and Russian Far-Easterners are starting to depart from each other. Now it’s on the Directory’s leadership (or anyone else willing to acknowledge this phenomenon) to turn it into a problem or an opportunity.

Q3 1893: The differences between two parts of the Directory separated by the ocean are seen in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky as a dividing and unwanted factor for the young nation’s unity. To mitigate this, a wide range of assimilating actions was undertaking, ranging from publishing statewide Russian-language almanacs, newspapers, and translations of Chinese and Japanese classics, as well as promotion of standardized “Greater Russian” language as the lingua franca of education and administration. These efforts have just begun, but they promise to establish a great deal of unitarian state once completed. (Regional quest progress: 32.26%, Pacific Directory losses: -2.9 HC, -4.22 IC, -6.14 EC, -0.68 MC)


Q4 1893: The Directory continued working on mutual integration of the two parts of its bi-continental nation with same old means of generic Russification, but with a twist. With an effort to shift the nation’s demographic focus to the New World, Transpacfic Far-Easterners were informed through various state-sponsored publications of wealth and possibilities that await them in North America. That propaganda campaign came in the worst possible moment, when the completion of the Great Siberian Way brough previously unknown level of prosperity and economic mobility to Pacific Siberia, while simultaneously bottlenecking naval lanes between it and the Pacific American shore. As a result, those few Transpacificans who bought the promise of American riches ended up struggling to find ships that could take them east, and after crossing the stormy ocean on overcrowded coilers and clippers they found mostly wild lands with little infrastructure to speak of, uncomparable to newly flourishing boomtowns of Eastern Siberia. Yet, despite the fiasco of the migration propaganda campaign, the assimilation effort continues bringing its fruits and moves even closer to completion. (Regional quest progress: 82.74%, Pacific Directory losses: -3.59 HC, -5.21 IC, -7.59 EC, -0.84 MC)


Between two volcanoes
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: Most of Russian cities in the Far East are built on and between sopkas (gently sloping hills and mountains). When Vitus Bering, a Danish explorer on Russian service, founded Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in 1740 in a bay huddled between two giant mountains, he probably didn’t think that less than a century later the sopkas would come alive. Now Avachinskaya Sopka and Koryakskaya Sopka are known to be fairly active volcanoes, causing no real damage to the capital of the Pacific Directory, but raising some concerns about the city’s security. Some of the more nervous magistrates suggest that the capital should be moved to the city of Okhotsk, the southern Pacific gateway to the Siberian River Routes, or to the bustling American port of Novo-Arkhangelsk, also known to its native residents as Sitka. Meanwhile, Petropavlovsk authorities display true Russian stubbornness and insist that the growing metropolis has nothing to worry about, pointing at the Italian shantytown growing on the Avachinskaya Sopka’s slope. If anything, they suggest that the volcanoes could become great tourist attractions or sources of volcanic ash for cement factories which would sure come handy should the Board of Directors follow up on their plan to expand the city’s port facilities and its fortress.



Transsiberian Railway (Transamur)
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Also known as Velikiy Sibirskiy Put’ (the Great Siberian Way), the Transsibirian Railroad has already transformed the economic and demographic landscape of the Siberian Popular Assembly. Now voices are heard encouraging Russia’s directorial government to not stop at its march of progress and extend the biggest infrastructure project on Earth so far all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Three proposals are on the table. The most fiscally responsible is also the most conservative from the engineering standpoint: it proposes to build a railroad along the Amur River valley past Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk, and Amursk all the way to the Pacific port of Nikolaevsk-na-Amure. The weakness of that project is similar to what impacted Russia’s decision to invest into the construction of the Transbaikal Bridge: the Amur River is currently a border between the Pacific Directory and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, meaning that in case of a conflict all supply lines would be highly vulnerable. A strategically safer, but more challenging option is to build the Lena-Okhota railway line, going north along the Lena River valley to Yakutsk and then turning east, crossing the Suntar-Khayata mountain range and then following the Okhota River valley to the port of Okhotsk. Critics of this approach point out that the region through which the railway would be going is severely underpopulated and features some of the most challenging winter conditions on Earth. However, Russia wouldn’t be itself had another, most expensive option not been weighted: to work on both branches at the same time, thus enabling repopulation of the vast region and easing its dependence on airship lines and summer Arctic cargo convoys.


Q4 1893: All three Russian sub-nations came together and rolled up their sleeves, determined to finish their gran Transsibirian railway project before January blizzards freeze Siberian soils several meters deep. The widest possible scope was chosen, with two branches being built in parallel: the main one along the Amur river to Nikolayevsk-na-Amure and later to the port of Ayan, and the secondary through Yakutsk and to Okhotsk. With machine of Russian railway engineering being at the top of its game, the construction was completed with record speed and quality, revolutionizing infrastructure across the vast and distant region. The Great Siberian Way radically changed demographics, culture, regional economy and manufacturing industry across the Russia Far East, tying all the three Russias closer together at the expense of foreign economic presence. (Regional quest completed with full success, region Pacific Siberia gains +20 HC, +5 IC, +15 EC, +10 MC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +2.25%, Directorial Russia gains +3% Regional Influence, Siberian Popular Assembly gains +2% Regional Influence, Pacific Directory gains +1% Regional Influence, Third Burmese Empire loses -2% Regional Influence, Tokugawa Shogunate loses -2% Regional Influence, Confederate States of America loses -2% Regional Influence, Directorial Russia losses: -3.99 HC, -0.89 IC, -10.06 EC, -9.2 MC, Siberian Popular Assembly losses: -1.74 HC, -0.46 IC, -4.7 EC, -3.35 MC, Pacific Directory losses: -0.88 HC, -0.24 IC, -2.46 EC, -1.74 MC)

Statistical theory
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: Director Volya’s brainchild and past field of study, statistical theory is being integrated into the state apparatus of the Pacific Directory. Borrowing from the processing power of “Dobrynya Nikitich,” Russia’s “younger” analytical engine, Transpacific statisticians are looking to analyze all sorts of data for optimization, ranging from immigration rate to fishing yields. Once the first pilot projects are completed, the Board of Officer-Directors expects to put this new field of knowledge to serve their nation, using a range of techniques, in both study design and data analysis, that are used within applications of statistics, closely linked to probability theory, utility theory, and optimization theory. (Technological quest progress: 43.75%, Pacific Directory losses: -1.88 HC, -2.73 IC, -3.98 EC, -0.44 MC)

Russian analytical engineers and programme encoders working on the new “Dobrynya Nikitich” analytical engine were tasked with assisting their Transpacific colleagues with consolidating the statistical theory in a series of clack-simulations run through the computing machine. At current rate, the joint statistical theory is likely to be fully formalized and put to good use by the end of 1893. (Technology quest progress: 75.18%, Directorial Russia losses: -1.16 HC, -2.03 IC, -3.06 EC, -0.75 MC)

Q3 1893: Academic cooperation grows across the globe, and the Pacific Directory seems to be particularly welcoming of their Dixie colleagues. A number of academic exchanges took place between the two countries this year, helping scientific elites of the CSA come up to speed in statistical theory and practice. The research is still ongoing, but its completion in the upcoming months may open a new area of knowledge for Russian, Transpacific, and Dixie analysts. (Technology quest progress: 94.64%, Confederate States of America: -1.7 HC, -2.53 IC, -3.68 EC, -1.04 MC)


Q4 1893: Academic charity of Transpacific scientists knows no bounds. Having engaged into knowledge transfer with Directorial Russian and Confederate American statisticians, they now have extended their helping hand to their Baltic colleagues, inviting them to participate in the development of this promising new field of knowledge. The offer was gladly accepted by the United Duchies, whose intellectual elites have indeed become closely connected with Russia and its directories. Sadly, most of the fall was wasted on exchanging bureaucratic correspondence and then bringing Baltic researchers up to speed with the status of the project. By the time they could actually contribute to the theory and its applications, it was already December, and only then did inferiority of the Baltic delegation become truly clear to the Transpacific academia. Some humble progress was made, still, but it appears like the statistical theory is bogging down in a sequence of conferences and paperwork, with various components of the theory changing hands too often, becoming ever more convoluted and disorganized. (Technology quest progress: 98.14%, United Baltic Duchies losses: -2.76 HC, -5.75 IC, -8.78 EC, -0.91 MC)


Modern archaeology and anthropology
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: The continuing expeditions into Central Canada and the Arctic Archipelago, as well as the numerous Inuit subcultures they encounter, largely uncontaminated by European thinking and technology, have sparked an interest amongst several of the more curious French intellectuals who migrated to Novo-Arkhangelsk in the early 1892. Combined with some of the more adventurous Russian Pacific academics, they have started gathering a steady following in scientific circles, requesting the Board of Officer-Directors to help them explore and develop modern tools and methods of learning about ancient history and foreign cultures. While no funds have been allocated yet to this promising cultural study, the late months of 1893 may see more government interest.


Q4 1893: The Pacific Directory became a center of development of modern anthropology, particularly showcased by a series of expeditions undertaken in Eastern Siberia by a detached Transpacific officer and explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, assisted by his friend and guide, Nanai hunter Dersu Uzala. Arsenyev’s books dedicated to the history and culture of Native Siberian peoples captivated imagination of many researchers across the world and attracted plenty of interest from surprising places. Dixie eugenists from the Saint-Louis Institute of Southern Culture and samurai-savants from the Kyoto University Eugenics department sent formal requests to exchange knowledge with their Transpacific colleagues, which the latter ones accepted after some ideological debates about humanitarian implications of eugenics and racial science. One way or another, this knowledge exchange helped to shape Arsenyev’s intuitive and ad-hoc methods of modern archaeology and anthropology into a streamlined and transparent system. (Technology quest completed with success, Pacific Directory, Confederate States of America, Tokugawa Shogunate adopt “Modern archaeology and anthropology” for no additional cost, Pacific Directory losses: -0.17 HC, -0.25 IC, -0.36 EC, -0.04 MC, Confederate States of America losses: -0.31 HC, -0.46 IC, -0.67 EC, -0.19 MC, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -0.3 HC, -0.45 IC, -0.68 EC, -0.17 MC)


Icebreakers and reinforced hull
Q4 1893: Now that the North Pole has been conquered once, nations of the world are starting to realize that a single trip across the ice cap may not be the limit of human achievement. That notion is especially strong among the three Russian nations whose infrastructure could be significantly improved by making the Arctic Ocean navigable in winter. To no one’s surprise, the Pacific Directory has announced that it intends to start looking into ways of creating purpose-built ships for navigating frozen seas, or other sea vessels that feature powerful engines and a strengthened hull with a wide, curved shape. No assets have been so far dedicated to that ambitious project by the Directory itself, but its booming eastern neighbor, the Tokugawa Shogunate, was quick to offer its assistance in this shipbuilding research. Once access was granted, Japanese contractors started working on blueprints for the first ever ship with reinforced hull, which could come in especially handy not only in Arctic expeditions, but also in improvement of warship survivability. (Technology quest progress: 12.63%, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -2.28 HC, -0.5 IC, -5.63 EC, -4.3 MC)



Australia-Oceania
Spoiler :
Slowly-developing, underpopulated, vast region with low economic potential, but big strategic value for control of the Pacific Ocean.


Professional criminals
Spoiler :
1890: For many years, the harsh shores of Terra Australia were used by Great Britain for establishing distant criminal colonies for unwanted individuals. In the early 19th century, this trend seemed to be changing, with proper civil colonial government being scrambled for. However, the ultraconservative twist of British politics in recent decades has led to the retunr to old practices of criminal exile. What’s worst, vast majority of the convicts sent to Australia are so called “professional criminals” with few other skills needed for a successful, functional society. This has resulted in the state of squalor and poverty all across this God-forgotten colony.



Maori wars
Spoiler :
1890: Aboriginal people of New Zealand, the Maori have been a thorn in the British side for half a century now. With resources of the Commonwealth spread out over the entire globe, few troops are available for enforcing British colonial dominance in the Southern Island. Rumors have it that the still independent tribes are being gradually united into a federation by a brutal, visionary warlord who is looking for ways to truly modernize the ways of his people for the sake of resisting the hated Pakeha (European settlers). If no action is taken, it may be only a matter of time before a new Maori nation springs out to existence.


Q4 1893: A Maori tribal chief known as Hone Riiwi Toia, the man behind the unification attempts of the entire Southern Island, was, according to rumors, approached by European foreigners this fall. They offered to supply his forces with modern small arms in exchange for two concessions: the defeated Maori tribes should be assimilated, but not slaughtered (something that Hone Riiwi Toia was intended to do anyway), and upon his ultimate victory the newly formed nation would provide its armaments suppliers with a chance to open some mining operations on the Southern Island. The offer was tentatively well-received, but the road to Maori unity is still a long one, and the natives’ new benefactors may have stick to their promises for quite a while. As long as they do, Hone Riiwi Toia, a notable prophet and religious leader, has a good chance to unite various Southern Island tribes of tangata whenua (literally, "people of the land") into a centralized federation that may look rather primitive compared to modern and even feudal states of Eurasia, but would still be a huge departure from primitive societies the British have grown accustomed to dealing with in Oceania over the course of the 19th century. (Regional quest progress: -16.43%, ??? losses: -1.5? HC, -2.7? IC, -4.2? EC, -1.3? MC)


Marsupials for sale
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Appearance of Portobrazilian traders in the Pacific region has brought with them a new type of economic demand. The world capital of exotic pet trade, Brazil is ever hungry for new types of domesticated animals to feed the pride, curiosity, and insecurity of aristocratic eccentrics. Naturally, the insular lands of Australia and New Zealand are ideal sources of such pets, because local marsupials surpass anything human imagination can come up with (in overhunted lands of Europe, at least). This creates an influx of wealth into the otherwise poor region, but British colonial authorities have been warned that Portobrazilian hunting practices could do a lot of damage to local ecosystems (an obscure notion that sounds too scientific for anyone to care as of now).



Winds and waves
Q4 1893: A major series of oceanographic expeditions was started this fall by Edo Nautical College of the Tokugawa Shogunate, nicknamed by the poetic Japanese “Kaze to Nami” or “Winds and waves.” The purpose of this ambitious endeavor is to get a better understanding of oceanic ecosphere, while also mapping currents, winds, and potential open-sea fisheries across the Southern Seas. Despite a huge area covered by the proposed research, the progress was rather robust, with most of the mapping almost done by 1894. Once the research is complete, it could easily give the Tokugawa Shogunate a big edge in exploitation of the Pacific Ocean for its natural resources, as well as generally improve maritime navigation across the region. (Regional quest progress: 81.29%, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -3.13 HC, -3.55 IC, -5.87 EC, -3.8 MC)


Benefactors of a thousand islands
Q4 1893: While all attention of the British Royal Commonwealth is concentrated on developments taking place closer to the metropoly, the Tokugawa Shogunate is using its growing industrial might and diplomatic influence to project power across the nominally British territories of the Pacific. Numerous minor investments done by zaibatsus and single entrepreneurs from Japan gathered together into a major tidal wave of Japanese capital and technological expertise. Gas-fueled manufacturing facilities, sea docks and modern ports were constructed all across the vast oceanic region, aimed specifically at supporting other Japanese businesses in their penetration of the regional market. The Shogunate’s diplomats and negotiators established plenty of constructive connections with aboriginal and Polynesian island tribes, while the Tokugawa navy patrolling the Pacific Ocean in the virtual absence of the British High Seas fleet also provided a lot of weight to the variety of deals and agreements made during these three months of bustling activity. (Regional quest completed with complete success, region Australia-Oceania gains +10 EC, +5 MC, +2.5% Regional Growth Fluctuation, Tokugawa Shogunate gains +5% Regional Influence, British Royal Commonwealth loses -5% Regional Influence, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -1.72 HC, -1.42 IC, -3.38 EC, -2.59 MC)

 
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Update 5: October 1, 1893 - December 31, 1893

North-Pacific America

Spoiler :
Fast-developing, but underpopulated region with big access to natural resources.

Kenaitsy rifles
Spoiler :
1890: Dena’ina natives from Alaska, known to Russian settlers as the Kenaitsy, are purchasing Russian-made rifles from local artel manufactures and reselling them to warrior societies of the Blackfoot tribal league that belongs to the Iron Confederacy. This does bring plenty of prosperity to the Dena’ina and, through them, to the Pacific Directory, but it also increases the risk of an international incident if Blackfoot natives were to clash with British or North-American troops.


Q4 1893: In contrast with its usual conservative risk management, the Pacific Directory’s board chose to throw cautions to the wind and embrace arms trade with the Blackfoot league and other tribes of the Iron Confederacy, unbothered by possibilities of diplomatic incidents that could arise if Russian weapons were to be found in use in contested territories of the east. Arms trade laws and customs tariffs were streamlined and optimized to enable greater involvement of Transpacific artels, while particular patronage was given a dedicated arms trade contract between the Kenaitsy and Blackfoot tribesmen. Diplomatic risks aside, this endeavor promises to bring plenty of revenue to the Directory’s treasury, while also boosting local small and medium armament industry. (Regional quest progress: 85.71%, Pacific Directory losses: -1.2 HC, -1.74 IC, -2.53 EC, -0.28 MC)


Brothers in business
Spoiler :
1890: The foundation of the Pacific Directory’s economy is built on traditional Russian small and medium businesses with collective ownership and decentralized leadership, known as artels. While an artel is a very flexible economic actor with a lot of initiative and tolerance to risks, the Directorial Board points out that the nation is too dependent on the metropoly to defend itself. They say the Pacific Directory needs to develop bigger industrial enterprises, capable of producing the materiel needed to expand the nation’s army and navy in the face of Asiatic and, potentially, American threats.



North Pacific Grand Lane
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: As the Pacific Directory continues developing into a successful dominion nation under its dynamic, energetic leadership, many investors (primarily of Russian origin) are starting to be more and more interested in establishing a robust, modern system of sea lanes and Transpacific transit that could handle both cargo delivery and passenger travel at a rate reflecting the most recent trend. The most practical and popular proposal is concentrated on expanding port facilities across both of the Pacific coasts and creating a modern ocean-faring flotilla of cargo and passenger ships. More inventive entrepreneurs point at the success of the Confederate Southeast Air zeppelin network and suggest providing transportation across the ocean primarily by air. That proposal could indeed prove to be more austere thanks to very little infrastructure required, but also would impede the traffic, as even biggest dirigibles cannot compete with a regular ship at the cost and amount of cargo transferred per trip. Finally, a small group of dreamers suggests a so-called Bering Bridge, a titanic suspension bridge that could connect both continents via a railway. Mostly, this suggestion is considered to be completely fantastic, but the idea creator of the Bering Bridge hopes to promote his brainchild once the Russian Transsibirian Railway reaches the Pacific.


Q4 1893: The Pacific Directory’s leadership is eager to finally connect both halves of its sprawling nation together not only culturally, but also infrastructurally. For that purpose, ports on both sides of the Pacific Ocean were expanded, with a particular short-term focus being dedicated to the Far-Eastern port of Ayan and Anglo-Russian city of Vankuvyr’ (also known as “Vancouver” to its English-speaking diaspora). Logistics of the short-term construction endeavor were well-thought through, as plans were drawn to use surplus of timber in the early stages of the project, with most of it coming from large Douglas Fir forests of the Puget Sound shore located in the Vankuvyrsky Kray (Vancouver Region). As for the long-term planing, expansion of more distant northern ports of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Novoarchangelsk (Sitka) is also on the table. However, for all of their ingenuity and resourcefulness, Transpacific engineers weren’t prepared for early completion of the Transamur and Transyakutian branches of the Great Siberian Way. The amount of cargo that started reaching Russian Far-Eastern ports greatly exceeded any expectations, and for the most of the season state-sponsored artels involved in the North Pacific Great Lane project were mostly struggling to keep cargo throughput up, with little time and resources left for long-term expansion of port facilities or merchant marine. Experts point out that by simply doubling or tripling the number of state assets dedicated to the construction, the Directory could increase the speed of the project tenfold or more. Now the tough part is to find enough artels to provide their services to this ambitious new endeavor. (Regional quest progress: 1.45%, Directorial Assembly losses: -3.51 HC, -0.95 IC, -9.82 EC, -6.95 MC)




Central Canada
Spoiler :
Stagnant, wide region with very primitive infrastructure and little access to foreign markets, but big potential for resource extraction.


Bisons come back
Spoiler :
1890: Ever since the whiteskins withdrew from Alberta, the population of bisons, briefly driven to near-extinction, has started to recover, supporting a population boom among local First Nations. Still, some European hunters have started returning to the Confederacy’s lands to hunt these animals, rarely for subsistence and mostly for trade. Taught by their previous dire experience, many warrior societies of the Assiniboine tribes have started to organize packs of “bizon runners,” groups of hunters and warriors tasked with hunting the hunters of non-indigenous descent. So far, nobody has died, since whiteskins caught by the bizon runners end up being stripped of their shooting weapons and set free with a humble, but reasonable food supply.



The burden of settlement
Spoiler :
1890: As demographics of the Iron Confederacy is stabilizing and products of European technologies become more and more common, settled lifestyle associated with agriculture and manufacture is slowly coming to the First Nations, especially popular among the Salish (also known as the “Flathead Indians”). For now, only a fraction of the Native American society of Central Canada has chosen to form permanent villages and forts, but the trend seems to be definitely in favor of further abandonment of the Confederacy’s nomadic traditions. On the one hand, it may bring the tribal league more wealth and, hopefully, more European technology. On the other hand, many in the Confederacy are afraid that the settled lifestyle makes them more vulnerable to the whiteskin threat.



Primeval justice
Q4 1893: Now that the Pacific Directory rules over vast hinterlands of the Arctic Ocean shore, populated mostly by Inuit hunters and few unlucky Transpacific garrisons, the modern law is starting to clash with the grim reality of this inhospitable place. This was most vividly showcased by a so-called Kikkik Trial. Kikkik, an Inuit woman, was charged with murder and child neglect causing death, because she killed her half-brother after he shot to death her husband and attempted to murder Kikkik herself as well. These horrible acts were committed under a threat of starvation because caribou herds didn’t come to their regular pastures this season. Facing inevitable death from hunger and lacking her departed husband’s help, Kikkik took her five children to a trek to a neighboring Transpacific ostrog camp, only to find herself exhausted halfway there and unable to pull the sled in absence of huskies that had run away earlier. She left two of her children in a primitive igloo, where they eventually died, but Kikkik and the remainders of her family did make it to Fort Dyachenko alive. Now she is to be tried by the Transpacific law, which, naturally, wasn’t written with such extreme conditions in mind. Most importantly, Kikkik’s case is not unique, but is rather the most known example of a larger trend, showing that Inuit people have been facing great hardships in recent years, often leading them to such tragic and horrible acts.


Manitoba Schools Question
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: South Winnipeg’s and Manitoba’s joining of the Union of North America coincided with a controversial move initiated by local self-governments, in their majority controlled by the “moneyed aristocracy” of Hunters’ Lodges. They have initiated separation of public schools for Roman Catholics and Protestants, which in practice only meant separate education for English-speakers (Protestants and Anglicans) and Francophone Manitobans (Catholics). Despite the Hunters’ claims of the opposite, Catholic public schools receive significantly less funding, forcing many children to abandon their French language or resettle to the war-torn, but newly independent Quebec. This, of course, causes diplomatic friction between the Union and their Quebecoi allies, who don’t wish to see their brothers and sisters oppressed under a friendly regime.


Q4 1893: The Union’s federal authorities quickly stepped in to protect the right of French Catholics in Manitoba, enforcing equal funding for all schools regardless of their religious or ethnic composition. That put the Hunters’ Lodges in their place, as some of these self-proclaimed “moneyed aristocrats” realized that the nation they had sided with had much different standards of regional independence than they’d hoped (albeit, still being much less centralized and oppressive than the British Empire). For most of the Manitobans and their Quebecoi brethren, the Union’s affirmative action was a triumph of justice, and the Union’s own progressive political observers hailed it as an example of justice and equality for all, showcasing the moral superiority the Union holds over the Royal Commonwealth. (Regional quest completed with success, region Central Canada gains +5 HC, +10 IC, Quebec gains +3% Regional Influence, Union of North America loses -3% Regional Influence, Union of North America losses: -1.35 HC, -2.27 IC, -3.27 EC, -1.03 MC)




Atlantic Canada-Quebec
Spoiler :
Fast-developing, region with well-established, but mediocre economy and demographics.


Q4 1893: The Arctic Ocean is increasingly starting to look like a “Russian lake,” as the fleet of the Pacific Directory finalized its colonization of Nanavut and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Two new supply depots were established in Ikaluktutiak on Victoria Island and the inlet of Sikusyilak on Baffin Island in much the same vein as Fort Dyachenko, with deals established with natives to keep the forts stocked with food and furs year-round. By this point, colonization of inhabitable Arctics is complete. (Pacific Directory gains +10% Regional Influence, uncolonized loses -10% Regional Influence, Pacific Directory losses: -1.21 HC, -0.8 IC, -1.58 EC, -2.33 MC)

American booze
Spoiler :
1890: Among the measures introduced by the Protectorate government in the wake of the Atlantic War and waves of discontent across the empire, was prohibition of alcohol. As unpopular as that measure is in most places, poor enforcement of the law gives British drinkers at least some relief. Only Canada stands out from this rule, because the military curfew still present in majority of bigger cities makes prohibition enforcement particularly strict. That doesn’t seem to stop North-American bootleggers, who smuggle big amounts of alcohol (some good-quality and some homemade) via secret boat routes going through the Great Lakes. This has created a powerful underworld culture across the Ontario Province, with networks of underground speakeasy bars being enjoying unspoken protection of local gangs and sometimes even of corrupt British officers.

1891: As if the already existing corruption was not enough, it seems like the North-American bootleggers have enjoyed some unusual increase in funding of their operations, and their smuggling techniques are becoming complicated beyond the level expected from petty criminal gangs. Their ways of finding their way into the pockets of Lower Canada’s officials are also becoming more smooth and harder to resist, to the dismay of the Protectorate’s agents. (Regional quest progress: 32.57%, ??? losses: -1.22 HC, -1.99 IC, -2.87 EC, -0.78 IC)

1892: This year saw a dramatic drop in criminal smuggling activity and associated corruption cases within the Canadian martial government, perhaps related to withdrawal of some shadowy powers from the illegal alcohol market. In that situation, British Royal police and its special prohibition squads reigned supreme, busting most of recently established trading spots, speakeasies, and warehouses across the Ontario province. Despite that, small-time smuggling continues, and the issue is far from resolution, still. (Regional quest progress: -4.21%, British Royal Commonwealth losses: -1.27 HC, -1.61 IC, -2.7 EC, -0.88 MC)



Reputed Golden Age of the Maritimes
Spoiler :
1890: Throughout most of the 19th century, the Maritimes region of British Canada experienced a powerful economic boom and development of local mass manufacture. The Atlantic War and its devastation have changed that trend, which coincided with huge levels of wealth inequality between the rich and the poor. In fact, something completely new to this regions is starting to happen. Broke urbanites and rural dwellers are starting to become so desperate that they happily volunteer to the army, only in order to disappear from the sight of their rich lenders. Those debtors who opposed military service, ironically, end up being blackbirded or impressed into it by the bounty hunters hired by banks and moneylenders who try to recover at least part of the lost sum by virtually selling the bankruptcy victims to the British army and navy.



How the tables have turned
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: English-speaking population of Quebec never favored the Protectorate’s martial law, military colonial government, and liquor prohibition. Still, Anglo-Canadians were never quite supportive of Quebec independence and establishment of a Francophone state in North Americas, so the British garrison historically has been actively using Protestants and English-speakers as informants or at least temporary allies against Quebecoi troublemakers. Now that Free Quebec is a geopolitical fact (despite the ongoing war), some of the more radical or bitter Patriote militias are starting to turn their vengeful eyes at the “duplicitous Angois.” Needless to say, any ethnic purges, especially done against English-speakers could spur a lot of discontent both within the Union and around the civilized parts of the globe. On the other hand, some hardliners and militarists suggest that some “limited ethnic cleansing” may bring the Union closer together with its French and Boer allies (the former, for the preferential support of French population, and the latter, for the hatred of the Anglos). One way or another, North-American leadership has to act soon, before it is too late.


Q4 1893: The Union’s Central Intelligence Committee reacted to the rumors of ethnic cleansings with extreme urgency, throwing the nation’s best agents to nipping any such actions in the bud. Free Quebec’s provisional government and some of the more cooperative partisan militias were influenced to take a more tolerant stance toward the Anglois settlers, while a few of the radical commanders were disavowed and since then have moved to radical opposition to virtually all sides of the conflict. To bridge the gap between the Anglo-Canadians and Franco-Canadians, some Anglois Patriotes militias were artificially formed by their North-American curators, providing much needed manpower for the young state. While the solution of that ethnic tension most likely prevented war crimes, it also helped a few British agents escape justice and remain a threat for the North-American and Quebecoi interests in Upper and Lower Canada. (Regional quest completed with mixed results, region Atlantic Canada gains +10 HC, Union of North America gains +0.75% Regional Influence, British Royal Commonwealth gains +0.25% Regional Influence, Quebec loses -1% Regional Influence, Union of North America losses: -2.83 HC, -4.77 IC, -6.87 EC, -2.17 MC)


Atlantic Wars and Atlantic cables
Q4 1893: The first Transatlantic telegraph cables were laid in 1869 by then-cooperating Great Britain and France with the assumption they’d remain if not allies, then at least partners. As a result, the cables were laid between the French colony of St. Pierre and Miquelon (two tiny fishing islands off the coast of Nova Scotia) and a town of Ballycarbery in British Ireland, extending from there to the harbor of Brest in continental France. During the First Atlantic War attempts were made to lay a new Transatlantic cable between Brittany and Massachusetts, but the British Atlantic fleet prevented such plans from materializing. Now the situation in the high seas is different, and France once again finds itself in need of effectively communicating with North America. Several projects of a new, British interference-free Transatlantic cable have been proposed. One of them suggests connecting Brest directly to St. Pierre and Miquelon, and from there on to Duxbury, Massachusetts. Another, more cautious, but much more costly approach is use Bermuda as the transfer station, prolonging the cable, but helping cable-laying ships to stay away from the British Isles. As challenging as that project promises to be, it could greatly improve the Triune Pact’s communications both during and after the war.


Inglorious bastards
Q4 1893: The Royal Commonwealth seems to have raised the stakes at the war for Canada. In an attempt to hinder North-American decision-making, the Brits have dispatched their license-to-kill agents to try and assassinate as many high-ranking Union officers as possible. The death toll has so far been relatively low, with only three generals and one military governor being dead or seriously wounded, but the sheer resonance (and dashing style) of these attacks sent a ripple across the entire North-American hierarchy of command. The scare of British “Kingsmen” (also tarnished and nicknamed by the Union’s press “the inglorious bastards”) makes many North-American leaders surround themselves with federal agents and limit their appearances, thus negatively impacting the public morale, as well as chain of command. It seems like the war for Canada has become a war for survival quite literally for many North-American leaders. (Regional quest progress: 38.52%, British Royal Commonwealth losses: -2.29 HC, -3.81 IC, -5.74 EC, -1.6 MC)




Greater California
Spoiler :
Fast-developing region with relatively mediocre demographics, but big agricultural and trade potential and not fully explored natural resource deposits.


Alien visions of Christ
Spoiler :
1890: Japan, Korea, and China are experiencing a surge of Christian conversion, and many of people from these Asian countries are looking for better life in Americas, some driven by religious persecution (taking place in Japan) or by the desire to spread their interpretation of the Bible (as is the case in Taiping China). As a result, thousands of these unorthodox Asian Christians are coming to Deseret, attracted by its ecclesiastic government and policies favoring Christian refugees. However, many Deseret Mormons are starting to complain that their own faith’s central role in the national formation is starting to erode as the Church of Christ and the Latter-day Saints is becoming just one of the many religious movements flourishing in California.


Q4 1893: Attempting to take advantage of the Asian immigration wave and integrate new arrivals to the larger Deseret society, the Church of Christ and the Latter-day Saints has started proselytizing among them, while simultaneously establishing closer ties with local flocks of the God Worshipping Society (or Hong worshipers, as some less tolerant Deseretans call them) and other Christian sects. The work to unite the multitude of various religious movements and Christian cults into one semi-homogenic ecclesiastic structure has only begun and so far promises to be a hard and lengthy process, as too much lies between the locals and the immigrants in terms of culture, religious tradition, and even language. Yet, if successful, this conversion may indeed turn the State of Deseret into a unique melting pot of Christian non-conformists. (Regional quest progress: 6.5%, Deseret losses: -2.51 HC, -3.77 IC, -5.9 EC, -0.28 MC)




Franciscan economy
Spoiler :
1890: With the return of South California to the Mexican control, the new authority is reintroducing the old policies that existed in the region before the Americano-Mexican war of the 1840s. Among them, is the donation of big amounts of land and some local enterprises to Franciscan monks. The Americans that remained in California after Mexican takeover seems to be very unhappy about this upsurge of Catholic capitalism and favoritism, especially since businesses owned by the Third Order of Saint Francis are excluded from taxation (in exchange for their informal “donations” to the Mexican government), which helps them outcompete even the most robust American-owned businesses. So far, the discontent has been pretty quiet, but the silence may not last for long.



Rancho barons
Spoiler :
1890: As thousands of American settlers left California in the wake of the Mexican takeover, the lands they used to own were simply captured by some opportunistic Mexican strongmen. As they found themselves owning huge territories supporting numerous livestock population, these landowners are now known as “rancho barons.” In an attempt to stand out among their peers, they live lives or ill-affordable luxury and employ gangs of bloodthirsty gunslingers of American and Mexican descent. For now, the rancho barons have been loyal to the President, but they’re turning Mexican California into an unruly frontier march.

Q1-Q2 1893: Perhaps, not fully grasping the socio-economic nature of the rancho barons’ domination of the region, Mexican authorities have attempted to solve the problem the same way they had previously dealt with cattle raids along the Rio Grande river. Border garrisons were increased, and a greater number of law enforcement officers was dispatched to work in Mexican California. Needless to say, what worked well at preventing cross border raids to and from Texas did little to contain overwhelming corruption of the Californian society. After a few “gifts of gratitude,” most of the sheriffs and patrolmen found nothing strikingly illegal with the strongmen’s reign, and those few principled souls that did try to ask too many questions have started to disappear. (Regional quest progress: 4.71%, Mexico losses: -2.36 HC, -3.31 IC, -4.80 EC, -0.73 MC)



Transcontinental Railroad
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: Mexico has embarked on another ambitious railway project, aimed at connecting the Pacific Coast to Confederate Texas through North-Mexican provinces of Sonora, Chihuaua, and Coahuila, all the way from Los Angeles to Fort Worth. However, while most of the republic’s industrial capacities were fully engaged into the expansion of the railway network in Central Mexico, the government could spare only its land surveyors to do the work of finding the optimal land route, followed by acquisition clercs that purchased desert lands negligible sums. (Regional quest progress: 6.4%, Mexico losses: -4.14 HC, -5.8 IC, -8.4 EC, -1.29 MC)

Q3 1893: As Mexican railroad-building companies chose to concentrate on finishing the Central Mexican Railway network, Confederate investors stepped up their participation in the Transcontinental Railroad project. Since all planning and landscape exploration were completed in the first half of the year, the Southron engineers could simply get to work with little preparation, and by early October the Texan part of the railway, stretching from Fort Worth to the Mexican border, was completed and ready for exploitation. However, the expectations in the Confederacy were set to see the Transcontinental Railroad as the main transportation artery connecting Southern businesses with Mexican cheap labor and raw resources, and the partial completion of the project offers little to no return of investments - that is, until the Mexican stretch of the railway is completed and ready for exploitation. (Regional quest progress: 22.42%, Confederate States of America losses: -3.28 HC, -0.72 IC, -8.06 EC, -7.56 MC)


Q4 1893: As Confederate infrastructural focus shifted once again away from the Transcontinental Railroad project to their internal integrated railway network, the Ferrocarril Mexicano (“Mexican Railways” or FCM) stepped in to ensure smooth progress of the ambitious project. At that, they were successful, finishing several sections of the largest single infrastructure line in North-American history so far. At this rate, 1894 promises to be the year when Transcontinental Railroad opens its facilities to passengers and cargo. (Regional quest progress: 55.68%, Mexico losses: -4.05 HC, -1.12 IC, -11.16 EC, -8.92 MC)




Great Plains
Spoiler :
Slowly-developing frontier region capable of connecting the Pacific and Atlantic shores of America, but currently underexplored and underpopulated.

Guarded Lands
Spoiler :
1890: For years, native people of the Great Planes had to obey resettlement agreements with the American government that forced them to live in arbitrarily chosen reservations. Now that the American Wild West has crumbled, the tables have turned on the white settlers, especially in Montana and Wyoming. They are being forced by local Crow, Sioux, and Chippewa tribes to resettle to so called “guarded lands” comparable to the reservations that Native Americans used to languish in. Some white frontiersmen despise being forced to live in sod houses in the middle of nowhere and instead choose to return to the Union of North America and Confederate States of America instead, a move that the Iron Confederacy doesn’t oppose, as long as they leave without delay. These humiliations of white people are then exaggerated and dramatized in North-American and Confederate-American newspapers as some hotheads are calling for “protective expeditions” to the West.



The Trail of Faith
Spoiler :
1890: The tectonic shifts happening in the core of the American society make it so that thousands of enthusiastic members of emerging Christian sects are choosing to gather their belongings and travel to Deseret, or the Land of the Faithful as it’s becoming to be known. Vast majority of this pilgrims, however, lack the funds to purchase a boat ticket and instead head out to Deseret in horse-driven carts and wagons (and, very rarely, in steam carriages), hoping to cross the vast expanse of the Great Plains. Besides being generally dangerous, this so-called Trail of Faith is also becoming a source of international incidents, since pilgrim routes cross the lands of an officially recognized Iron Confederacy (something that rural believers choose to ignore in their decision making). Whenever caught trespassing, these pilgrims end up being deported to their country of origin, but in some cases blood gets spilled. It appears that neither of the American governments truly controls this issue, and the Native American dismay at the state of things keeps growing.


Q4 1893: Deseret’s authorities have finally acknowledged Native American discontent over Christian migrations through the Great Plains. After a few brainstorms, a decision was made to strive to develop effective oceanic lanes that could bring pilgrims to North America’s West Coast from the east. However, before such an approach becomes financially and infrastructurally feasible, a temporary solution was applied. Tribes, through whose territory the notorious Trail of Faith passes, were directly contacted by Mormon ambassadors and offered various benefits and payments in exchange for temporary agreements allowing the migrants to travel through tribal lands. In a lot of cases, the ambassadors were rejected right away, and in a few instances informal agreements were made, but didn’t improve the situation on the ground. Yet, Mormon leadership continued stubbornly seeking compromise solutions with the tribes, and it seems that they slowly but surely earn the natives’ trust, turning the Trail of Faith into something more civilized and survivable. (Regional quest progress: 42.79%, Deseret losses: -0.5 HC, -0.75 IC, -1.18 EC, -0.06 MC)


Barn raisings
Spoiler :
1892: Barns are crucial constructions for any rural community, especially one that is too remote from other civilization centers to rely on imported grain. Yet, barns are also expensive and labor-intensive constructions to build, and in years of good harvest building a new barn before winter may be a time-dependent activity as well, crucial for the entire community. As a result, Confederate, North-American, and Mexican villages of the Great Plains have started to use communal corvees (so called raising bees or barn raisings) to accomplish such constructions in time. Besides, after the barn is fully built, a village-wide celebration usually takes place inside of it, featuring music, dancing, and a good deal of moonshine, along with other, more frivolous activities. In fact, barn raisings have become so important in community building, that local clergy has started to voice discontent over the popular abandonment of church construction and other forms of religious congregation. They demand that the state intervenes and redirects the farmers’ energy to more spiritually “pure” activities, least people’s morals decline.



Southwestern Wall
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: It seems like building the longest defensive line in modern history along its northern border is not big enough of an achievement for the CSA’s military. In July 1893, yet another stretch of loosely connected forts, dedicated lines of communications, and supply depots started being built in the Confederate reach of the Great Plains region all the way to the Rio Grande river and the Gulf of Mexico. (Regional quest progress: 51.55%, Confederate States of America losses: -5.61 HC, -1.77 IC, -2.81 EC, -2.82 MC)


 
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Update 5: October 1, 1893 - December 31, 1893

American Midwest

Spoiler :
Booming frontier region with reasonable potential for resource extraction and agriculture.

Dakota exodus
Spoiler :
1890: Official recognition of the Iron Confederacy is making Dakota natives of the Union of North America agitated. They ask North American authorities for a permission to resettle to the lands of other independent First Nations and join their union. Opponents of that move point out that the Dakota migration could lead to a rise of illegal activity by the Native Americans across the region (a claim that more cool-headed experts deny). Besides, diplomatic advisors point out that after joining the Iron Confederacy, even outside of the North-American territory, the Dakota natives could later produce territorial claims on the lands of the Union. No decision has been made so far, but Midwestern politicians are afraid that fulfilling that request would create a dangerous precedent for any ethnic group around North America.


Q4 1893: Recent joining of the Iron Confederacy by Metis communities of British Manitoba sent a clear signal to North-American Dakota natives that the time has come to join their Native American brethren. The main migration has begun, with thousands of Dakota people abandoning their reservations and crossing federal lands to the Iron Confederacy. Even though their abandonment of reservation lands (which are extremely poor and non-arable) doesn’t really impact local economy, the migration itself certainly does. Besides, law enforcement officers in localities standing on the way of such migrations find themselves lost and unsure of what to do, since very little trust exists between European settlers and the Dakota natives, and every little disturbance and crime is mutually blamed on the other party. (Regional quest progress: -30%)


Work hard, not smart
Spoiler :
1890: As power of unionized labor is growing across the North-American nation, some regions display a rather backward, Luddite approach to the fruits of industrialization. A series of demonstrations have taken place across towns of Minnesota and Iowa, spearheaded mostly by local fur trappers and corn farmers protesting against the use of modern industrial equipment by bigger companies operating in that region. Complaints range from valid to silly, but now it’s up to the federal government to resolve the argument about the role of technology in a regulated market.



Merit and skin color
Spoiler :
1890: The Iowa Agricultural College And Model Farm is an educational pride of the Midwest, a center of knowledge that’s starting to expand to include other fields of knowledge into its curriculum. However, this institution’s directorial board seems to be not very fond of the fact that children of well-off black families from neighboring regions are sending their offspring to study sciences in this primarily white institution. In private conversations, it is admitted to be an unspoken rule of the establishment to exclude black residents or newcomers from any and all social activities if possible, but without acknowledging any bias and without going as far as directly humiliating them. This mirrors the mood of European settlers across the entire region, which, in turn, impacts productivity and social trust.


Q4 1893: The Union’s Education Board’s decision to promote educational equality between Anglophone and Francophone Manitobans was well-received across most of the country, but in Iowa and across the Midwest it also caused some negative ripple. Prominent black families are expressing their deep frustration that the plight of Franco-Canadians now bothers President Fouracre and his cabinet much more than similar educational discrimination taking place in the Midwest. Some peaceful protest were held across many cities and towns of the region, supported by some racially progressive whites and even female suffragists, who view it as a part of a larger fight for a more just, egalitarian, and meritocratic society. (Regional quest progress: -25%)




American Deep South
Spoiler :
Fast-developing agricultural region with up-and-coming industry and education and complicated racial history.

The pride of the Crescent City
Spoiler :
1890: To live in the American Deep South while being black most usually means being a slave or being a second-class citizen, regularly discriminated against or picked as a suspect of pretty much any crime. However, one place in the Confederacy stands out from this rule: the Crecent City of New Orleans. In fact, that city has a flourishing African-American and Creole culture, and it’s the only place in the South where a black person may own a mansion or gain higher education degree. On the one hand, it makes New Orleans a valuable conduit of Southern African-American ingenuity and a big contributor to the Confederate economy and culture. On the other hand, it’s widely viewed as a breeding ground of Union-sympathisers and abolitionists, and many people don’t take these suspicions easy.



Traitors among us
Spoiler :
1890: Now that the Atlantic War is over, and both the North and the South are recovering from their losses, it seems like some people just can’t let it go. This has made Deep South a scene of a zealous witch hunt for scalawags, or Union sympathizers. The fact that vast majority of Southern abolitionists have left the country for the North doesn’t seem to bother anyone, especially since many officers and policemen still suspect that the hated scalawags may act as spies of the Northern regime. A big number of moderate Southern liberals has already fallen victims of ill-justified arrests, and in some tragic cases, of even lynching. The “scalawag hunters,” and among them some state politicians, demand cracking down on New Orleans’ policies of liberal exceptionalism, as well as building a border wall with the Union of North America, whatever its cost.

Q3 1893: The declaration of war by the Confederate States of America against the Union of North America was a sudden, but not exactly unexpected development for many Dixie citizens who still hear the echoes of the Atlantic War. Even though this war is formally being launched in honoring the defensive pact between the CSA and the British Royal Commonwealth, some of the Southron jingoists view it as an extension of the older, more bitter fight against the hated North. In this atmosphere, lynchings of scalawags and their sympathizers are becoming commonplace across the Deep South, and President Stone’s inaction is making both sides increasingly agitated. (Regional quest progress: -30%)


Q4 1893: Peace exists between the CSA and the Union once more, and therefore… President Stone’s administration is in dire straits. Having failed to promote ideas of coexistence with the the North before the war has started, the beleaguered political leader of the South gained few praises by exiting the war with the aggressive northern regime after three months of demonstrative inaction. For corporations and their owners, his foreign policy is dangerously inconsistent, considering its impact on global and continental trade. For the economy-conscious middle class, he is just another political opportunist who got the country at unnecessary war in the first place. As for the rural rabble and motley groups of reactionaries and rabid nationalists, he is a scallywag incarnate, a Yankee-lover who turned a righteous war against an old enemy into a farce. 1894 is going to be an election year in the CSA, and very few people are willing to bet on President Stone’s (or, for that matter, his entire party’s) success in that ordeal. (Regional quest progress: -60%)



Zeppelinariums and Southwest Air
Spoiler :
1892: Capitalizing on the wave of their commercial triumph, executives of the Southeast Air, the first passenger Zeppelin network in the world, are looking into expansion of their business further west, to the booming New Orleans and sleepy St. Louis, via the creation of a daughter-company called Southwest Air. Should that happen, the entirety of the Confederacy would be connected by a reliable network of fast-travelling airships.

Q3 1893: Zeppelin flights are becoming more common across the Confederate America, as Southwest Air has been established in the Deep South. Zeppelinariums are being built in multiple cities across the region, with the biggest of them under being construction in St. Louis and New Orleans. (Regional quest progress: 49.15%, Confederate States of America losses: -1.71 HC, -0.38 IC, -4.2 EC, -3.94 MC)


Q4 1893: Expansion of the CSA’s zeppelin network continued in the American Deep South, coming very closely to connecting all major cities of the region in a stable network of airship flights. A few zeppelinariums remain unfinished in Eastern Texas, still, while the Southwest Air executives start hinting to the press that they consider expanding commercial zeppelin flights as far as Mexico City in the upcoming years. (Regional quest progress: 94.3%, Confederate States of America losses: -2 HC, -0.44 IC, -5.37 EC, -4.33 MC)


Rich people’s railroads
Q4 1894: Looking to optimize distribution chain of raw materials across the nation, President Stone’s cabinet invested heavily into constructing a series of integrated railroads, connecting a multitude of “private rails” into a single system. Needless to say, the All-Confederate scope of the change turned this endeavor into a costly project that President Stone may or may not be able to see to its completion before leaving office. Among commoners, these new arteries of commerce became known as “rich people’s railroads,” since they don’t exist for the benefit of common folk (and often, vice versa, lead to costly and bitter relocations), but rather feed “robber barons” of the South, along with their insatiable factories. On the other hand, the Senate majority points out that benefits of the big businesses translate into benefits for all, as employment and wages are sure to increase once the new network of industrial railways improves industrial production across the region. (Regional quest progress: 11.76%, Confederate States of America losses : -2.71 HC, -0.6 IC, -7.29 EC, -5.87 MC)


Northern Wall (West)
Spoiler :
1892: Now that the eastern stretch of the defensive line is completed, many Confederate generals are expecting army engineering resources to be thrown at the completion of the so-called Northern Wall’s western part. Meanwhile, some of the Atlantic War heroes point out that the fortification trampes the elan and offensive spirit of the Dixie army, which, according to them, was the sole reason the previous war had been won in the first place.

Q1-Q2 1893: Adjusting to the reality of the Western theater, Confederate army has continued working on the Northern Wall, which in this stretch consists mostly of a series of elastic defenses, observation zeppelin bases, fast response cavalry forts, and static defenses around centers of industry and population. (Regional quest progress: 26.19%, Confederate States of America losses: -5.47 HC, -1.77 IC, -2.86 EC, -2.88 MC)

Q3 1893: War against the North-American Union is so far proving to be an extremely quiet affair, and Confederate general staff is using this lull to do what they love most: build fortifications. Even the western section of the so called Northern Wall is being constructed in a direct vicinity of North-American army camps. (Regional quest progress: 93.64%, Confederate States of America losses: -5.61 HC, -1.77 IC, -2.81 EC, -2.82 MC)


Q4 1893: Even though the “war” with the North-American Union just ended inconclusively, the CSA’s leadership went ahead with its plan to surround the nation with a string of forts and bunkers, just in case it needs to fight another “phoney war.” (Regional quest completed, Troops defending in region American Deep South gain +1 CR for defending against enemies attacking from region American Midwest, Confederate States of America losses: -4.74 HC, -1.6 IC, -3.2 EC, -3.03 MC)


Institutes of Southern Culture
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: The Atlantic War established the CSA as a truly independent, recognized nation, but it’s this year that the Southron society has started coming together as a cultural entity. State-sponsored Institutes of Southern Culture were established in multiple cities across the country, aiming to preserve local dialects, folklore, regional cuisine, history, and art. One of the biggest such institutes is being formed in Tahlequah under the supervision of Cherokee philanthropists, with archaeological expeditions being dispatched all along the Mississippi river valley in search of local mounds and other architectural and evidential artifacts of ancient Native American civilizations. (Regional quest progress: 92.57%, Confederate States of America losses: -2.16 HC, -3.21 IC, -4.68 EC, -1.32 MC)


Q4 1893: The CSA continued working out the core of its national culture as Institutes of Southern Culture became commonplace across big cities of the American South. Besides a cultural bloom, it also attracted somes stable flow of European tourists wishing to personally witness and enjoy all aspects of Dixie hospitality. Besides everything else, this cultural effort helped to tie many Southrons closer to their home country, helping, besides other things, in business competition at home market. What the Institutes definitely failed to do, despite President Stone’s hopes, was to relieve him of pressure from the far right of the Confederate political spectrum - mostly because scallywag-cursing trigger-happy ultrapatriots weren’t really into reading books of Southern Gothics poetry or enjoying fine art of Georgian barbeque when their beloved homeland was being ruled by a “treasonous Yankee-lover.” (Regional quest completed with success, region American Deep South gains +15 IC, +5 EC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +0.75%, Confederate States of America gains +1% Regional Influence, Free Boer Republic loses -0.25% Regional Influence, Tokugawa Shogunate loses -0.75% Regional Influence, region Carolinas-Florida: Confederate States of America gains +2% Regional Influence, Union of North America loses -2% Regional Influence, Confederate States of America losses: -1.7 HC, -2.53 IC, -3.68 EC, -1.04 MC)


Fortress New Orleans
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: In their obsession to fortify every square foot of land settled by a Dixie, Confederate generals have initiated yet another fortress construction project, this one aimed at creating a string of coastal forts, bunkers, and batteries protecting the Mobile Bay and the city of New Orleans from enemy amphibious landings or attempts to enter the Mississippi river delta. (Regional quest progress: 68.71%, Confederate States of America losses: -1.25 HC, -0.39 IC, -0.62 EC, -0.63 MC)


Q4 1893: If you do something, never do it half-way. That appears to be a motto of the Confederate general staff. True to their “better be safe than sorry,” Dixie generals happily announced completion of a string of coastal forts and bunkers surrounding the Mobile Bay and the city of New Orleans widely associated with joy, cheerfulness and insouciance. (Regional quest completed, Confederate troops defending in region American South gain +1 CR for defending against enemies attacking from Atlantic Ocean, Confederate States of America losses: -1.95 HC, -0.66 IC, -1.32 EC, -1.25 MC)


Dixie bourbon
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Growing economy of Japan is ever hungry for various exports of the American Deep South, but out of all of them it’s bourbon whiskey that occupies a special place in the hearts of almost every rich Japanese samurai-savant. Rich with taste and smell, this strong distilled alcohol proves to be one of the best-sold imports in Confederate liquor emporiums that are starting to pop up on the streets of the Dikasi quarter of Edo. Scared that the Second Atlantic War would put a swift end to Japan’s flirt with American whiskey, Tokugawa navy and merchant marine were dispatched to secure trade routes going through the Strait of Magellan and crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Not really suited for mercantile and commerce activities, this centralized shipping effort nonetheless is set to secure the Japanese share of bourbon imports. (Regional quest progress: 96.71%, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -1.03 HC, -0.73 IC, -1.34 EC, -2.17 MC)


Q4 1893: Even as the flame of the Union-Confederate War was put down upon barely starting, Japanese traders still hurried to secure their market share of “Dikasy” bourbon whiskey via securing dedicated naval commerce lanes across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Eventually Tokugawa Japan became the biggest foreign importer of Southron distilleries, going as far as opening some bourbon emporiums in the Dikasi quarter of Edo. (Regional quest completed with success, region American Deep South gains +10 EC, region Japanese Isles gains +5 EC, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -0.46 HC, -0.1 IC, -1.13 EC, -0.86 MC)




Offshore drilling
Q4 1893: Growing demand for oil and gas is making people look for strange new places to dig for precious fossil fuels. One of such places is apparently sea floor, as the Confederate States of America have started working on offshore oil rigs, bizarre giant constructions that are planned to be built in littoral waters of the Mexican Gulf just near the Texan shore. Rumors originally swirled about the CSA’s East-Asian partners from Burmese luuhcu corporations partaking in this research, but that proved to be a story made up by the press. What investments did come, however, arrived from the Confederation’s newfound Japanese and Ottoman partners. A competing effort by the Sumitomo Zaibatsu group seeking to break the Atorasu-Mitsu oil market monopoly provided their expertise and equipment to the Texas Oil Company, followed by the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) sanctioned by the Sublime Porte to learn from Confederate technological advancements. The works have just started, but if the first pilot rig proves to be successful, the Confederates, Ottomans, and Japanese may become world leaders at use of mechanical processes where a wellbore is drilled below the seabed, usually for oil or gas extraction. (Technology quest progress: 54.86%, Confederate States of America losses: -1 HC, -0.22 IC, -2.69 EC, -2.16 MC, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -1.52 HC, -0.33 IC, -3.75 EC, -2.86 MC, Sublime Porte losses: -0.66 HC, -0.15 IC, -1.75 EC, -1.18 MC)




Carolinas-Florida
Spoiler :
Fast-developing region recovering from war and suffering from contradictions between old-fashioned social hierarchies and highly modern technology and infrastructure.


Phoney war
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Despite not wishing to annul his secret obligations of defensive alliance to Great Britain, Confederate President Stone still really disliked the idea of risking his nation’s hard-won freedom in yet another massive war with the North. Thus, despite formally declaring war on the Union of North America after the British refusal of the Triune Pact’s ultimatum, the Confederate military was issued only one simple Presidential directive: dig in and sit tight. However, not everyone in the CSA’s headquarters (and especially among the frontline troops and officers) wished to view this war from such defeatist positions. Dixie spirit, they argued, was one of elan and dashing attacks, and old hatred toward the Northerners didn’t help keeping people content with the enforced lull. These hawks received support from an unexpected source, however. British military attache in Savannah and a number of Britain-sponsored English-speaking publications started a wide public campaign criticizing President Stone and his “cronie generals’” defeatism and urging politicians and voters to apply pressure on their deputies and officials to turn the strange border standout into a proper war against the old enemy. Still, despite achieving some initial success, that campaign stalled when it met a wave of pro-Stone publications that justified the inaction as a chance for the army to finish its fortification efforts, thus saving the South from yet another March to the Sea. Still, political tensions between the two allies run high, and nobody is sure how long the so-called “Phoney War” could continue. (Regional quest progress: 11.43%, Confederate States of America losses: -4.84 HC, -7.19 IC, -10.47 EC, -2.95 MC, British Royal Commonwealth losses: -4.26 HC, -5.41 IC, -9.09 EC, -2.95 MC)

While in the South two allies were arguing about the way of fighting the war, their northern opponents knew exactly what they wanted to see on their southern flank: calm and inaction. Strictly defensive orders were issued to all units, and federal agents were dispatched to reinforce this highly passive doctrine on the troops. Among the public and in the ranks, the idea of not pushing south and avenging the bloodshed of the First Atlantic War was not very popular, but gradually the ideas of Phoney War are becoming more and more accepted in the North as well as in the South. (Regional quest progress: 22.57%, Union of North America losses: -1.71 HC, -2.89 IC, -4.23 EC, -1.33 MC)


Q4 1893: As a peace treaty between the Union and the Confederacy was signed, it became shockingly clear to the British Foreign Ward that the Commonwealth had been betrayed by its new allies. In a last desperate attempt to reverse this diplomatic decision and bring the CSA back into an active war against the Union (or, at the very least, bring political hawks back to the office in the upcoming elections of 1894), the Foreign Ward dispatched a variety of its resources to run an aggressive pro-war campaign in the American South, playing on President Stone’s already tarnished reputation among Southron nationalists and jingoists. However, majority of the Dixie population continued growing colder to the idea of continuing the unwanted war with every passing day of peace. By now, it appears that the Confederate society is moving toward a shart split: most of the voters are firmly against of renewing the country’s rivalry with the North, and a militant jingoists are likely to gain little in the upcoming elections, but they become ever more united and radicalized in their actions, keeping ideas of anti-Northern revanchism still afloat across the South. (Regional quest progress: 56.29%, Confederate States of America losses: -3.07 HC, -4.57 IC, -6.64 EC, -1.88 MC, British Royal Commonwealth losses: -4.35 HC, -7.24 IC, -10.91 EC, -3.04 MC)

Slave factories
Spoiler :
1890: Traditionally, Southern slavery was purely agricultural, but with the development of modern industry plantation-produced agricultural goods are no longer as valuable. This has led to an interesting development, as the most prominent Southern slave-owners are seeking ways to organize industrial manufacture around slave labor. Despite many setbacks and downsides of their production cycle, these slave factories are quickly becoming the most profitable plants in the region. While this seems to appease wealth-hungry investors, it also draws a lot of ire from among white workers, whose factories fail to compete with this new type of enterprise and either cut the paycheck for their white workers in order to stay afloat or get out of business altogether. Amazingly, some of these working class folks are even starting to consider standing up against slave labor.



Rough and tumble
Spoiler :
1890: Principles of personal and familial honor are very important for a Southron. While the gentry have their own classy duels, with polished sabres and Colt revolvers, poor redneck folks are going for more affordable, but not less deadly options. When a simple fistfight doesn’t seem to be enough in protecting a fellow’s hurt pride, the duelists choose to solve it “rough and tumble.” Armed with Bowie knives, brass knuckles, broken bottles, and steel nails, Southern commoners engage in brutally violent fights that rarely lead to death, but usually end with mutilation of one’s opponent. Rural areas around the country (and especially, the proud state of Florida) are full of farmers with missing fingers, split lips, cut-out noses, and gouged-out eyes.



New South Creed
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: Rapid industrial development of Southern states, combined with growing shortcomings of the “Old South” economy, is creating a political demand for what a brand new generation of Confederate politicians call the New South Creed. Yes, they say, the Confederacy fought for state rights, one of which was indeed the right to legalize slavery, but the world has moved on, and slave labor is no longer as valuable as it was some half a century before. And even if it is to remain legal in some places, why would not promote economic developments of greater complexity, not abolishing slavery legally (for it would anger too many voters), but simply letting it run itself into the ground? These new Bourbon Democrats are yet few in number, but they enjoy a lot of attention and donations from more technologically savvy companies of the South, including such giants as Parks&Lyons, Shenandoah Steel, and Austenaco. More conservative politicians, meanwhile, label them as “scalawags” and “carpetbaggers”, betrayers of the Old South tradition and thus of everything they’d fought a war for.



Engine-driven stock exchange and algorithmic trading
Spoiler :
1891: In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, preparations have begun for the construction of a massive new analytical engine that is described in the Confederate press as “a mean of analyzing the entire Southern economy.” However, engineers and programme analysts more familiar with the project confirm that the new building is going to be reserved for a stock exchange equipped with difference engines, allowing traders perform to stock trade faster, and letting simple analytical algorithms to track some indexes and perform simple trades. Some of these analysts also break the silence regarding the fact that this unique project is underequipped and underfunded, perhaps due to the fact that the Confederate leadership itself underestimated the revolutionizing nature of the invention it represents, and thus didn’t account for the complexity and risks associated with it. Regardless of misrepresentation that took place in the press, the new establishment is believed to be an important step toward the future of stock trade - once it overcomes the accidents and broken deadlines that plague it. (Technology quest progress: -3.17%, Confederate States of America losses: -2.71 HC, -0.60 IC, -6.66 EC, -6.24 MC)

1892: The Confederate Senate Commission has heeded the pleas of its Fort Lauderdale project managers and dedicated a bigger share of the nation’s funds and resources to the development of the first stock exchange supported by automata devices and difference engines. It seems like now the Confederate engineers finally have something to show for their effort. (Regional quest progress: 26.6%, Confederate States of America losses: -3 HC, -0.66 IC, -7.36 EC, -6.9 MC)

Q1-Q2 1893: The construction of the first engine-driven stock exchange has lumbered forward in Fort Lauderdale this year, progressing at a pace that much displeased its multitude of private investors. (Technology quest progress: 36.24%, Confederate States of America: -2.28 HC, -0.5 IC, -5.6 EC, -5.26 MC)

Q3 1893: Confederate authorities and businesses have finally realized the true value of their troubled stock exchange project, and this year saw an influx of investments into “the Fort Lauderdale’s Tower of Babel.” In three months, more progress was made in engine-driven stock trade than over the last few years, and investors await a completion announcement any day now. (Technology quest progress: 99.67%, Confederate States of America: -2.43 HC, -0.53 IC, -5.95 EC, -5.59 MC)


Q4 1893: Giddy to finally start using algorithmic trading in their practices, Confederate stock trading companies threw a team of top-notch engineers and testers to ironing out last defects of index monitoring programmes. By late November, the Fort Lauderdale difference engine-driven stock exchange was completed, and investment bankers all across the country started to hire teams of programme engineers to build similar difference engines for tracking trade indices in their local markets. (Technology quest completed with success, Confederate States of America adopts “Engine-driven stock exchange and algorithmic trading” for no additional cost, Confederate States of America losses: -2.85 HC, -0.63 IC, -7.68 EC, -6.18 MC)


Midas of Fort Lauderdale
Q4 1893: Just when it seemed like the boomtown of Fort Lauderdale had seen enough major construction efforts in four years, yet another “wonder of engineering” was announced. While the first difference engine-supported stock exchange already had everything it needed to function, bull market party chose to carry on with construction of corporate-owned analytical engine dedicated primarily to programmes needed for optimization and enhancement of Confederate banking enterprises. Since Pearl of Florida already had all required infrastructure, construction crews, and engineering talent pool, the project was completed with record speed, in big contrast with the CSA’s earlier struggles with computerised banking. The new analytical machine, tentatively nicknamed “Midas,” not only improved Confederate corporate intellectual base, but also streamlined a lot of banking operations around the region, making sure that the money-service flow is as smooth across the Tidewater region as it could possibly be. (Regional quest completed with success, region Carolinas-Florida gains +10 IC, +15 EC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +0.75%, Confederate States of America losses: -0.86 HC, -0.19 IC, -2.3 EC, -1.86 MC)


Fort Lauderdale Planned City
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: The Confederate leadership’s obsession with an otherwise insignificant Floridan town of Fort Lauderdale has reached a new climax this year, as a new construction project was announced by an infamous “robber baron,” Floridan industrialist and banker Robert Flagler. Flagler’s idea is to expand the city by building pre-planned neighborhoods for bankers, engineers, clerks, and Zeppelinarium workers that will likely want to move to the Biscayne Bay coast once the multitude of ongoing projects gets completed in and around Fort Lauderdale. Some journalists speculate that the Planned City project was influenced by the North-American reconstruction of Chicago, although the “Pearl of Florida” is expected to showcase Southern hospitality and comfort, in stark contrast with Chicago’s cold bustle. While the government formally provided no engineering assistance to this endeavor, Flagler received a lot of help in pitching his vision to private investors, as well as in planning and land requisition, propelling the Planned City venture forward. (Regional quest progress: 64.43%, Confederate States of America losses: -1.08 HC, -1.61 IC, -2.34 EC, -0.66 MC)


Q4 1893: Concerted efforts of turning previously little-known town of Fort Lauderdale into intellectual and financial capital of the CSA came to neat conclusion this year, as the boomtown was gentrified and expanded into a miracle of landscape architecture. Besides everything else, It now includes a business district surrounding a fuming colossus of a newly built analytical engine, fully electrified town hall and clock tower, a streetcar network with connections to the Zepplinarium and to Biscayne Bay, and well groomed, optimized parks. (Regional quest completed with success, region Carolinas-Florida gains +5 HC, +30 EC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +0.25%, Confederate States of America losses: -0.57 HC, -0.13 IC, -1.54 EC, -1.24 MC)


Sea Dogs and volunteer navy
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: As the extravagant sale of letters of marque in the Caribbean Sea came to an end this year, the Confederate navy has announced that it’s planning to integrate privately equipped civilian ships into its structure as a part of aso-called “Volunteer Navy” or, as such ship-owners are nicknamed “the Sea Dogs.” While administrative actions required for true integration haven’t even started yet, it’s expected that the Dixie navy is going to soon spearhead the development of a modern form of privateering, in which enlisted raiding ships are privately owned and manned, and are eligible for prize money, but their crews are under the discipline of the regular navy.





Great Lakes Region
Spoiler :
Booming trade hub of inland America with growing labor market and up-and-coming manufacture and resource industry.

Second Toledo Strip War
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: Also known as the Michigan-Ohio War, the conflict for the so-called Toledo Strip was an almost bloodless confrontation of 1835-1836 between militias of the state of Ohio and then-territory of Michigan, caused by poor geographic knowledge of the time. Hosting an infrastructurally important Erie Canal and very arable land, the Toledo Strip was considered a valuable prize for both states at the time and was eventually resolved through direct confrontation by President Andrew Jackson, in Ohio’s favor. During the Statehood Reform that took place in the Union shortly after the Atlantic War, the Toledo Strip War was used as a prime example of absurdity of old statehood rights. Winter and spring of 1893, however, saw an embarrassing development in and around the Toledo Strip. It started simply as a turf war between two local gangs of bootleggers who attempted to use the Erie Canal and the port of Miami Bay for their alcohol shipments to British Canada. The shootout went beyond the limits of a regular mob clash, and both gangs chose to escalate the war by pulling on their connections in local unions and rural workers’ communities. Soon, militias (albeit, not state-related ones) were formed and started patrolling the strip, sometimes exchanging shots with each other. Finally, mayors, county chairmen, and sheriffs with political ambitions completely forgot about the origins of the conflict and brought it back to light as an old territorial dispute between municipalities. Now the Union has to face the ghost of its old statehood rights and persuade all of the statehood rights opponents that the new status quo is better than (and different from) the old one.



Bootleggers of the Lakes
Spoiler :
1890: British prohibition of alcohol is the single best thing that ever happened to organized crime of Chicago, Milwaukee, and Cleveland. Illegal transit of legally made American alcohol, as well as of homemade moonshine is bringing big money to the American Great Lakes coast, and local municipalities are willing to close their eyes on the origin of this wealth. The people who own this wealth, mob bosses, are looking for ways to legalize it and to be recognized as respected entrepreneurs and, possibly, politicians. Now it’s turn for the North-American federal government to decide what deal they want to strike with them, and whether they want to strike any deal at all.



The City of Steam Turbines
Spoiler :
1890: The city of Detroit is becoming a model for North-American industrial towns, with multitude of plants and factories built there, all supporting different aspects of train and steam carriage production. While the city is booming, some experts warn of what could happen to the city (and whichever town follows Detroit’s example) of repercussions if a big market swing were to hurt the market for the city-forming industry. Another, fringe group of analysts, also points out at the unbearable air conditions in the heart of the city, fuming with steam, soot, and exhaust gases. Yet, the city is swelling with opportunity seekers, attracted by the high wages and epic romanticism of the City of Steam Turbines.

Q3 1893: North-American leadership’s take on diversification of Detroit industries was somewhat one-sided. Instead of reducing the share of heavy industry in the polluted megapolis, they looked to build more of it, albet this time concentrating not on automotive plants, but rather different armament factories. As for pollution, this problem was also addressed in a half-hearted manner, specifically by spreading out factories over a constellation of Detroit suburbs and neighboring towns. This, of course, made some industrial areas of Detroit slightly less unbearable, but also meant that practically any part of the city now was clouded in smoke and soot, because polluted air was coming from whichever direction a wind would blow. Besides, transportation of raw materials and labor to greater distances meant that even more exhaust fumes would find their way into the atmosphere. While many doubts about long-term effects of the new industrial planning policy remain, supporters of the measures point out that the effort should result in formation of one of the biggest and most productive heavy industry clusters in the world. (Regional quest progress: 70%, Union of North America losses: -1.63 HC, -0.43 IC, -5.01 EC, -4.17MC)


Q4 1893: The Union’s Industry And Labor Department continued funnelling resources into developing various types of armaments factories in the Greater Detroit agglomeration, completing their plan by the end of 1893. This has turned the City of Steam Turbines into a place of permanently covered in a savan of heavy smog, making many of its inhabitants (especially holding white-collar jobs) leave the area for more hospitable places that don’t make one’s lungs bleed. However, Detroit did become the unquestionable industrial heart of America, churning out all sorts of industrial machines, equipment, and armaments every day. (Regional quest completed with mixed results, region Great Lakes Region gains -5 HC, -5 IC, -5 EC, +25 MC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +0.5%, Union of North America losses: -1.4 HC, -0.37 IC, -4.36 EC, -3.57 MC)


Mines of the Snowbelt
Q4 1893: Areas located downwind from the Great Lakes are known to their residents, as well as geographers, as the Snowbelt. That nickname was given to them for extremely powerful and sudden snowfalls caused by the “lake effect” of steam ascending from unfrozen middle of the lake. However, besides the extreme weather, they are also known for being rich of natural resources. Standing out among them is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which up until the First Atlantic War produced 90% of America’s copper and was a promising source of iron ore as well. Under a short British occupation during the First Atlantic War the local mining industry practically stalled and remained such up until now. With the North-American army occupying roughly half of British Canada, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and other Snowbelt mining areas are once again strategically secure and can be developed for exploitation of their resources. Moreover, a big number of Cornish immigrants who had previously lived in Canada have started to move to the Upper Peninsula, attracted by the chance of starting their own cooperatively owned small-business mines, a chance that they lacked under the British military rule in Canada. Now it’s up to the Union’s authorities to decide how the mines of the Snowbelt should develop.



New England
Spoiler :
Booming center of American education, urban economy, trade, and infrastructure.


Refugee competition
Spoiler :
1892: British persecution of independence-minded Franco-Canadians has created a big immigration wave, with countless thousands of economic refugees arriving to Massachusetts. Most of them, despite their leftist views, are not looking forward to staying in the Union for too long, and instead want to wait out the worst of the violence in Quebec, while also earning a decent fortune within the dynamic, well-paying American economy. The employers were more than happy to hire Franco-Canadian laborers, partially due to a relatively high literacy and education level among them. That doesn’t sit too well with working class Irish immigrants who have arrived a few years earlier and already view themselves as more entitled to the American job market and decry their Canadien competitors as moochers and job-stealers.



Statue of Fraternity
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: During the Atlantic War, New York was one of the main bases of the United States Navy and on a few occasions was raided by British squadrons who even attacked and burned the Ellis Island. The trauma of these events, together with the Communard scare that briefly overtook New England and the North Atlantic coast, made New York largely enclosed for immigration, with a sole exception of the Manhattan island. In recent years, plenty of opinions have been voiced about making the Ellis Island an Atlantic gateway to the Union, comparable to the Peddocks Island of Boston. However, as a reminder to the prospective immigrants about the loyalty to the old order they’d have to relinquish and a new allegiance to the Union they’d have to develop and accept, New York representatives are suggesting to build a giant Statue of Fraternity, a 300-feet-tall monument of a man wearing Ancient Greek armor and holding the Book of Constitution in one hand and a shield in another. A few Communard-leaning architects from Manhattan suggest that they could pull their strings in Europe and get other leftist regimes on board to assist North American Union with that construction under the promise that Ellis Island would be open primarily for working class immigrants, especially from left-leaning countries, and that the monument would be dedicated not to Fraternity, but to Equality (with imagery still being discussed). One way or another, a third group of voices proposes to do none of that and keep New York closed for immigration, preserving its historical views and its quiet post-war lifestyle.



Zeppelinariums and Northeast Air
Spoiler :
1892: The establishment of the first ever passenger Zeppelin network in the Confederate Tidewater region has created a big demand for expedited luxury travel across America. In a bold attempt to extend their investments northward, some members of the Southeast Air board of directors are proposing the creation of a daughter-company Northeast Air, capable of providing similar services all the way to Portland. Naturally, many in the North feel animosity to Confederate investors and travellers and question what sorts of legal predicaments would arise should, say, a Georgia plantation owner take a trip to New York with his entourage of home slaves. Other, more cynical voices, point out that the war is over, and the Confederacy is merely another independent country that wishes to invest into the North-American infrastructure. Time will show which side will emerge to be the winner in this argument.



Dynamo and electrified ships
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: In the Age of Sail, lighting on ships used to be an ever-present, yet unavoidable danger element. Ever since gas lights were introduced, comfort of crew members improved, but introduction of electrical power to inner ship functionality promises to be not just a next step in the crew’s living conditions, but also a source of automation of numerous simple tasks. Besides, lack electrical lighting is so far one of the main handicaps preventing long-range voyages of submarine vessels, since other sources of light may be unavailable or too costly for the crew. With the beginning of the Second Atlantic War, a solution to this problem started to be actively discussed in one of the shipbuilding capitals of the world, Marcus Hooks wharfs of the North-American Union. An Ottoman engineer of Bulgarian descent previously dismissed by the Kapudan Pasha (Chief of the Navy) of the Sublime Porte has proposed to install so-called dynamo machines on ships. From what little is known to the public, these pieces of machinery are used to transform mechanical energy produced by steam-, oil-, or diesel-driven engines into electricity on ships. Surprisingly, despite being well-accepted in the Union, the engineer and his project couldn’t solicit it to North-American shipbuilders. Interest, however, arrived from another side of the Atlantic, as Southern African Shipyards of Durban happily sponsored this prospective research of naval electrification. (Technology quest progress: 38.86%, Free Boer Republic losses losses: -1.12 HC, -0.28 IC, -2.87 EC, -2.45 MC)


Q4 1893: As predicted, Durban Shipyards’ interest in dynamo-equipped ships turned out to be a precursor of more centralized and concerted investments by the members of the Triune Pact. By the end of 1893, electrification of ships was fully researched, and re-equipment of the Triune Pact’s navies started at full speed. (Technology quest completed with success, Union of North America, Communard France, Free Boer Republic adopt “Dynamo and electrified ships” for no additional cost, Union of North America losses: -0.47 HC, -0.12 IC, -1.45 EC, -1.19 MC, Free Boer Republic losses: -0.56 HC, -0.14 IC, -1.5 EC, -1.19 MC, Communard France losses: -0.49 HC, -0.12 IC, -1.44 EC, -1.16 MC)


Telemobiloscope and early naval detection
Q4 1893: Burmese echo-locating devices promise to be quite useful at detecting submerged or deep draft vessels at sea, as well as navigate ships through risky aquatoria. The Triune Pact’s navies, meanwhile, are looking for an alternative approach to naval detection, mostly useful for detecting above-surface vessels and airships at long range. Developed by a mixed team of Yankee, French, and Afrikaan engineers in mere months, a device called telemobiloscope uses radio waves bouncing off large objects to provide an early warning and detection capabilities at sea. (Technology quest completed, Union of North America, Communard France, Free Boer Republic adopt “Telemobiloscope and early naval detection” for no additional cost, Union of North America losses: -0.35 HC, -0.09 IC, -1.09 EC, -0.89 MC, Free Boer Republic losses: -0.42 HC, -0.11 IC, -1.12 EC, -0.89 MC, Communard France losses: -0.74 HC, -0.18 IC, -2.17 EC, -1.74 MC)

 
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Update 5: October 1, 1893 - December 31, 1893

Caribbean Region

Spoiler :
Fast-developing region recovering from a major rebellion, but still retaining certain agricultural and trade value.


Voodoo people
Spoiler :
1890: Sudden ascension of the Empire of Haiti to its regional influence has brought up a question of state religion. The Catholic church is not nearly as popular among regular Haitians as the syncretist religion of Voodoo. Wooing voodoo priests to support the Emperor could bring him almost divine popularity, at least on the island of Haiti. On the other hand, on Jamaica, that only recently was incorporated into the Haitian state, the cult of voodoo is not popular, while the Abrahamic religion of Rastafarianism is slowly coming to its maturity. It appears that these exotic believes are slowly coming their way to the Creole diaspora in New Orleans.



Shades of black and white
Spoiler :
1890: Confederates took over of Cuba and the Northern Antilles during the Caribbean Slave Rebellion and the collapse of the Spanish Empire. Since then, Hispanic and Franco-Caribbean population of this region has started its complicated way to being integrated into the Confederate society. For the rich, this path was short and direct, as families of Cuban plantation owners enjoy the best aspects of Southern hospitality. Poor Hispanics and Creole, on the other side, are despised by poor Confederate farmers, who perceive them as competitors on the labor market. But nothing can compare to the horrible treatment of Afro-Caribeno slaves (and freedmen often confused with slaves by indifferent Confederate policemen), whose conditions are even worse than those of African-American plantation workers. Unless these tensions are resolved, the Confederate influence over the region may experience a setback.



Fortress Havana and Caribbean island forts
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Different people have different hobbies. Confederate generals have fortification. While fortifying the open sea was deemed unfeasible, islands of the Caribbean did provide fairly good platforms for the engineering obsession of the Confederate general staff. A series of island forts were built on different islands of the North Antilles, and the ancient fort of San Carlos de la Cabana protecting the entry into the Havana bay is being modernized and rebuilt, along with other old Spanish, French, and British fortifications around the region. (Regional quest progress: 31.2%, Confederate States of America losses: -4.37 HC, -1.38 IC, -2.18 EC, -2.2 MC)

Q4 1893: What is an island without a fortress? Just a pimple of land on the face of the Earth. What’s an island with a fortress? Pretty much the same, but not for Confederate generals! Constructed with love and tenderness, new island fortifications now dot Confederate Caribbean possessions, making them impregnable to pirates and other enemies of the Confederacy, - but mostly pirates... who also happen to be mostly of Confederate descent. Either way, now the region promises to be much, much safer for the nation that’s been the main source of instability in it. (Regional quest completed, Confederate troops defending in region Caribbean Region gain +1 CR for defending against enemies attacking from Atlantic Ocean, Confederate States of America losses: -3.9 HC, -1.32 IC, -2.64 EC, -2.5 MC)


Porfirio’s friends (Haiti)
Q4 1893: Porfirio Diaz’s Mexico seems to be coming to age and looking increasingly outwards in its trade endeavors. One of the nations Diaz and his cientifico advisers have identified as a useful trade partner is neighboring Empire of Haiti, which ports have already become a standard destination place for Mexican ships for maintenance and refueling duties, ever since the Mexican anti-piracy campaign in 1893. While interests of Mexican corporate businesses were directed elsewhere this year, Mexican diplomats and political lobbyists have already started probing for possible expansion of mutual relationships between the two countries, with expansive two-way economic connections promising to be established next year. (Regional quest progress: 89.29%, Mexico losses: -1.38 HC, -1.93 IC, -2.8 EC, -0.43 MC)


Mexico
Spoiler :
Fast-developing, emerging region with above-average potential in all spheres.

Cientificos and the Church
Spoiler :
1890: President Diaz has surrounded himself with a council of technocratic advisors known as cientificos (lit. “scientists”). Now this council, despite being deprived of any formal power, has a lot of influence over national policies, pushing for more secular modernization of the Mexican society, with a strong lean toward social darwinism. Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, however, are disappointed in how much power these disbelievers have in the Mexican government and demand that the council is eliminated. On the one hand, cientificos are very popular among Mexican capitalists, bankers, and bourgeoisie, who are seeing direct results of the new policies. On the other hand, the Church enjoys almost universal support of rural landowners and, surprisingly, the peasantry (despite the fact that they, too, have benefited from the “scientific politics” of the cientificos).



Bread or a stick
Spoiler :
1890: “Pan o palo” is a phrase that’s becoming increasingly popular in the Mexican culture, and some people worry about what that may mean for the national mentality and ethics. Translated as “bread or a stick,” it describes an approach to suppressing one’s political opponents by offering them a lucrative position in one’s own office in exchange for them dropping their criticism. Pioneered by the President himself, this practice has become widespread not only in politics, but also in day-to-day language. As it’s starting to impact work ethics, career advancements, business deals, and police procedures, many lawyers express their concern - that is, until somebody asks them to accept a well-paying government position, or else…



Portable power tools
Spoiler :
1892: A construction company closely affiliated with the presidential regime has opened a new page in the history of Porfiriato, as Porfirio Diaz’s economy is becoming popularly known. They are trying to pioneer use and production of relatively light and mobile tools actuated by an additional power source that doesn’t require a fixed installation. While believed to be very prospective when completely tuned up, the venture so far has been a rough ride for its participants, with prototype tools suffering from high cost, bad ergonomics, and low reliability. Advisers suggest to the President that a significantly bigger, more concentrated effort should be thrown into finishing this industrial innovation. (Technology quest progress: -1.43%, Mexico losses: -3.18 HC, -0.88 IC, -8.54 EC, -7.04 MC)

Q1-Q2 1893: President Porfirio Diaz, preparing to get re-elected in 1894 on the wave of industrial achievements, made the development of portable power tools his personal focal priority, dedicating significant resources of the Mexican industry to assisting its construction bureaus. This has helped to remedy the problems the project was facing last year and move it toward first truly ergonomic prototypes of equipment.(Technology quest progress: 52.67%, Mexico losses: -2.46 HC, -0.68 IC, -6.6 EC, -5.44 MC)

Q3 1893: Under the supervision of President Diaz’ loyal cientificos, the portable power tools project has continued speeding up, nearing its completion by late September and promising first marketable products by Christmas sale of 1893. (Technology quest progress: 95.05%, Mexico losses: -2.46 HC, -0.68 IC, -6.6 EC, -5.44 MC)


Q4 1893: Perhaps, in an effort to woo Japanese investors, Diaz and his cientificos welcomed Atorasu-Mitsu research teams to assist Mexican concerns with developing carryable or vehicular power tools. This was somewhat criticized in Mexican scientific community, as people familiar with the project attested that its completion was practically guaranteed without any help (or, rather, interference) from Japanese colleagues, and the only result of Atorasy-Mitsu participation was that the precious patents are now not exclusively owned by Mexican businesses, hurting the nation’s competitiveness on the world market. One way or another, Porfirio Diaz might have had his own reasons to be so generous with the Tokugawa Shogunate, as a series of cultural events and exhibits planned in Japanese embassy in Mexico City could suggest. (Technology quest completed with success, Mexico, Tokugawa Shogunate adopt “Portable power tools” for no additional price, Mexico losses: -1.45 HC, -0.4 IC, -3.99 EC, -3.19 MC, Tokugawa Shogunate losses: -0.91 HC, -0.2 IC, -2.25 EC, -1.72 MC)


Rural schools
Spoiler :
1892: Modernization of the Mexican society is in full swing, and it requires bigger number of educated laborers than the country can currently provide. Looking to tackle that problem, the presidential regime has started reforming rural school education across the country, concentrating primarily on its densely-populated heartland. So far, the reform has been a disappointment, though, with the presidential commission complaining about the lack of funds and dedicated magistrates to produce meaningful results. The nation still lacks everything, from elementary school teachers to supplies to infrastructure that could help village children from some remote areas to reach their schools. If the nation wants to see progress, more administrative resources need to be engaged. (Regional quest progress: -0.67%, Mexico losses: -3.15 HC, -4.42 IC, -6.4 EC, -0.98 MC)

Q1-Q2 1893: Hoping to finally set the education reform moving, Mexican cientificos invited North-German educators and magistrates to help review their program and identify ways to improve it. Having barely set their feet off a steamer, horrified North-Germans immediately found a number of major gaps in the Mexican rural education scheme, including a rift that existed between schools and universities. After pedantically reviewing the system of public education, the North-German advisers helped to set the program on the right footing, and the Mexican went on obediently following their instructions, pushing the reform closer to completion. (Regional quest progress: 65.88%, Mexico losses: -2.36 HC, -3.31 IC, -4.8 EC, -0.73 MC, North German Federation losses: -0.72 HC, -1.48 IC, -1.93 EC, -0.54 MC)

Q3 1893: As North-German cadres assisting Mexico with its education reform were pulled back perhaps driven by a significant change in priorities for the North German Federation, the United States of Mexico chose to double down on their reforms in the only way they knew how. Advisory recommendations of North-German specialists were abandoned, and the requirements gap between school and university education remained glaring. However, the sheer administrative energy channelled into the reform has helped to push it ever closer to completion. (Regional quest progress: 93.02%, Mexico losses: -3.35 HC, -4.69 IC, -6.8 EC, -1.04 MC)


Q4 1893: Reforms of rural school education in core regions of the country have concluded in the late 1893 with promotion of a system that was somewhat flawed, but still incredibly progressive by Mexican standards, giving thousands of rural children access to at least some basic world knowledge and literacy. Sadly, the issues earlier identified by Mexican and foreign advisers were never addressed, and the national education board still acts on an assumption that a promising student who showed good skills at reading, writing, and arithmetics already deserves a scholarship to a High or Technical school. Despite these flaws, the reform is expected to greatly benefit Mexico’s core provinces. As a side effect, North-German academic and educational influence from early days of the reform remained a factor in Mexican society, culture, and politics. (Regional quest completed with success, region Mexico gains +15 IC, +5 EC, Regional Growth Trend +0.25%, North German Federation gains +0.75% Regional Influence, Mexico loses -0.75% Regional Influence, region Mesoamerica gains Regional Growth Trend +0.25%, North German Federation gains +0.5% Regional Influence, Mexico loses -0.5% Regional Influence, Mexico losses: -2.96 HC, -4.14 IC, -6 EC, -0.92 MC)


Opportunities and Prosperity
Q4 1893: Growth of Mexican welfare programs under progressive presidency of Porfirio Diaz has drawn a lot of support to more localized, region-based welfare models, designed to supplement country-wide policies. Two of such proposals are branded as Oportunidades (“Opportunities”) and Prospera (“Thrive”) and are proposed to be applied to all states of Central Mexico. Both aim to provide conditional cash transfers to so-called “rights holders,” or people responsible for health and consumption decisions in poor families, usually mothers. Differences lie in the benefit distribution approach: Oportunidades is based on a strict, centralized top-down model, with all administrative decisions made by the federal government (which may streamline decision-making, but could also hurt precision of targeting specific population segments), while Prospera aims to give municipal authorities big power in defining conditional cash transfer recipients and specific, regional benefit packages (which, of course, allows to tailor more beneficial decisions, but also slows them down and opens gates for regional corruption). Needless to say, both programs look highly advanced even by world standards, and the nation’s leadership should wisely consider its options.


Green-water navy
Q4 1893: As navies all around the globe gain plenty of experience from recent naval actions, theory naval organization develops as well. This winter, a revision of Mexico’s naval doctrine was announced, reflecting the nation’s position of a regional great power, capable of holding its own even in contest with global players. Nicknamed by military analysts the doctrine of "green-power navy,” it is based on the creation of a naval force that is designed to operate in its nation's littoral zones and has the competency to operate in the open oceans of its surrounding region. For smaller nations, it may become a well-balanced solution for defining a pragmatic naval strategy, while for large navies, it could help define a section of the fleet that functions as a connection between the high seas fleet and shore protection forces. (Technology quest completed with success, Mexico adopts “Green-water navy” for no additional cost, Mexico losses: -1.89 HC, -1.6 IC, -3.68 EC, -5.1 MC)



Mesoamerica
Spoiler :
Fast-developing region suffering from low literacy levels, but possessing large agricultural potential.


South Mexican railways
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: The success of the Central Mexican integrated railway network suggested a natural extension of that infrastructure project southward, into the forested hills of Mesoamerica. That construction promises to be more challenging due to a complicated landscape, sharply defined rain seasons, and much more sensitive tribal and class divisions (which could impact land requisition and work conditions in construction camps). In order to cut down on costs, some cientificos propose to President Diaz that a conservative, low-scope project is implemented, connecting only most crucial population centers to Mexico’s heartland. More ambitious presidential advisers, meanwhile, insist that the new infrastructure project should be just as well funded as the Central Mexican railway network, thus helping to integrate Mesoamerican states into the Mexican nation and finally starting to solve regional wealth disparity. Either way, easing up access to Mesoamerican tobacco, sugarcane, cauchuck, and other agricultural goods is seen as a result worthy of heavily investing into.


Bloody divinity
Spoiler :
1890: In Mesoamerica, native folk religion has existed back to back to the most pious Catholicism for centuries. However, as estrangement grows among ethnicities of Aztec, Zapotec, and Mayan descent, old religious cults seem to be rising back from their graves. Many rural communities seem to be returning to celebrating their ancient religion in the most pure, authentic way. And that way, of course, involves human sacrifices to teotls (gods or aspects of divinity). Most of sacrifice victims are volunteers (no wonder, given the poor life conditions in the region), but in some unproven cases they were kidnapped local magistrates who went too far at investigating the cults. In any way, the Roman Catholic Church demands that the President does something about these abominable practices.

1891: Mexican government dispatched its agents and detectives to investigate rumors of sacrifices and an end to them. At the same time, worshipping of teotls was allowed to continue, as long as it didn’t involve violation of people’s right, a move that enraged Roman Catholic clergy and ensured that local priests provided little help to the investigators. (Regional quest progress: 26.57%, Mexico losses: -0.53 HC, -0.74 IC, -1.08 EC, -0.16 MC)



Peons or slaves
Spoiler :
1890: Most of Mesoamerican economy is agricultural, with majority of means of production belonging to rich owners of large personal estates, or haciendas. The rest of the peasantry owns only small lots of land, usually of too poor of a quality to provide anything but basic subsistence, especially without an easy access to modern mechanical tools. This drives thousands of peasants into the state of debt peonage (known as peonaje) in haciendas. There they stay for the most of their lives, hoping to pass what little personal belongings they have to the next generation of their family, at best. Even outside of basic human decency, there’s plenty of issues with that. The widening gap between the rich and the poor is generating a lot of social contempt and leftist sympathy among the peasant. Besides, debt peons contribute very little to the society and cannot even be used as a cheap labor force for manufacturing effort, since they’re pretty much tied to the land they help cultivate.

1891: The Mexican government started a serfdom reform, but so far its aspects remain very vague, impacting both its public perception and administrative execution. (Regional quest progress: 7.4%, Mexico losses: -1.68 HC, -2.36 IC, -3.41 EC, -0.52 MC)


Central America
Spoiler :
Booming region, potentially crucial for Atlantic-Pacific trade, trying to overcome legacy of prolonged economic stagnation.

Canal is a canal is a canal
Spoiler :
1890: In 1876, Imperial France has already attempted to build a canal in Gran-Colombian Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. That bold project, however, failed when the Atlantic War siphoned all resources directed to that gian infrastructure project, and now the Panama Canal is nothing but a series of unfinished excavation works in Centroamerica jungles. Now that the world in this hemisphere is not engulfed in flames of war anymore, people are back to discussing the benefits of connecting two oceans by a canal. One project merely suggests continuing the work started by Imperial French engineers, while another one suggests starting a new canal further up north, connecting Punta Gorda and Brito through the Lake Nicaragua. Of course, both efforts would require the governments of, accordingly, Gran Colombia and Centroamerican Federation to agree to hosting such projects on their territory, as well as, potentially, a sale of adjacent lands.

1891: Most recent successful dynastic marriage made the monarchy of Gran Colombia very receptive of Portobrazilian offer to build the Panama Canal in exchange for indefinite return of investments, combined with a 10-year lease of lands adjacent to the canal, and full protection of assets. The work has started at full possible speed, but progresses slowly, mostly due to the harsh climate, epidemic disease, and large task at hand. (Regional quest progress: 2.95%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -2.79 HC, -0.62 IC, -6.65 EC, -6.15 MC)


Q4 1893: While people of Gran Colombia were fighting for their freedom, one of the members of the Monroe Conference was happy to use that chaos for development of a troubled Panama Canal. Confederate construction firms were dispatched to a liberal stronghold of Panama, along with lobbying groups, informal ambassadors, and security teams provided by the CSA. The hope was to use the temporary confusion in Gran-Colombian politics to ship in Confederate heavy machinery and Japanese migrant workers with a permission of the local liberal governor and thus finally start moving the prospective canal construction forward. However, as the situation in Gran Colombia escalated to the state of civil war, the entire endeavor became compromised. Miraculously, Confederate negotiators managed to retain somewhat lukewarm relationship with the Panama governor and then, later, with the Portobrazilian marine corps general who took control of the region as a part of the Twin Crowns’ counterinsurgency operation. Somehow, Dixie engineers even managed to achieve some progress in the construction, despite the chaos and war that surrounded them, but the managers tasked with keeping the construction going insist that they have no confidence in security of Confederate assets as long as the war goes on and diplomatic gap between the CSA and Portugal-Brazil widens. (Regional quest progress: 17.3%, Confederate States of America losses: -3.56 HC, -3.13 IC, -8.62 EC, -4.84 MC)



Fourteen families
Spoiler :
1891: Historically, El Salvador’s regional economy was controlled by fourteen rich families that owned the majority of fincas (coffee plantations) and eventually diversified their businesses, becoming powerful financiers and politicians. The Centroamerican Revolution put an end to the reign of oligarchy across the land, but El Salvador became an unlikely exception, because its "las catorce families” (the Fourteen Families) managed to get a deal out of their rebellious workers. The families agreed to a set of major compromises with the peasants, improving work conditions and pay, and also allowing peasant leaders to join the families’ ranks through politically motivated intermarriage. That helped keep the union leaders’ demands relatively low, while the union leaders themselves went an extra mile to calm down their base and rebrand the Fourteen Families as no longer the oppressors and exploiters, but friends and protectors of the workers (it also helped that the oligarchs made sure to not show off their wealth in front of the people, like they used to). That state of compromise between the capitalist survivors and their workers remains to be a problem in the eyes of the Federation’s leadership, but the Centroamerican Constitution limits their ability to intervene into regional self-rule. It remains to be seen if this fragile pact between the ruling oligarchy and appeased proletariat will last.


Q4 1893: After years of an awkward status-quo, the Fourteen Families of El Salvador started suddenly receiving plenty of financial and material assistance from an unknown foreign source. Lacking expertise in modern-day espionage and counterintelligence, the Centroamerican police failed to notice this spike in banking transactions and negotiations with foreign actors until it was too late. In late November of 1893, barely a few weeks after neighboring Gran Colombia descended into the abyss of civil war, las catorce families of El Salvador officially declared that they wish to heavily renegotiate their position in the political structure of the Centroamerican Federation. When some of local workers’ unions and particularly patriotic police officers attempted to intervene and protest the chameleon oligarchs’ decisions, they were bloodily cracked down upon by a force of suspiciously well-trained and well-equipped international mercenaries, gathered by the Fourteen Families over a strangely short period of time. Now, it appears, the entire Federation of Central America is in a state of nervous standoff with its rogue region of El Salvador. (Regional quest complete with full failure, region Central America gains Regional Growth Trend -0.25%, ??? gains +14.75% Regional Influence, Centroamerican Federation loses -14.75% Regional Influence, ??? losses: -2.?? HC, -2.7? IC, -4.4? EC, -0.8? MC)


Greater Republic of Central America
Q4 1893: As ideologically agnostic the Fourteen Families of El Salvador are, their open demarche against the Centroamerican Federation’s authorities has exposed the weaknesses of that collectivist state and crystallized an anti-leftist opposition. Uneducated and lacking political consciousness, Centroamerican Mestizo peasants often lack the initiative and will to oppose various resurgent reactionary elements, unless their direct day-to-day interests openly conflict with them. In other words, large portion of the country suddenly showed quite a lot of indifference to the Fourteen Families’ defiance of the central authority and the semi-militant standout that resulted from that. Now the country is left paralyzed, as the Central Committee is afraid that other regions will experience similar uprisings of old-regime reactionaries supported by foreign adventurers. This political inactivity is being viewed as a sign of fatal weakness by one of the most vocal members of the Fourteen Families, one Tomás Regalado, who has started to agitate for a destruction of the collectivist regime and installment of a so-called Greater Republic of Central America in its place.


Collective economy
Spoiler :
1890: Historically, the lands of modern Centroamerican Federation lacked the indigenous forced labor to allow the establishment of haciendas (plantations, mines, and factories owned by aristocracy). This has shaped the local agricultural economy as an amalgam of free village communities producing, mostly, export crops. But the new type of economy proposed by the Centroamerican Planning Bureau requires more sophisticated forms of organized labor, and Centroamerican citizens have a trouble grasping that concept, especially in the more remote parts of the country. However, the government is exploring its ways to move away from small-time agricultural production to modern, collective agriculture and industrial production.


 
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Update 5: October 1, 1893 - December 31, 1893

Gran Colombia

Spoiler :
Slowly-developing region suffering from corruption and obsolete socio-economic institutions.


Resguardo wars
Spoiler :
1892: Multiple distinct nations of Amerindian (pre-Columbian Native American) people exist in the region, vast majority of them residing in reservation-like areas known as resguardos. Most of such resguardos occupy undeveloped, hard-to-reach lowland and highland locations deep off the coast, making them hardly an attractive land to own. However, the recent “Plato o Plomo” deal between the capos and Portobrazilian interventionists has made distant patches of land hidden in the wilderness an attractive investment for coca plantation owners that wish to stay away from the eye of Gran-Colombian customs police or from their Portobrazilian competitors. This has pushed the two groups into a non-stop low-key warfare across the jungles, with narcoparamilitary squads and Amerindian bands clashing for control of the glades.



No one writes to the colonel
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Corruption and collaboration with Portobrazilians have split Gran-Colombian military and police officers almost equally into two groups: those who accept bribes and live luxurious lifestyle deprived of any professional competence, and those who prefer to see their nation free and independent, thus refusing to succumb to endemic corruption and viewing their skill as their only true possession. A personification of the latter case has recently appeared in the nation’s newspapers and became a hot topic. An explosive article described the life of a colonel, a once heroic Diaz follower in his civil war victories and conquests, who now is reduced to living alone, writing letters to the government, asking for a meager pension promised to him some fifteen years earlier. A sympathetic character, the colonel also appears to be vehemently critical of the current state of national affairs, reserving nothing but distaste for the new Portobrazilian overlords and their “lap generals” who betrayed their own fatherland. That case wouldn’t catch fire in the press, had it not been so stereotypical for contemporary Gran Colombia. The poor-but-honest officers are idealized by the people and are seen as the only incorruptible carriers of the nation’s hope, now that the “lead capos” are in the hiding for the sake of self-preservation, the Jesuit Order is turning into a clique of tax collectors and clerks, and the Social And Political Front makes deals with the devil for the sake of its far-reaching strategic goals. Some experts argue that it’s merely a matter of time before this new caste of patriotic outcasts trained for war turns to troublemaking, in one form or another.


Q4 1893: Gran Colombia is notorious for being a chessboard of neighboring great powers, often becoming a scene of their clandestine competition at Gran-Colombian people's expense. Barely a year ago, a so-called Grand Deal between Portugal-Brazil, Union of North America, and Mexico has averted a seemingly inevitable civil conflict by letting all parties have some influence in various parts of the Gran-Colombian society. Since then, a shaky compromise has existed, buying more time for all signatories to discern their Gran-Colombian strategy moving forward, while simultaneously giving local population a short break from escalating social tensions. This lull, however, didn't stop or slow down degeneration of social institutions and growing partisanship in all aspects of social and economic life in the country. On December 8th 1893, this blister of social tensions burst. As the country celebrated the Immaculate Conception Day, progressive army officers in Bogota army barracks started a mutiny, quickly bringing majority of soldiers to their side. Their supervisors failed to react to that event effectively, as many of them enjoyed time with their family at suburban villas bought with Portobrazilian money, and quite a few of them were, in fact, visiting Brazil on a "qualification improvement tour" of local casinos and samba dance clubs. Soon, vast majority of Gran-Colombian regiments and four out of five ships of the nation's navy followed the case, acting synchronously and with a suspicious level of organization. On the second day of the mutiny, the Social And Political Front, using its majority in the national parliament, announced its State Emergency Act, reaching out to all people of Gran Colombia to forget their old disagreements and unite against Portobrazilian dictate, which almost immediately was followed by a rise of Civil Guards across all major cities. In the face of the revolution, only the Jesuit Order, few disorganized army elements, and, not surprisingly, Twin Crowns-aligned cocaine-trading syndicates have chosen to remain on the "toddler queen" Madalena's side. Despite some assassination attempts of SaPF leadership by narcomilitia members, the Republican coalition remained strong, and the state apparatus and the army quickly started to purge themselves from any collaborators, mostly via peaceful lustration. Surprisingly, even moderate conservatives and liberals supported that move and volunteered to join the Republican forces and administration, given that they have some say in the constitutional convention after the country’s independence is secured. This patriotic fervor has created waves of popular support, and public enthusiasm has brought thousands of people to joining the army or participating in various forms of civic activities. Still, as Portobrazilian reinforcements continue to arrive from all across the globe, it becomes obvious to many that the national independence will not be easily gained, if gained at all. Meanwhile, members of the Monroe Conference are no longer bothering to hide that it’s their support that has been keeping Gran-Colombian patriotic movement alive through all these months. (Regional quest completed with mixed results, region Gran Colombia gains +15 HC, +10 IC, -5 EC, Regional Growth Fluctuation -0.25%, Gran Colombia gains +18.75% Regional Influence, Portugal-Brazil loses -18.75% Regional Influence, Portugal-Brazil losses: -21.76 HC, -29.29 IC, -46.86 EC, -9.04 MC, Mexico losses: -3.98 HC, -5.58 IC, -8.08 EC, -1.24 MC, Union of North America losses: -2.41 HC, -4.06 IC, -5.85 EC, -1.85 MC)


Moon roads go past customs houses
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: A Portobrazilian decision to make an export tax on cocaine de-facto non-enforceable has finally led to what some conservative economists were afraid of. While the illegal smuggling activity has diminished, the nation is now experiencing severe shortages of currency, even despite being one of the leading coca powder producers in the world. The Minister of Finances is worried that the imbalances of the budget are very serious, and the damage done to the local economies is just as high, since the “silver capos” prefer to pocket most of the money they make, paying rural workers virtually peanuts. That “robber capitalism” in the capos’ eyes is justified, since it’s the only way they could compete with Jesuit Order businesses that don’t pay taxes at all. Now it’s up to Portugal-Brazil (or any interested power) to try to disentangle the Gordian knot of Gran-Colombian economy.


Q4 1893: Almost simultaneously with the urban patriotic rebellion, Gran-Colombian countryside also flared up into a state of revolt, with numerous economic woes of poor peasantry stacking together to form a backbone of their anti-kleptocratic and anti-clerical manifesto (especially after pro-Portobrazilian capos refused to take the rebels’ side after the latter attempted to sway their loyalty by promising tax breaks (something the Portobrazilians were already giving them as a part of a much bigger “package”)). As rural militias started to form, striking against Jesuit property and “silver capos’” camps alike, it became fairly clear that a lot of the peasant militas’ armaments, supplies, and even instructors were coming from the south, bearing clear signature of a low-key insurgency support by the United Communes of the Andes. Communal President de Luna refused to admit his nation’s involvement into the civil conflict in Gran-Colombian Ecuador and Cajamarca, but at this point Andean involvement is just too obvious to be not accepted as a straight fact. All in all, the rural rebellion has fai (Regional quest completed with failure, region Gran Colombian gains +10 HC, -5 EC, Regional Growth Fluctuation -0.25%, Gran Colombia gains +5% Regional Influence, Portugal-Brazil loses -5% Regional Influence, region North Andes Region: Gran Colombia gains +5% Regional Influence, Portugal-Brazil loses -5% Regional Influence, Communes of the Andes losses: -2.79 HC, -3.35 IC, -5.93 EC, -1.62 MC)


Tickets for service
Q4 1893: Gran Colombia’s economy was never particularly strong, but its forced union with the Twin Crowns led to even greater degeneration of the state apparatus and the military, leading to dropping of wages for state officials, officers, and soldiers. Under a brief rule of the “toddler queen” Madalena de Braganza (who was lucky to be staying with her mother in Sao Paolo when the rebellion started), almost the only way for a state servant to be paid well was to dutifully collaborate with the Portobrazilians in everything, sometimes leading to almost unbelievable wealth gaps between colleagues and brothers-in-arms. Now that the Republic of Gran Colombia has officially separated itself from the Portugal-Brazil-backed monarchy, it’s treasury needs to be filled anew before any significant government obligations are fulfilled. One of the most dire signs of that state of limbo is the fact that soldiers newly recruited for the Republican army are being offerred payment in “tickets,” which are essentially vouchers guaranteed by the Central Bank of Gran Colombia to be redeemable after the war. For now, Republican support among the population (at least, its politically active part) is still high, meaning that wageless soldiers still receive food and supplies from civilians mostly free of charge, and are willing to sacrifice their wages for the betterment of the Republic. However, experts in counterinsurgency point out that in countries with such level of institutional decay and unformed national mentality such early enthusiasm may quickly switch for the “business as usual” attitude quite sharply, so the Republic should better find a way to pay its servants and soldiers with something better than “tickets.”


Father General strikes back
Q4 1893: Jesuit Order has suffered quite a lot of losses to peasant proletarian rebel forces in the first months of the War of Independence, mostly in assets, but at times in lives of its brethren. Most of the cases of anti-Jesuit persecution and, on a few cases, mass murder were committed by radical Communards and social-revolutionaries, influenced, but not directly instructed by the Andean Communes. Now, it seems like the monks have had enough. Provost-general Rafael Sosa, also known as Father General, has announced that the Order will be forming a “host” of devoted Christian soldiers to put an end to Communard depravity. Skirmishes between the Jesuit hosts and Communard partisans are starting to take place across the country outback, as hostilities escalate. Bad blood is being accumulated on both sides, and some more radical figures are starting to rise in both camps (for now, disavowed by their supreme leaders). Rumors spread that some particularly rabid anti-Communard priests are forming special kill squads consisting of “repentant narcos,” who mix their traditional criminal brutality with zealous righteousness.



North Andes Region
Spoiler :
Booming region overcoming years of economic neglect and weak infrastructure.

Land-use permits
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: Land-use permits are a new legal document that earlier in the year helped prevent land speculation at the height of the Transandean Railway Network construction. Essentially, the permits and an associated law established that any land owning citizen or commune could be stripped of their right to that land by the local Citizens’ Council if the user of the land did not begin “intended and meaningful work” upon the land within 30 days of obtaining the right to use it. While being the most robust method of land nationalization, this law was written in a hurry and has left a trail of loopholes and anecdotal, counterproductive judicial rulings. Some citizens clearly became victims of personal vendettas by chairmen of their respective Citizens’ Councils, while a few communes lost agriculturally valuable fields just because they were using obsolete or too advanced crop rotation systems that left some patches of land formaly “not used” for more than thirty days. As for the state, it has found itself in unintended possession of some low-value lands all across the nation. Now it is up to the Communal President (or any of his enemies) how to use this bureaucratic chaos for better or for worse.


Guano farmers
Spoiler :
1890: The world is experiencing a population boom, which leads to a skyrocketing demand on agricultural production. This, in turn, makes use of fertilizers an indispensable part of an agricultural cycle. One of such fertilizers is guano, dry excrement of seals, seabirds, and cave-dwelling bats found in big quantities all across Peru. Besides boosting agricultural output of local village communes, guano makes a great export good, being much cheaper than artificially made fertilizers. However, many Andean experts predict a drop in guano demand quite soon, because of the growth of artificial fertilizer industry across the world. While the prices are still good, these experts suggest investing money into something more lasting.



Airships of the Andes and the Amazon (North)
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Fascination with airships doesn’t seem to be contained to the CSA alone. The United Communes have announced their own attempt to establish a permanent, collectively-owned airship transportation company, known as the Airships of the Andes and the Amazon (Aeronaves de los Andes y el Amazonas, or simply AAA). Zeppelinariums (or rather much humbler versions of the grand airship hangars of the CSA) were built in the lands the government has semi-accidentally inherited from its misguided introduction of land-use permits, with army units being used to provide manual labor for the construction efforts in a typical Communard fashion. Efforts were also put into encouraging local communes to subsidize community-owned airships, although that particular drive saw very few successful requisitions, mostly because mountain peasants and herders had a hard time wrapping their heads around the usefulness of big flying bags filled with gas and hot air (after all, trains already provide enough long distance transportations). Yet, despite a few hiccups, the northern branch of the AAA network was almost completed in mere months, in stark contrast to the recently finished railway struggle. (Regional quest progress: 84.54%, Communes of the Andes: -4.5 HC, -1.88 IC, -5.4 EC, -2.65 MC)


Q4 1893: Central planners of the United Communes showed good estimation skill, precisely scoping the final push for completion of the AAA’s northern branch, so that it all of its zeppelinariums could open their hangar doors by Christmas, letting some excited (and relatively well-off) citizens visit their relatives’ families for the holidays and exchange holiday postcards depicting airships flying over mountain peaks. (Regional quest completed with success, region North Andes Region gains +5 HC, +15 EC, +5 MC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +1.5%, Communes of the Andes losses: -3.63 HC, -0.78 IC, -3.88 EC, -2.52 MC)


Legacy of Royal Proclamations
Q4 1893: Peru-Ecuadoran territorial dispute over territories located north and east of the Maranon and Napo rivers is one of the oldest running international conflicts in the Western Hemisphere. It stems from so-called Real Cedulas (Royal Proclamations) issued by Spain, quite loosely defining borders between various viceroyalties in South America, making it easy for each country to read it whichever way they wished. With the conquest of Ecuador by young General Diaz, the caudillo and first monarch of Gran Colombia, and with absorption of Peru into the United Communes of the Andes, the conflict didn’t dissipate, but rather changed how it manifests. For years, it was considered that the troubled Communes had no realistic way to challenge Gran-Colombian power in the region, erasing their claims de-facto if not de-jure. However, in recent years the situation flipped completely, and now calls are being made by many peasant communities of south-eastern Ecuador to Andean President de Luna, asking him to allow them to join the United Communes. Diplomatic experts warned the Andean leader that such move would require a lot of diplomatic investments, bringing all local leaders on board, while simultaneously not angering either the Republic of Gran Colombia or the Twin Crowns of Portugal-Brazil. Besides, they point out that such pleas are made not out of Pan-Andean sentiment, but due to a desperate hope by the villagers to be protected from collaborationist pro-Jesuit bandits, who ravage the countryside and may spread havoc across Andean river valleys further south if the territories of Tumbes, Jaen, and Maynas get included into the United Communes or simply receive their protection.


Heliographic networks
Spoiler :
1892: The idea to use light-reflecting mirrors to pass encoded signals over big distances originated in the Ottoman army, but was never used on a scale bigger than inter-platoon communication in the field. Civilian government of the Sublime Porte was previously unimpressed by the project proposed by its retired military engineer to create a permanent heliographic network across the nation, so the inventor took it elsewhere. This year, the Andean government saw some value in the proposal, recognising its value in the largely mountainous nation, divided by deep valleys and rugged terrain, yet almost entirely located above the elevation level that could hamper effective heliographic exchange due to weather conditions. Essentially, plans are made to build fast-speed communication networks that use heliographs, wireless solar telegraphic devices that signal by flashes of sunlight (generally using Morse code) reflected by a mirror. However, the young nation was short of resources to start working on the new project, so the financing was promised to start in the upcoming year, according to the plan.

Q1-Q2 1893: Development of the first nation-wide heliographic network in the world has started this year, but the progress was slow, since Andean engineers were struggling to find a reliable method of converting heliographic information into analogue messages without mass use of human labor for round-the-clock “light sighting.” Once more resources are dedicated to the research, it may be able to progress faster. (Technology quest progress: 8.07%, Communes of the Andes losses: -3.31 HC, -0.75 IC, -6.98 EC, -4.78 MC)





South Andes Region
Spoiler :
Booming region recovering from civil war and decades of neglect and corruption.

Campesino communes
Spoiler :
1890: Andean peasants, campesino, have a long history of resisting debt peonage on local haciendas (nobility-owned mining or agricultural holdings). With the formation of the United Communes, many of these village communities formed quickly and naturally into grassroot countryside municipalities that rejected central authorities’ attempts to urbanize and industrialize the entire nation. Besides, unlike French communes, the campesino communes of the Andes have very well-defined natural borders (usually, limited by mountain ranges), which allows introduction of intercommunal tariffs designed to protect local farmers from competition. On the one hand, it does make lives of Bolivian campesino Communards stable and quiet. On the other hand, the nation’s leadership is afraid that this practice may spread throughout the country, hindering its development.



Civilista Party
Spoiler :
1892: Unlike the Paris Commune and the French Grand Revolution, the popular coup that established Communard regime in what used to be the Peru-Bolivian Confederation was not very bloody and wasn’t followed by a sweeping wave of repressions, akin to the ones that took place in France. As a result, a good number of rich merchants, planters, and businesspeople of the old Peru-Bolivian society had never truly lost their fortune, but rather retired from leading social roles and chose to save their energy and resources for better times. Now that it becomes obvious that the Communard regime is here to stay, these people try to re-enter the political stage and organize into a political faction within the framework of the communal, radical-leftist state. Calling themselves the Civilista, they argue for a more capital-friendly set of policies, of course with preservation of communal organization and welfare state. Their vision of the future of the Andean society has been coined the “Aristocratic Commune,” signifying the fact that the political leadership, as the Civilista see it, should be reserved for a well-educated and financially independent elite of the society, a role that they hope to at least partially fill.



Melgarejismo legacy
Spoiler :
1891: Mariano Malgarejo was an infamous ruler of Peru-Bolivian Confederation in the 1860-70s. One of his most notorious policies was one of cruel discrimination against South American Indians in favor of pureblood Spanish or mixed-blood Meztico population. Now that a new authority controls Bolivia, the grudges of the old should be forgotten… But people have different ideas. A series of disputes between indigenous rural communes and urban Hispanic guilds has led to riots and, in a few cases, bloodshed. Until these disputes are resolved, it’s unlikely the Bolivian society will truly prosper.



Airships of the Andes and the Amazon (South)
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: The all-state Andean effort to connect various mountain areas and remote valleys via airship transit in the south of the country mirrored that in the north. The progress was equally good, but the use of army units for providing labor for the public works was much less successful, partially owing to the fact that Bolivia was in the center of a major fortification effort, creating certain logistical difficulties with quartering of such number of troops. (Regional quest progress: 77.29%, Communes of the Andes losses: -4.55 HC, -1.88 IC, -4.69 EC, -2.12 MC)


Q4 1893: Unlike in the northern communes, South Peruvian and Bolivian airship collectives had a more entrepreneurial lean in their work, meaning that by the end of the year 1893 the southern line of AAA featured much more ergonomic airships and generally better service quality, as well as more efficient cargo delivery timelines. Yet, just like in the north, the airship network did miracles for improving both personal travel and small-business commerce between more savvy agricultural and craftsmanship collectives. (Regional quest completed with success, region South Andes Region gains +5 HC, +5 IC, +15 EC, +5 MC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +2.25%, Communes of the Andes losses: -1.77 HC, -0.4 IC, -4.15 EC, -2.98 MC)


Bolivian fortifications
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Lacking access to a surplus of heavy artillery and military grade cement, the Andean Communal army has started a major fortification program, looking to establish easily constructed, low-maintenance strongpoints dotting mountain peaks and valleys of Bolivia and South Peru. The idea was quite sane, considering all logistical difficulties construction and garrisoning of a proper modern bunker fortress would require in high mountains. The construction effort has just begun, but Andean engineers hope to finish all work by the end of the year. (Regional quest progress: 55.55%, Communes of the Andes losses: -8.33 HC, -1.74 IC, -3.72 EC, -1.79 MC)


Q4 1893: Andean investment into a southern fortification belt was completed this year with success, safeguarding the collectivist nation from its imperialist neighbors in the region most suitable for attacks. (Regional quest completed with success, Troops defending in region North Andes Region gain +1 CR for defending against enemies attacking from region La-Plata, Coastal Brazil, Communes of the Andes losses: -8.33 HC, -1.74 IC, -3.77 EC, -1.84 MC)



Amazon Region
Spoiler :
Fast-developing region with big infrastructure challenges, but a lot of unexplored resource extraction potential.

Bandeirantes’ fortune
Spoiler :
1890: Recent growth of industrial exploitation of the Brazilian rainforest region has led to resurrection of Bandeirantes (lit. “bannermen”), professional explorers, fortune hunters, and slave raiders. Hired by nobility-owned corporations or by the Royal Crown itself, these gun-slinging mercenaries briskly equip ad-hoc expeditions deep into the deadly jungles of the Amazon valley, sometimes simply mapping the route for better prepared expeditions to follow up. More often, however, their missions border illegal or even barbaric, ranging from capture of exotic animals for the black market to recovering industrial equipment lost in geologic exploration to genocide of local native tribes that display too much territorial pride in attempts to protect their lands from resource exploitation.



New India
Spoiler :
1890: Spooked by the scope of the Great Caribbean Slave Rebellion, British colonial authorities in Guyana chose to replace unreliable Afro-Guyanese labor with indentured workers recruited and brought in from India by paid local agents known as arkatis in North India and maistris in South India. However, it appears that the agents did their job a little bit too well (or, maybe, the number of people wishing to escape suppressive British policies in India was a bit too high). Now, British Gayana and even parts of the neighboring Dutch colony are populated primarily by Indians of Telugu and Tamil origin, who outnumber Europeans five to one. The region is being transformed by this cultural shift, and some observers suggest that a new, mixed Indian ethnicity is fusing in Anglo-Dutch Gayana.



Dancers or fighters
Spoiler :
1890: Cabanagem was a rebellion of black or mulatto slaves in Northern Brazil that occurred in the first half of the 19th century. Since it was put down, slave population in this region has been very closely supervised by the authorities, which make sure that people of color don’t stash weapons sharper than a fork and don’t practice any fighting skills. Now, however, the line begins to blur, because many slaves are starting to practice an acrobatic dance known as capoeira that looks suspiciously like some form of a combat. Facing this uncertainty and surrounded by well-trained, athletic people, gendarmes choose to look the other way. Meanwhile, in the slums of Bahia towns, these dance- and battle-hardened martial artists, known as capoeiristas, are starting to form criminal gangs that can rival those of Italian mafioso.



Escape from the Cape
Spoiler :
Q1-Q2 1893: Strange duality continues existing in relationships between the Free Boer Republic and the Twin Crowns of Portugal-Brazil. Despite all diplomatic setbacks between the two nations, they continue exchanging gestures of goodwill or, at the very least, cooperate on the issues that one of them continues generating. This year, Portobrazilian navy volunteered to assist with semi-forced evacuation of English refugees from the Cape to Brazil. This royally sanctioned effort by the Portobrazilian merchant marine indeed helped many refugees escape the horrors of Kaapstadt, although some number of survivors still wait their steamer in Capetown. Many chose to settled down and stay in Manaus, while others took tickets to Great Britain (if they could afford them) or to Portobrazilian Patagonia (if they couldn’t), where English is still the dominant language of day-to-day life. (Regional quest progress: 84%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -1.19 HC, -0.76 IC, -1.56 EC, -2.72 MC)



People from the clouds
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: While the airship network over the Andes was still being established, some airships started being leased to eastern Peruan communes that wished to establish more or less permanent trade routes with peoples of Portobrazilian Amazonia. Logger villages and bandeirantes camps, as well as some semi-legal quilombos were happy to see Peruan air traders as the most responsive source of basic goods that could at time be scarce in the depth of the Amazon basin. In addition, the dirigibles turned out to be great reconnaissance and exploration tools (despite not being intended for that use by the Andeans). Several previously undiscovered primitive tribes were contacted thanks to accidental detours made by a few (un)lucky airship captains. While one of the trade crews suffered losses to poisoned arrows of an overly territorial tribe, other discoveries were much more peaceful and resulted in barter exchange so lucrative it was described as fooling a child. Finally, in one instance, an airship crew descending from a gondola was greeted as living gods for awe-struck tribals, leading to an awkward, but lasting tie between the trade ship captain and tribe that now reveres him as a cloud spirit. It remains to be seen what good can come out of it, but right now it seems like the Andeans have discovered a rather successful way to surpass seemingly unsolvable logistical challenges presented by the Amazonian rainforest. (Regional quest progress: 81.71%, Communes of the Andes losses: -0.98 HC, -1.43 IC, -2.02 EC, -0.28 MC)


Q4 1893: Andean discovery of previously uncontacted native Amazonian tribes defined the main focus of the United Communes’ trade outreach into the Amazonia. They attempted (often with success) to keep their reputation of celestial beings among the locals, while trading with them and, most importantly, gradually introducing their leaders to modern firearms, hoping to influence their progress and development of more resilient power structures. On the one hand, it may help to prepare such tribes for an inevitable encounter with the Andean rivals of Portugal-Brazil. On the other hand, this movement was criticized at home both for exploitation of the divine impression the locals had of Andean traders, as well as for the fact that trade with such tribes is a rather poor business choice, compared to trade with mining and lumberjack Brazilian communities. Still, the effort was successful at tying several tribes across the vast region to the Andean Communes. (Regional quest completed with success, region Amazon Region gains +5 HC, +5 EC, Regional Growth Fluctuation +0.25%, Communes of the Andes gains +3.5% Regional Influence, Portugal-Brazil loses -3.5% Regional Influence, Communes of the Andes losses: -1.57 HC, -1.56 IC, -3.4 EC, -1.27 MC)




Coastal Brazil
Spoiler :
Fast-developing center of South-American immigration, with big trade, economic, and manufacturing potential in upcoming years.


Quilombos and their dwellers
Spoiler :
1890: Brazil has a long history of colonial slavery, and the very landscape of this land offers a lot of options for runaway slaves to escape their owners. Most notable of them are quilombos, remote settlements founded by runaway slaves in distant, badly explored territories deeper inland. While some royal advisers insist that these communities are criminal in nature and need to be cracked down upon (and the runaway “property” has to be returned to their masters), others point out that quilombo dwellers could be a great tool in development of remote parts of Brazil. Besides, some sort of amnesty to quilombo settlers could go a long way in integrating them into the large Portobrazilian identity and making them serve the Braganza dynasty in one form or another. That, of course, is likely to enrage coastal plantation owners, so it remains to be seen what solution the Twin Crowns will choose.


Q4 1893: To say that Empress Isabel’s Emancipation Decree was received by quilombo dwellers with jubilation would be an understatement. However, it was followed by a quick realization that old habits die hard, meaning that Portobrazilian plantation owners and, in general, less educated whites still viewed freed slaves as a lower social caste. Besides, some of the quilombo settlers found themselves at odds with the law, because, while their escape from their past owners was forgiven, other crimes committed during that time weren’t. Still, despite all of these setbacks, the Portobrazilian government’s stance was firmly inclusive and humane, making great leaps toward integration of former slaves and their descendants into the Portobrazilian society. Quilombos are still widely regarded as hotbeds of poverty, crime, and disease, but for the first time in decades they have a chance of moving toward becoming fully recognized settlements, which residents, at least on paper, have same rights as any other subject of the Twin Crowns. (Regional quest progress: 79.93%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -2.01 HC, -0.55 IC, -5.8 EC, -4.33 MC)


Royal Haven
Spoiler :
1890: Citizens of Sao Paulo jokingly call their city the Royal Haven, because of how many members of various royal dynasties now inhabit the place. First, the entirety of the Portuguese branch of the Braganza dynasty move in there, escaping their homeland overrun by the French. And now, ex-opponent of the Portuguese king in the Atlantic War, King Carlos VII of Spain is residing with his former enemies. While the grand reunion of the Braganza dynasty into the Dual Crown has been seen as an easy and smooth transition, many political observers wonder what will be the Porto-Brazilian move in regards to their de-facto control of the Spanish king’s decisions. Meanwhile, experts in espionage point out that Portugal-Brazil may be not the only player in that grand dynastic game, as other nations may try to either manipulate King Carlos or apply more blunt means in order to push their agenda.



Keep your friends close and your enemies closer
Spoiler :
1891: In a reversal of diplomatic relations that had been rather sour between the Free Boer Republic and Portuguese crown for years, a new delegation of Afrikaan businessmen, ambassadors, and social activists has moved to the capital of Portugal-Brazil with the goal to establish closer ties not only with the monarchy, but also with any local businesses and social organizations interested in cooperating with the South-African state. Legation quarters similar to the Maghrebi town in Rio de Janeiro have been established in Sao Paulo, and Afrikaan Dutch is being often spoken in the backrooms of the parliament, where local politicians drink brandy with foreign lobbyists and important guests. However, the vast differences in political culture and mentality have so far stifled this influence effort. (Regional quest progress: 12.68%, Free Boer Republic losses: -1.98 HC, -3.22 IC, -4.49 EC, -1.10 MC)

Q3 1893: Portugal-Brazil and the Free Boer Republic’s relations have hit a new low this year, after the Twin Crowns, in the interpretation of the Boer press and the foreign office, made a full geopolitical reversal and shifted from the Anti-British Pact to being Great Britain’s neutral ally. Besides causing public dismay in South Africa, this has also led to an emigration wave of Boer expatriates from Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Many diplomats and their families are leaving Brazil, and Afrikaan diaspora, mostly consisting of businessmen and traders with investments in the East-Angolan Trading Company, is following the suit. The legation quarters haven’t been emptied yet, but local Brazilian bankers, capitalists, and entrepreneurs of less jingoistic attitude are very displeased with it. They blame the Empress and her inconsistent foreign policy for the loss of business they experience, first as a result of Maghrebi exodus, and now with the decline of the second largest foreign diaspora in Brazil. (Regional quest progress: -37.32%)



Hard work and toil, and noble lineage
Q4 1893: Recognizing their economic elites’ frustration with the nation’s erratic foreign policy, as well as attempting to placate slave-owning nobility that lost most of its “assets” with the Emancipation Decree, the Twin Crowns of Portugal-Brazil have invested into home industry. Particular emphasis (perhaps, expectedly for a global maritime power) was made on construction of wharfs, steamer engine factories, and other naval supply manufactures. Most of the new assets are planned to be passed along to major fidalgo houses of the empire, compensating them for their support of the crown in its reforms. However, what was good on paper turned out to be a badly scoped project. With Portobrazilian state enterprises seriously lacking in terms of technology, a project of such scale saw only a very humble progress, with only foundation pits being completed for some of the factories by the end of the year. (Regional quest progress: 2.52%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -3.34 HC, -0.92 IC, -9.67 EC, -7.21 MC)


Signal rockets and night fighting
Spoiler :
1892: Plantation farmers from several major homesteads have been recently scared out of their wits by what appears to be entire platoons of soldiers semi-blindly wandering into their sugarcane fields in the midst of night, desperately trying to read maps under hand-held gaslights. After a barn burned to the grown as a result of a hit by an experimental signal rocket and several farms were “assaulted” by bayonet-wielding wargamers in nightly confusion, the Twin Crown’s military secretariat had to admit it had a low-scale field exercise going on in the area, but not before promising to keep participating regiments away from the plantations. All disorder aside, it seems like Portobrazilian army continues pursuing continuous innovation, this time trying to develop tools, tactics, and personal training applied to coordinating military action at night. (Technology quest progress: 10.4%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -6.14 HC, -1.89 IC, -3.25 EC, -2.28 MC)

Q1-Q2 1893: Work on the new night fighting tactics and tools have continued throughout the first half of the year with no major changes, although the wars in Europe have persuaded the Portobrazilian military to speed up their efforts. (Technology quest progress: 20.76%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -5.94 HC, -1.84 IC, -3.04 EC, -2.2 MC)

Q3 1893: Little-by-little, Portobrazilian troops are familiarizing themselves with better ways of coordinating night attacks. By now, random assaults on rural henhouses taken for conventional adversary’s bunkers are becoming more and more rare, and only occasional forced night marches end in collision of attack columns. (Technology quest progress: 52.83%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -6.06 HC, -1.89 IC, -3.01 EC, -2.24 MC)


Q4 1893: After all of the progress made throughout the year in the field of night-time operations, the Portobrazilian military has attempted to showcase some of its newly learned techniques to the Empress’ own cousin, Duke of the Algarves. The demonstration, however, was a humiliating failure, as a cazadores regiment, equipped with flares and signal rockets, confused the lights of the Duke’s encampment for a light-marked position of a conventional adversary, surprising he highblood and his entourage with a savage bayonet charge that only miraculously didn’t lead to any death or injury. While this doctrinal development is still targeted by the Twin Crowns’ general staff, reputation of its proponents has been somewhat damage in the scandal that followed. (Technology quest progress: 48.95%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -5.39 HC, -1.68 IC, -2.71 EC, -2.03 MC)


Futebol and mass sport events
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: Historically, exercising and sports were mostly privileges of aristocracy or, at least, bourgeoisie, because the equipment cost quite a penny and, in addition, the ruling classes were always wary of mass gatherings of city rabble. Now, it seems, ever-festive Portugal-Brazil is turning this tradition around, as a British team game, known as “football” (or, as the Portobrazilians spell it, “futebol”) is winning the hearts of the commoners and outgoing gentry alike. What makes it so attractive is that it requires only a wide field with markings and a leather ball full of rubbish to play. Seeing how the new game distracts unruly have-not’s, the rich are happy to sponsor their own teams and build special stadiums for cheerful spectators. It seems like futebol is just the first of such “sports for the masses,” and Portugal-Brazil is moving to pioneer various forms of sport competitions requiring little to no costly equipment and available to the masses both in terms of participation and in terms of viewership. (Technology quest progress: 50.14%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -1.11 HC, -1.5 IC, -2.4 EC, -0.46 MC)

Q4 1893: Despite the immense popularity of futebol among quilombo settlers and urban poor, the last quarter of 1893 wasn’t particularly good for development of mass sports in Portugal-Brazil, perhaps because the Emancipation Decree captured the public mood and distracted potential players and spectators with a wave of political celebrations. Stills, some steps toward the establishment of the first professional sports league were made, and the upcoming year may see finalization of that process. (Technology quest progress: 60.93%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -1.49 HC, -2 IC, -3.2 EC, -0.62 MC)

Compressed air energy storage
Q4 1893: The Industrial Revolution has supplied humanity with plenty of engines of all sorts and sizes. What the industry has rarely seen so far is reliable ways of storing previously accumulated mechanical energy for later use. Direct-current electricity has already attempted to answer to that challenge through use of so-called electric batteries. This year, Portobrazilian fidalgo corporations have started to invest into technologies and equipment used to store heat energy generated at one time (usually, during low demand) for use at another time (during peak demand) or in a different location using compressed air. Still experimental, this technology could prove highly popular, given the popularity of steam engines across the world. (Technology quest progress: 19.18%, Portugal-Brazil losses: -2.17 HC, -0.6 IC, -6.29 EC, -4.69 MC)



La-Plata
Spoiler :
Fast-developing region with a strong agricultural backbone, but recovering from a series of wars.


Q4 1893: On his deathbed and suffering from cancer, the infamous Francisco Solano López, President and de-facto dictator of Gran Paraguay, gave his Ministry of Internal Affairs his last executive order to continue heavy investments of state capital into essentially monopolized La-Platan market. On December 17, the father of the victory in the Great Paraguayan War and person who turned it into a great power passed away, only to be succeeded by his son, Enrique Venancio López, who will lead the nation forward from now on. (Regional Growth Fluctuation +6.93%, Gran Paraguay losses: -3.95 HC, -1.01 IC, -11.3 EC, -8.15 MC)


Hot mate for my mate
Spoiler :
1890: A new caffeine-rich hot drink called mate has been recently becoming more popular than tea across the Americas, most likely caused by the trade disruptions that occurred during the Atlantic War. Produced from yerba mate plant, it’s becoming a major export product for Gran Paraguay that hosts vast majority of its plantations. Some experts suggest that the mate craze may not last if the world tensions drop and normal, pre-war Transatlantic trade returns to normal. Others suggest it won’t happen for a while (if happens at all), and Gran Paraguay should invest more efforts into expanding its yerba mate agricultural production. Some people even suggest that Gran Paraguay should use its shares of the British economy (both in the Albion and in British India) to manipulate the Empire Where Sun Never Sets into reducing its tea production, thus opening bigger markets for mate exporters. Time will tell what approach will be chosen by the President himself.



Husband hunting
Spoiler :
1890: Paraguay’s ascent to its status of major power was a glorious, but costly affair. A series of triumphal campaigns in the west, east, north, and south of the country has helped to expand the nation’s territory more than five times, but it also cost countless lives of Paraguayan men. Now it’s led to a serious demographic problem that the country is trying to resolve by importing labor from British colonies. However, it appears that Paraguayan women are looking for something other than just workers for their gardens. They’re seeking husbands and lovers, and the nation’s newspapers are awash with advertising campaigns for matchmaker agencies. Some handsome men, on the other side, have embrace a reputation of “professional grooms,” dating rich widows or prospective maidens with a simple promise to “consider a marriage.” Presidential advisors consider this development unhealthy both for public morale and for the national demographic situation.



Freedom-loving gauchos
Spoiler :
1890: Gran-Paraguayan conquest of northern Argentina and Uruguay has not been quietly accepted by the locals. While urban centers of these lands are generally well-garrisoned and thus rather orderly, the countryside remains full of anti-Paraguayan discontent. Rebellious mood is particularly widespread among the gauchos, an unruly sub-class of Cisplatin horsemen and cowboys praised in the folklore for their heroic and brave deeds. Some officers point out that fighting gauchos straightforwardly could be a hard endeavor, given their nomadic lifestyle and uncertain political loyalty. Others marvel at what an unstoppable force the Gran-Paraguayan army could become if the gauchos could join it as an irregular fighting force. For now, these dreams seem as far from reality as ever.

Q1-Q2 1893: Radical anarchist agitators seem to be stirring gaucho discontent and adding a clear social-revolutionary undertone to it. The agitators were, however, smart enough to not clash with gauchos’ individualist philosophy in their pamphlets and demagogic speeches. Gran-Paraguayan secret police, however, reacted to these activities with brutality typical for Asuncion’s militaristic regime. It may take more time and effort to sway gaucho discontent toward some open opposition against El-Presidente and his loyal “authoritarianists,” and any continuation of agitation is likely to attract all attention of Gran-Paraguayan secret police, but the first six months have shown a smallcrack in the Gran-Paraguayan monolith of a state. (Regional quest progress: 3.43%, ??? losses: -9.6?, -14.1?, -19.9?, -2.76?, Gran Paraguay losses: -6.44 HC, -8.42 IC, -14.36 EC, -3.37 MC)





Chile-Patagonia
Spoiler :
Fast-developing, but sparsely populated region with limited economic potential, but so far valuable as a maritime navigation hub.


Huaso discontent
Spoiler :
1890: Huaso are free-spirited countrymen and horse riders of Central and Southern Chile that weren’t truly engaged in the Chile-Paraguayan conflict up until they found that their lifestyle and their love for freedom are threatened. Now it appears that huaso communities across Chile are connecting into a secret underground network of freedom fighters who fight against what they consider unlawful occupation by the forces of Gran Paraguay and United Communes of the Andes. Gran-Paraguayan ambassadors have already demanded that the huaso “terrorism” is cracked down by the authorities of the Chile-Patagonian Free State. To that, Chile-Patagonian magistrates can only shrug: their libertarian laws prevent them from exercising any repressive measures against huaso communities whose guilt in supporting their northern adherents is not proven. It seems like a bigger conflict is brewing.



Justice for the white men
Spoiler :
1890: Native Mapuche tribes of Patagonia have recently been engaging in series of punitive cattle raids against white colonizers of their lands. Known as malon, these raids are being performed through mountain passes and usually target haciendas of local major landowners. The latter ones have tried to complain to the central authority in Los Lagos, but received very little support, since the government of Chile-Patagonia is too lean for any major law-enforcement effort. It seems like a civil conflict could result from this situation, unless somebody finds a way to put relationship between the natives and the colonists under control.



Gualicho demons
Spoiler :
Q3 1893: The Gualichu plateau recently explored by the Grant family and its Dixie rescuers is named after “gualicho,” otherworldly spirits of Mapuche mythology. However, Captain Grant himself insists that there is yet another meaning that his Tehuelche followers put into that word. “Gualicho demons” is a nickname the locals gave to some ancient predatory lizards that survive stern Patagonian winters in a single, well-hidden valley with particularly stable, warm climate, possibly originating from ongoing volcanic activity. The “gualicho demons” are described as relatively warm-bloodied and active, covered in a thin layer of brown down feathers, walking and running on their back legs similarly to the way an ostrich runs, and reaching a giant size, six to seven meters from head to tail. Some paleontologists boldly suggest that a lot in the “gualicho demons’” description matches the description of prehistoric lizards known as dinosaurs. Others find this theory completely preposterous and guess that the “gualicho demons” must be simply some runaway exotic pets of Portobrazilian frontier nobles, who are known for their extravagant tastes. Meanwhile, more adventurous and cynical huntsmen avoid such discussions completely and instead prepare their big-game rifles for the ultimate hunt of their life, regardless of who or what that game might be.


Q4 1893: One Edward Malone, a Dixie reporter for the Daily Gazette, was one of the main coverers of the Captain Grant rescue expedition earlier this year, and it seems that either need of fame or his senseless curiosity drove him to become the main organizer of yet another daring endeavor. Having received support of the Confederate Navy and a sizeable grant from the Tampa Institute of Southern Culture, he put together a major expedition, tasked with a rather dashing goal: to find the elusive gaucho demons of Patagonia and, of course, bring them to Florida alive. Besides transporting the daring journalist-cum-explorer to Patogonia, the navy also supported this team of adventurers and cutthroat hunters with a squad of Confederate marines, who saved many Dixie lives, when the expedition found the mysterious volcanic valley and was attacked by a local tribe of so-called “Ash People,” savage aboriginals who live among the valley’s lava fields and fern jungles. They, as Malone and his partners have found out, live in constant fear of feathered carnivorous lizards, while simultaneously worshipping them as their sole protectors and gods. It remains to be seen what wonders Malone and his expedition (or, perhaps their future competitors) will unearth in Patagonia. (Regional quest progress: 80.32%, Confederate States of America losses: -2.64 HC, -2.73 IC, -4.63 EC, -3.92 MC)

 
Update 5 is complete. World map and the stats will be updated withing a few days. You may post now.
 
Stats are now up to date and public. Hail big data!

The world map will be updated soon. New tech research options - around the same time.

Meanwhile, could all new joiners please post here again, please? I remember several people announced their desire to join on Discrord chat, but I don't remember who exactly. (Also, @Sniiperman456 - do you still want to join as Gran Paraguay?)

P.S. Just a reminder for everyone:

Rule amendment:
  • Joint tech research with 1-3 participants will gain X2, not X3 bonus (and 1-turn tech adoption cooldown instead of 2-turn); J
  • oint tech research with >3 participants will gain no bonus and no cooldown (i.e., the new tech will be adoptable by any nation the next turn after research completion).
 
From Russia, on behalf of the Coalition*
To the Kingdom of Hungary
*Coalition consisting of Russia, Poland, North German Federation, Austria-Bavaria, Italy, Illyria

You have been defeated through force of arms on every front. The majority of the fighting in this war is now taking place on your soil. Surrender, end this bloodshed, or the new year will see Russian troops in Buda.

The Coalition has agreed to offer the following terms for peace:

  1. Mutual abandonment of claims by the Austrian and Hungarian branches of the House of Habsburg on each other.
  2. Reparations from Hungary to Austria-Bavaria in suitable amounts for the aggression that started this conflict.
  3. Surrender of the province of Slavonia to the Kingdom of Illyria, to ensure its future security against invasion.
  4. Surrender of the northern komitats, colloquially "Slovakia" to Poland, to ensure its future security against invasion.
  5. A formal end to Hungarian political and military control of the Romanian Domnate, recognizing its new sovereignty.
 
From the Országgyűlésof (Country's Assembly/Parliament) of Hungary
To the Anti-Hungarian Coalition

The warmongering king Ludwig Viktor von Habsburg of Hungary is considering his abdication under very persistent encouragement of the Country's Assembly and all true Hungarian patriots. Should we be successful at ridding Hungary of its current king and establishing a parliamentary republic, we would be open to accepting the currently proposed peace terms, with only one correction:
  • While most of Slovakia can indeed be passed along to Poland, Hungary still wishes to remain in possession of its two southernmost, Hungarian-majority districts (Komáromi járás/Komárno District and Dunaszerdahelyi járás/Dunajská Streda District). Letting Poland control these districts would create a dangerous state of post-war revanchism and instability both in Polish Slovakia and in Hungary.
All other terms are completely acceptable, as long as Austria-Bavaria agrees that Hungary is free to no longer be ruled by a Habsburg monarch (and, ideally, no monarch at all).
 
To: Portugal-Brazil, other Investors into the Panama Canal
From: The Confederate States of America

We are concerned at the instability in the Panama Region of Colombia, and the risks it presents to the investment the Confederate States has made in the area. As such, we ask what steps Portugal-Brazil is taking to ensure the protection of Confederate citizens and assets.
 
From Portugal-Brazil
To Confederate States of America

None. We are currently busy with more urgent issues, as you can see. As long as the Confederate citizens continue cooperating with Portobrazilian troops, they will have no issues with them. We cannot speak for the Godless rebels.
 
The Free Boer Republik has commissioned a new national anthem for the Hungarian state that we present herewith for the consideration of the Országgyűlésof, who have bravely surrendered their nation to the clutches of the Jew and the Briton.

 
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Spirits



Whiskey is perhaps the most ubiquitous of spirits in the Confederate States of America, with many regions developing their own varietal. Whiskey in the CSA takes its roots from british and scottish colonists, who imported the distilling techniques from their homelands in two distinct waves. The first wave, from which most American Whiskeys are derived, originates in the european colonization of the American South. The Second wave was much more recent, occurring in the early years of British prohibition, as more and more distillers realized that the temporary emergency measures would not be lifted quickly, and that their businesses would need to adapt to survive. Though there is some overlap between the two traditions, overall, they remain distinct, a difference reflected in the spelling of the product: Americans produce Whiskey, while Scottish expats produce Whisky.


Confederate Federal and State governments impose some regulations on the production of whiskeys produced to be sold commercially, though no such restrictions exist on batches created for domestic consumption. As a general rule of thumb, whiskeys, whether they be Bourbon, Rye, Rice, or Whisky, must be distilled to no more than 80% ABV, ensuring the preservation of some of the Original Mash. Similarly, no colorings or flavoring agents may be introduced after distillation after the discovery (and subsequent burning by a rioting mob) that distillers at the Woodfin Still were flavoring their whiskeys with a toxic agent. Though these restrictions should run against the general libertarian mentality of the CSA, there is a strong cultural momentum towards the preservation of these laws.


All whiskeys begin their lives the same way, with a creation of a Mash, a process by which the distiller transforms the unfermentable starches in grains into sugars. First, the grains, whatever they may be, are malted: they are dried, cleaned of detritus (stones, straw, chaff, etc,) and allowed to germinate. Once the grains have germinated, they are passed through a kiln and roasted, which prevents further growth, as well as providing color. Once the Malted Grain has been roasted, it is boiled in water, usually pure and fresh, or distilled, so that no impurities alter the taste. After fermentation (similar to beer) the mixture is run through a still (copper, which will remove sulfur compounds that give the whiskey an unpleasant taste.)


Once the desired alcohol content and color has been reached, the whiskey is aged in a barrel for at least a few months, before bottling and shipping.


Of course, different varietals have different characteristics in the production, which results in differing characteristics and flavors.


Bourbon: The origin of the name “Bourbon” is a matter of some dispute, with some linking the name to Bourbon county in Kentucky (still one of the capitals of Whiskey production in the Union), while others attribute it instead to Bourbon street in New Orleans, where the whiskey was first sold. Bourbon in the CSA uses a Mash that must be over 51 percent corn, which gives Bourbon it’s distinctively sweet flavor. It must also be aged for no less than three months in Oak Barrels that have been charred on the inside, in which the whiskey acquires flavor and color from the caramelized sugars in the wood. Once it is drawn from the barrel, the whiskey is bottled and sold. The barrels themselves retain somewhere between two and three gallons of whiskey soaked into the wood, and may not be used for bourbon again. Instead, the barrels are often sold to other whiskey producers, or used to age other products, such as beer, wine, or other spirits.


Rye: Rye whiskey is very uncommon in the CSA, associated as it is with the Distillers of the Old American North East, though one of the key distillers of New Orleans, Sazarac, is famous for its rye. Rye whiskeys must be produced from a mash of at least 51 percent Rye, and, like Bourbon, must be aged in new charred oak barrels. Rye whiskeys tend towards a drier, spicier flavor than Bourbon.


Whisky: Whisky, as a distilling tradition, is distinct from other American whiskeys in a number of ways. Nearly all of the Whisky distillers are expats from Great Britain, who moved their businesses to the CSA after the introduction of prohibition, under the assumption that relations between the two countries would remain warm (Though, of course, not all Scotch producers moved to the CSA. Many found refuge in other countries, resulting in the “Scotch Diaspora.”) These distillers, often very well off, tended to look for areas similar to that of their homelands, hoping that some of the original flavor could be maintained. For that reason, many of the Islay distillers, and some highland distillers, have set up shop on the barrier islands of North Carolina (Notably, Bowmore acquired large portions of the Island of Roanoke, while Lagavulin and Laphroig own Kitty Hawk and Nag’s Head, respectively.) Traditionally, Scotch Whisky distillers produce their Mash with Malted Barley, which has been dried over a peat-fire, imbuing distinctive and characteristic smoke flavors to the end product. Unfortunately, the CSA has only one peat bog, the product of which is jealously guarded by Glen Scotia, which acquired the small peat producing area in early 1882. For that reason, most other Whisky producers have resorted to importing peat from Scotland. Since this has pushed costs up, most have resorted to producing a “lesser” line in addition to their classic products, where the smoke-drying of the malted barley is done with hickory or applewood. A small number of domestically owned Whisky stills have opened on the Carolina Shore and the Outer Banks, including Crystal’s, on the Crystal Coast, and Rebecca Distillery, on Cedar Island. All Whiskys must be aged at least three years in oak barrels, though the barrels may be reused.


Whiskey is not the only spirit characteristic to Dixie. Rum is produced throughout the Caribbean States as well as on the Mainland. Historically, Rum has been produced for nearly as long as Europeans colonized the Americas, and varieties of Rum are produced everywhere sugar cane is either grown, or traded. In fact, Rum played an integral part of the Triangle trade, one of the industries responsible for the creation of our peculiar institution.


Rum is produced through fermentation and distillation of sugar products, either molasses or sugar cane juice (a difference denoted in the spelling: Rum is produced from molasses, and Rhum from cane juice, a technique prefered in many of the former French Colonies.) Once the Sugar is fermented, it is distilled. There are no standards for distillation, with some distillers preferring pot stills and others column stills. Aging is just as varied and unrestricted, with some choosing to age the Rum in wood barrels (usually whiskey barrels) and others choosing to age in copper or steel drums. The choice of container in which the rum is aged greatly affects the taste and color of the finished product. Light, or Silver, rums are aged in metal containers, and have little flavor of their own, aside for a hint of sweetness, while Dark Rums are aged in heavily charred wood barrels and have a distinct spicy caramel flavor. In between, Gold Rums are rums that are aged in used charred barrels, usually Bourbon barrels. Some dark and gold rums are spiced, aged and infused with (usually proprietary) combinations of spices and herbs. Often, these include, but are in no way limited to, cinnamon, anise, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and cayenne. Some also soak fruit or coconut as part of the aging process, infusing those flavors into the drink, though it is a practice only really done with small-scale production intended for domestic consumption rather than sale.


Smaller scale production also exists of Distilled fruit-based spirits. The most famous of these is Applejack, made from distilled ciders, though variants exist for nearly every fermented fruit. Though in the Union, Applejacks are produced through freeze distillation, in the CSA, where it is much rarer for temperatures to remain long, or even reach, the below freezing temperatures needed for distillation, most producers employ a method similar to that used to produce brandy.
 
The map's out, you can find it in the second post of this thread and in the first post of Update 5.
 
From Poland
To the Országgyűlésof

We are willing to accept this amendment to the terms of surrender in the interest of greater security and stability of our respective nations. We will, however, insist that the Slovakian minorities in Komárno District and Dunajská Streda District be secured the right to their own language and customs, and that there be no attempts by the Hungarian state to evict Slovakians from their homes. In exchange, we are willing to secure similar status for the Hungarian remnants who fall under Polish governance.
 
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