December World - game thread

[tobiisagoodboy]

Today was a day of great grief for the entire Italian Nation, as Presidente Mario was buried on the Palatin graveyard. Hundreds of thousands of citiziens accompanied the procession, filling the streets of the eternal city with waves of black cloth. Several foreign dignataries showed their condolence during the burial and for a single day it seemed that the entire nation was united in the grief for this titan of Italian history.

Still, not a day afterwards discussion about the Political future of Italy reached new heights. With Augusto Rumano, the young and charismatic leader of the Liberal-progressive party and Antonio Beneventi, the leader of the National party of Unity, both announcing their canditature for the presidential office, after Vice-president Filippo Romano announced that he would only hold the office until a new president has been elected.
Parliament and Senate have agreed on the 12th of March as election day.
Neither candidate has a majority of support in the all important Italian senate, with about 25 % of senators backing Augusto and 40 % supporting Antonio.While Augusto enjoys strong support from the public and parliament, Antonio is the favoured candidate of most of the old familys.
All will come down to the Centralist party, the old party of Presidente Mario, which is still struggling to recover from its legendary leaders loss. Many of them favour Marios younger brother, Fleet Admiral Luigi, but Luigi has stated several times that he does not ahve any desires to join politics, as he strongly believes in the supremacy of the civillian goverment over the miltiary.

So all of Italy wonders, who will make the race ? Will the old families win and put a man into office who will surely cement their rule and power even more, will the Liberals be able to gain Centralsit support or will the Centralists finally manage to end their struggle and put out their own candidate, preferably one that can gain either Nationalist or Liberal support.

Only time will tell us.

 

[Ahigin]

Time for a creative writing assignment!

So, while Seon and Masada are writing their masterpieces about spreadsheets (with conditional formatting!), I also invite everyone (+Seon and Masada) to describe their martial arts and/or analogs of the Kingsmen. That's because tons of you have adopted these technologies, and I guess it's time to learn how you envision that stuff. (I also welcome made up martial arts, because we live in the age of synthetic martial arts, such as Krav-Maga, Systema, Baritsu, etc. Just don't make them too unrealistic a-la "running on water and curving bullet trajectory by flailing your arms really fast.)

As usual, I grant resource cookies to participants.

 

[Ahigin]

It was announced by @ItsAGiraffe000 that Third Burmese Empire is now NPC.

 

[Ahigin]

The map is updated in the second post of this thread. (Beware that I did some border-gore fixes and correction of geographic mistakes that are unrelated to the influence changes (such as making sure the Ottomans do own Jerusalem, as they used to have an option to build an analytical engine there early in the game). Also, don't forget that I don't verify my map changes against every city mentioned in the update. The update is the canon, the map is a soft supplement.)

Order deadlines are setup (see first post of this thread):
Early orders deadline for Update 8, i.e., all economic, domestic, and diplomatic orders are due by: August 13, 2018, 9 am CST
Late orders deadline for Update 8, i.e., all military orders are due by: August 20, 2018, 11 pm CST.

 

[Immaculate]

The Death of Sadness

Edited and removed to make a less sad story​

***​

still earlier…

Manjiro Makime has never been in a hotel before. He has never been to Edo before. In fact, he has never been away from his small suburb outside Osaka. He has arrived at the hotel with a doctor from the Kenpeitai offices, only days after the agent arrived at his home and spoke to his father, only days after his father told him his life would never be the same again.

The officer, who’s name is Henchu-sama, is meeting with another doctor, a man form the Edo office. The three of them sit in the hotel lobby, the two older men sipping Dixie bourbon with ice from mount Fuji. They are discussing Makime but Makime is unsure what they are discussing exactly. It has something to do with a hero of the nation and his young wife, a women who wants a family but because of some secret having to do with the hero, has not been granted permission by the eugenics office. Makime has learned he is a favorite of the eugenics office and a great honor will be bestowed upon him- but he doesn’t know why or what it is.

Makime stops listening and looks around. There is a samurai at the bar. The samurai is thin, neither old nor young, with a long mustache trailing to his chin. He is dressed conservatively, in both haori and kimono and the twin swords await his hand at his waist but a tophat, in the fashion of the tekuno-kurats, balances at the bar next to his bourbon. He withdraws a pipe, packing it with tobacco from his kimono. Makime watches him for some time and realizes the samurai is drunk, and suddenly, just like that, he recognizes him. The man is Ima Naoaki, who’s air yacht the Masayoshi Baindo, defeated Bugyō Ōta Ieyasu, director of Japanese Foreign Affairs’s air yacht in the great Mount Fuji race and brought the savants to prominence. Makime has read the manga; Naoaki’s fame is far-flung across the boy’s comic book stories, a hero for an entire generation.

Without realizing it Makime is soon bowing deeply to the celebrated samurai-savant.

 

[Masada]

Science and Progress

Labour - Our strength!
Organisation - Our skill!
Science - Our liberator!
Hong- Our Will!
World Revolution - Our Goal!

On the Latest Developments in the Capitalist World

Times of crisis, like the present, are periods of innovation which give rise to new devices to reduce the cost of production. But the domination of capital converts all these devices into instruments for ever more intensive exploitation of the workers.

Ticker Ledgers are one of these devices.

Recently developed in America, the cruelest and most vile of the capitalist states, advocates of this system arranged the following competition.

An American negro, a freeman and skilled accountant, heard he was to be replaced by a Ticker Ledger.

This negro worked dawn to dusk, carrying ledgers back and forth reckoning and calculating as he walked. He took no rest because he had to be better than the whites around him. So great is the racial prejudice in the Union.

When the agent of the company bought the ticker ledger bought it here, the negro wanted to race it. He took a lot of pride in his work and he hated to see a machine take his job.

The partners of his firm, cruel capitalists to a man, agreed to test the ticket ledger against their wage-slave. The test went on all day and part of the next day.

The negro won, to the great consternation of the assembled capitalists, who preferred dead capital to living men. But the negro wasn’t allowed to rest, the capitalists demanded he work all the harder. After three days of labour, he took sick and died soon after that.

The capitalists shed not a tear.

But the dead negro was exceptional, far surpassing the skills of his white ‘betters’. The ticker machine proved this and before long the whites were thrown out into the street. Racial solidarity is a weak force next to profit.

The layout of new accounting buildings is now planned in such a way that not a moment will be lost in delivering tape, that not a scrap of tape will be wasted, that not a moment more is lost than is needed to free jams and in conveying the final product to the offices which commissioned them. These new factories now assemble accounts in one-fourth the time it had taken before!

What an enormous gain in productivity!... But the worker’s pay is not increased and a great many of the workers are shown the door. The capitalist obtains an enormous profit and the worker, who was before a valued professional, becomes a mechanic. His hearing soon goes because of the noise, he sweats in the heat because the machines run hot, if he is slow to clear a jam it will take his fingers and his mind no longer experiencing stimulation withers. This mirrors what the slave owners in the Confederate States do to dull the negro mind. Long hours and heat turn the mind listless and the certain loss of limb if he loses a moment’s concentration is no less monstrous a form of discipline than what occurs in the Confederate States.

Let us consider the role that the workers play in this. In the old days, skilled workers would interpret the data that went into the report. They would separate the good from the bad data and make adjustments as needed. Now the machine does this. The machine however lacks the mental faculties that we have and would introduce errors into the figuring. The workers however have invented most ingenious tricks to work around this issue. One such trick is to have the machine search for duplicate numbers in the string and to mark these with a special dash. A second technique has key numbers such as profit and loss flagged in the string through a unique set of dots and dashes. Unusual ratios might also be marked in another way and so on. A low profit ratio with three dashes and a high ratio with three dots and so on. By this measures the workers have imposed a series of checks which introduce an element of human intelligence to a mechanical process.

All these vast improvements made by the workers, however, have been to their detriment. With more errors being detected from the start, the capitalist has increased his profit by reducing his need for labour. The worker exercising their natural pride in improving the productive process, in effect cuts his own throat in a capitalist society.

In the final analysis, capitalism organises and rationalises labour within the new account factories solely for the purpose of increasing the exploitation of the workers and increasing profit. But this process creates the seeds of its own destruction. The capitalist process causes chaos, leading to crises - like the present age we live in - in which which the gains to prodigious gains in productivity destroy the jobs of millions of workers, and those workers lacking jobs cannot purchase goods, which forces yet more productivity gains to make up for the diminished market and so on and on until the collapse.

The Ticker Ledger —without its initiators knowing or wishing it — is preparing the time when the proletariat will take over all production and appoint its own workers’ committees for the purpose of properly distributing and rationalising capital. The professionals who once had white collars now wear blue and their solidarity once non-existent has been sharpened by their immiseration. As the contradiction grows between the vast profits of the capitalist class and the workers own immiseration, the workers will organise and with organisation will come a real revolution to overthrow the corrupt regime that rules in the name of labour - but in fact rules in defence of capital.

 

[Masada]

The Child:

All trials involve judges but not all involve courts.

My first trial was a test administered when I was five.

I was smart. All the adults told me that. I could copy an accent at will. Veering from the urbane sounds of Nanjing to the lilting accent of Canton in a sentence. I could manage impossible calculations in her head. I had memorised Mark. I was working on Luke.

I was never told my score. But it must have been high.

Six times mother was called into the provincial seat for meetings about me. One meeting each for Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice and Works. All offered mother gifts and me a place at their academies for savants.

Mother turned them all down. War threatened to invoke its powers to conscript. Mother reached into her pocket and pulled out a single sheet of thick paper. All that was written on it was was two characters. One for Prince and the other for Gan. The woman from war went quiet and the meeting was ended.

I was six when he came.

He was not like the others. He didn’t ask mother to travel. One morning he was simply there. Dressed in a rites uniform. But first he played a game.

The morning he had arrived he knocked on our door and introduced himself to mother as Brother Gao. He explained that he would be staying next door for some time and had wished to get to know his neighbors.

He was handsome in those days. Tall. Flat faced. Some said he had the look of a Mongol. But he made up for that with intelligent eyes and a fullness to his lips that betrayed a certain sensuality. My mother was a widow. He must have known that.

Now my mother was taller than most men with thin legs and a slim figure. Her eyes were large and shining. Her skin was like white jade. Her face a pleasing melon shape. When she smiled, the effect was striking.

She smiled at Brother Gao. It must have been his lips. That smile had an effect. The predator became the prey.

Had Brother Gao done his research better he would have come prepared with a wife. They might have kept his mind on the mission and dissuaded mother from her game. But instead he came as a widower and became fair game. Mother was lonely.

Instead Brother Gao found himself dumbstruck. His mouth opening and closing like a carp on the bloack awaiting the cleaver. My mother laughed at this taking it for boyishness. It was the first and last time I saw Brother Gao make a mistake.

I knew Brother Gao was not as he seemed. He claimed to be from rites but he he fidgeted in his stiff coat. He had forgot about his long sleeves. Food and ink were constant companions on the ends. No rites scholar would have made that mistake. Rites scholars take professional pride in keeping their sleeves clean.

He was also muscled. Subtly, yes. But there was a strength in how he held himself and, I thought, violence too. I had watched the boxers fight and I recognised some of that in him. But for all that he had nothing of the boxers cockiness. He didn’t strut, flex, run or jump like they did to impress the girls. He was not fussy like that. He let his figure do the talking. Usually, I found out later, it worked.

But not on mother.

Mother was living in a small village in Hunan. It had nothing to recommend it. It was a full days journey to the prefectural capital and three days from the metropolis of Changsha. For all this you might think mother was a hick with farming on the brain. You would be wrong.

For, you see, mother was a relative of Prince Gan. She was his niece. His favourite niece, he said. At the time, I thought it was because she never asked for anything from him and that she could cook miracles. The reasons were more complicated than that.

But that was not all. You see mother was also a soldier or had been. As she told it, she had been a lieutenant in the supply and logistics section of the 44th Division. It was there she had met my father. He was a captain, very dashing and already at 28 a war hero. They married against the wishes of Prince Gan. His family were all dead. Her family wanted nothing to do with a captain however dashing and brave. Maybe they were right. My father was dead six weeks later at Shanghai. He was made a national martyr. My mother became a martyr to his memory.

They would call it melancholy now. At the time they called it derangement. She was a young beautiful women of the best possible family. A relative of the great Prince Gan and of God’s own Son! But rather than remarry she lost herself in grief. When I was born I was given over to her aunt, the Princess Gao, to be raised.

(Mother never talked about God, she was much younger than him, but I know he baptised her and that God had adored my grandmother. It was said that before my grandmother married, God had wanted for a time to marry her. Certain family members insisted that mother looked like grandmother and that God have favoured her because of it. I never repeated this gossip. It would have gotten me in trouble. But the truth is the truth.)

My mother recovered enough to take me back when I was two. Princess Gao, who is still alive, however remains my second mother. Mother raised me till I was six. Her parenting was indifferent. Lassitude really defined her life. All she cared about was my dead father and the imminent arrival of God who was going to bring father back.

You now have some hint of the circumstances of my upbringing. You might have noticed that I wrote of having two mothers and a dead father. If you keep this fact in mind, you might then appreciate why I enjoyed having Brother Gao around. I knew he was a liar and so did my mother. But a male presence was welcome and Brother Gao was easy company.

I said my mother worked in supply and logistics. That wasn’t exactly the case. She had worked for the 44th but in their political section. She was, like me, a spy but in counterintelligence. By all accounts she was very good. She knew, I think, what Brother Gao was. But she never let on. I don’t think he ever knew he was being played by mother. I said she was good.

Brother Gao for his part worked in gaining our trust. In between visits to his ‘family’ and attending to his ‘work’ he made himself useful. He fixed our roof. He cleared trees. He rehung our door. He painted the gate. He built, what we call in the game, rapport. He was a very good operator. He was not a good renovator. The gate had light spots. The door was no better than when he’d started.

My mum almost seemed happy. She never forgot my father. But where once the house was still as the night, there was now noise and sometimes my mother even sang.

All this built on a lie. But tacitly, my mother and I agreed to let it go on as long as we could. It lasted six months. That’s when he proposed. My mother accepted. Prince Gan officiated the wedding under duress. That was when I knew Brother Gao was not one of his.

After this we moved to Nanjing. Thought my uncle lived there, he never visited me. My other mother did but infrequently and in secret. As I said, Brother Gao wasn’t his.

My official record says I studied at the Lao Xiyang Institue for Daughters of National Martyrs. It was a school for languages. Privately it was a grooming school for future spies. But what I learned at Lao Xiyang was only part of my schooling. The rest of it occured after hours.

There was no name for this other school. I’d hesitate to even call it one. I learned a lot. All manner of things. But the discipline was more barracks than school. It was Prince Gan’s school. Once you’ve read this part of the tale, reflect a moment on the fact that my own beloved uncle put me through this.

I cannot tell you all that transpired there. I studied there from age seven to sixteen and besides rather a lot of what I learned is secret. The other school itself is secret. But I have permission to talk about it for the purposes of this memoir. All its readers are, I suppose, in the know. To those who are not, I applaud you. Getting access to this memoir would be no small feat. If, by some miracle, you have gotten it out of where it sits, well, you are due a standing ovation.

But a small taste should be sufficient to understand why I am as I am.

When I was seven they broke my hand and made me through gritted lips repeat in exactitude an entire page of text that I was allowed to look at for ten seconds. Mistakes resulted in a further beating and the application of a bucket cold water. This occurred outside during winter. It wasn’t too cold in Nanjing, but to a child in pain it might as well have been Manchuria.

(To those who object to my use of Manchuria, I say to hell you with. You can complain all you want, I’m allowed to call it that. I was there before the liberation. I risked my immortal soul there many times. In sum, I’ll call it whatever I damned well please.)

I was nine when I was abducted and tortured. For a week I was denied sleep, beaten repeatedly, tortured in other ways too and endlessly questioned. I assumed that I had been abducted by a foreign intelligence agency. At the time there was a scare, which had become a mania, about foreign agents.

I gave them nothing. I had been taught to do so. Then after a week of hell I was freed. They never told me it was a training exercise. It was only a great many years later that I learned that. Most of the physical scars healed. One nail never quite regrew to its full length. But the mental strain has never quite gone away.

Do you know that after six hours of squatting in chains, your muscles knot so much that muscles you didn’t even know you had become visible and that there is nothing you can do to make the pain go away? Do you know that being kept awake for days makes you hallucinate? I hallucinated my mother’s presence.

She told me to kill myself to deny the enemy intelligence. That’s what she would have said, incidentally had she actually been there. I was squatting in a stress position and there was sound blaring into my room. That wasn’t enough to keep my awake I’d found, to their considerable annoyance, so I was having cold water dumped on me every ten minutes or so too. Not enough to drown myself alas.

So how was I to kill myself? That was tricky question. I couldn’t move and there wasn’t anything able to do me harm. I didn’t even have fingernails by that point. So I set my brain to thinking. One part, the lower part I set to working on mathematical problems, the higher bit I tasked with finding a way to kill myself. The higher bit soon figured out that I could force conjure my own phantasms. Let me take a break for a moment from the narrative to say, I am terrified of snakes. So I summoned snakes. My lower brain responded and adrenaline surged into me and my heart gave out. That’s how I learned I could kill myself at will after three days not sleeping.

They restarted my heart and I was liberated soon after. I think the verisimilitude held for so long because Prince Gan killed some of the people involved. He wanted me hardened not broken or dead. He did love me. He still loves me. I suppose I’m to be his successor.

Despite all that, the training was useful in the days that followed and I hold no grudge. They did what they could to prepare us. It was not enough. It’s never enough.

I killed my first woman at thirteen. Killing was supposed to be easy as breathing for us. It never got that way. But they tried and I wish they had succeeded. I was never told her crimes. They were irrelevant. I was given a loaded pistol and asked to resolve the issue.

I did. Two shots to the back of the head.

I don’t know if I killed her really. Years later I thought I saw her in the War Ministry. I couldn’t be sure and I was not able to check. But I’m sure. A thirteen year can be trusted not to look at her first execution with too discerning an eye.

Perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part. I hope it is. I have enough blood on my hands. Blood I know to be deserving. Except his. He didn’t deserve that.

Balanced against all this was a normal school day.

Well sometimes.

They told me who to befriend so I could spy on them. They told me to ferret out subversives. They told me to destroy reputations and build them up. They told me to pretend I was bad at maths. They arranged a mathematics tutor who taught me other things instead. They told me to seduce a teacher. Then they told me to back off. Everything they asked me to do was aimed at breaking me down to remake me. Again and again I was remoulded. Twisting me this and that way. Never ceasing. Never allowing me to be myself. I was clay and they the potters.

After I finished school with the highest marks and a number of awards, including most improved in maths, they sent me to the Madame Wang Institute. This was a finishing school for spies. My handlers thought it quaint. Still they valued the cover it would provide me.

By necessity they saw me less often. After all, I was training in the house of their enemy. For all my uncles lot talked about the danger of foreigners, it was clear to me that who their real foe was.

My organisation and I suppose it is mine now has one role. It is we who watch the watchmen. Yes, students, our role is to keep order among the spies. That’s our big secret. Yes we do other things, you know that, but it is we who sit at the apex of the entire edifice. We are it's gardeners. It is we who decide which trees bear good fruit and which trees bear bad fruit.

 

[Bair_the_Normal]

Announcing my intent to return and assume the helm of the Hetmanate, should there be no objections.

 

[Ahigin]

Welcome back to the game, Bair.

 

[JohannaK]

Joint Declaration of War​

We, the Leaders of Egypt, Indostan, and Russia, in observance with the conditions outlined in our previous joint statement of 1894, have convened to declare


That the Turkish has repeatedly ignored or outright violated the conditions indicated in our joint statement of 1894, namely by conducting a total occupation of Persia;


That the actions of the Turkish government in the Caucasian Imamate, replicating the Kurd scheme in Persia, on their own make obsolete the circumstances under which our previous statement was issued, indicating that the Turkish government has no intention to stop their military advance into the region;


Therefore that we, the Leaders of Egypt, Indostan, and Russia, in defence of the international order and to put a stop to Turkish adventurism, declare that a state of war now exists between our nations and the Ottoman state.

 

[Bair_the_Normal]

to Whom it may concern
from the Ukrainian Hetmanate

In recognition of the devolution of our region once more into war, the Ukrainian Hetmanate would like to forward its intentions for complete and total neutrality for the duration of this conflict. Thus:

• The Hetmanate will not permit the transit of belligerent military forces on its territory INCLUDING segments of the River Dnieper in Kyiv Governorate,
• The Hetmanate requests that its neutral and non-military shipping along the River Dnieper will be respected and protected by belligerent forces,
• The Hetmanate states that willful abrogation of any of the above will result in corresponding and appropriate retaliation,
  
• Additionally in recognition of a history of atrocities in modern conflict—whether in Voyevodyna, Cape Town, or elsewhere—the Hetmanate requests that, to the extent possible, the rights and livelihoods of Ukrainian peoples currently residing or doing business be respected or at the very least taken into account.

The Ukrainian Hetmanate now requests recognition of this declaration and these points.

 

[Bair_the_Normal]

Kyiv in the Shadows

Tuesday, 10 PM. Far west down Bohdan Khmelnytsky street, where the gas lamps begin to flicker—grasping in vain for the last vapors of coal gas in their pipes—lies a small, nondescript bar. At first glance, it doesn’t seem out of place in this quiet, working class fringe of Kyiv. It’s the sort of place where the average Ivan Ivankiv retires for a drink or two—maybe four—after a taxing day of work at his Left Bank collective factory. It’s a humble establishment where the bartender, Béla, a fresh transplant from Hungary who fled miserable, war-wrought Budapest, speaks barely enough Ukrainian to take orders and collect payment, and just enough Russian to pay his taxes and rent. With smoke-stained windows, an ill-fitted door, and peeling paint inside and out, it’s clear that this store has seen far better days.

Nonetheless, whatever the bar may look like, it certainly does not give any hints to being perhaps the most important meeting spot of the New Brotherhood of Sts. Cyril and Methodius.

Which is, perhaps, all the better for its Fraternal members. A setting whose only witnesses are the politically voiceless Ivan and the blissfully ignorant Béla does, in fact, make a perfect environment for the debates and discourse of the secretive, occasionally illicit fraternity.

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Enter Yevhen P. An imposing man dressed to the nines, he wipes the sweat glistening off of his quickly receding hairline. Indeed, Kyiv in August is dreadfully hot and humid. His apparent discomfort melts away upon ducking through the door. With a quick nod to Béla, and even an unnoticed one to an Ivan long slumped, snoring, on his stool, he wears the comfortable airs of a regular. A curt wave from Béla beckons Yevhen into a back room.

There to welcome him sit two men. One is a well-built, clean-shaven Cossack with a much more forgiving hairline than Yevhen—Svyatoslav T. The other is a shorter, mustached German-Ukrainian—Mykola P. They rise to greet their Fraternal comrade.

“It is fantastic to finally to meet you,” Svyatoslav begins. “I’ve come all the way from Lviv for this honor.”

“Likewise. I hope you had safe travels,” replies Yevhen, receiving a curt nod in return. He turns to Mykola and offers his hand.

“I have heard many a good thing about you, Brother Mykola. I am very pleased to have the chance to work with you.”

“It is I whom is more pleased, Yevhen. As you very well know, this meeting is a fantastic opportunity for advancing the aims of our great Fraternity.”

The three men take their seats. Mykola procures a pipe, and Svyatoslav some Dixie Tobacco. A brief silence of the packing and lighting dissipates into jovial chatter, while more smoke rises to fog the small room.

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“Pereproshuyu.”

Béla’s voice signals an end to the pleasantries. He slips through the door with a tray, upon which lie a shot glass of vodka, and a snifter with an amber beverage tinged with red. The bartender notes Yevhen’s apparent confusion.

“Is a new drink. Is very popular in South Kyiv.”

“Highly recommended,” adds Mykola. “It’s called a Kyivan Liberty. An all-Ukrainian drink.”

Yevhen contemplates for a moment. A difficult choice between the two, to be sure. So naturally, he takes both.

The vodka is shot down immediately, a natural precursor to any Ukrainian gathering of note. Sharp, perhaps oaky, but otherwise neutral, it does well to clear Yevhen’s mind for the upcoming discussion—if also his sinuses. The other drink, he decides, will be reserved for sipping through his meeting.

Looking around at his companions, Svyatoslav starts.

“Gentlemen, I’m sure you know why I have summoned you both today. Now, as we know, the recent rise of the Narodnyky has set our Ukraine in motion down a truly frightening path that could very well spell the end of a sovereign and independent Ukraine. The Hetman, honorable though he may be, notices not that he leads us back into the grasp of the Russian state, like a sheep to slaughter. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that the Narodnyky agenda will bring about the demise of Ukraine and the return of Malorossiya. Thus do we the brotherhood, with the best interests of our Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian peoples in mind, rise to the occasion to combat the creeping Russian spectre and return Ukraine into her rightful, self-guided sovereignty.”

Murmurs of assent echo from his companions. Livened by his own words, he continues.

“And now, we have discovered our greatest asset. You, Sir P., are a constituent member of Hetman Hrushevsky’s cabinet, and thus you alone can act as a voice of reason in this new government. No matter what, we all still know Hrushevsky to be an incompetent politician, but a beloved and emotional scholar. The Brotherhood firmly believes that appeals to the peasantry, to the citizenry of Ukraine will be able to enable policy to bring Ukraine back about a more Western pole.”

Yevhen nods. It makes sense, after all, he was—to his knowledge—the highest-ranking associate of the Fraternity in the current administration.

“Well, what would you have me do, pray tell?”

Mykola offers a wry smile in response. “It will be a pleasant and fitting surprise for you, my friend, given your academic career thus far. I trust you will not find it any hassle at all.”

More intrigued now, Yevhen sits just a little bit straighter.

“Go on then.”

And so, with Yevhen’s full attention, the Brothers went on.

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The clock strikes midnight. Ivan stirs at the sudden noise. Incoherent in his sleep, he fails to notice that the bar has nearly entirely cleared out. The three secretive men in the back room were long gone, their taciturn meeting masked by the coming and going of other patrons. Ivan drags his head up. Annoyed at the clock for yanking him from his dreams—dreams where he was a wealther man, dreams where he lived in the grand apartments of Podil—he angrily rubs his eyes. The answer to his woes, he decides, will lie in another vodka, neat. Béla will happily oblige.

Meanwhile, his children wait patiently at home, their mother still out, working the night.

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Kyivan Liberty (Київська Свобода)

4 pts. Medukha
1 pt. Kontabas
Dash high-proof Horilka z pertsem (Optimally Kozats'ka)

Put ice into a snifter to chill. Stir kontabas with horilka z pertsem with ice to chill and for dilution. Remove ice and melted water from snifter and pour in the chilled mixture. Top with medukha and serve.

 

[Masada]

The Taiping Mandate strongly supports the Russia, Egyptian and Industani position regarding the necessity of military intervention to defend the independence of Persia and the Imamate, condemns in the strong terms the Sublime Porte’s territorial aggrandisement at the expense of the peace and further the Taiping Mandate offers any and all assistance which may be of use to the allied powers in their endeavours.

 

[tobiisagoodboy]

Italy hereby declares that it shall support the Joint Egyptian,Russian and Indostani declaration.
If the Ottoman do not retreat out of Persia (within 48 hours) and accept the terms put forward by the joint declaration, Italy will also join the declaration of war.

 

[Kyzarc Fotjage]

The Pacific Directory will, of course, follow wherever the Russian Directory leads. We may be small, but the would-be imperialists of the world will tremble at our coming. Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Chief Director Grigori Volya

 

[Masada]

Comrades! Do you love Hong with all your heart? Did you love watching Hong: Youth? Did you imagine yourself frolicking through the hills singing praises to God? Well this might be your lucky day comrades! We are casting for a new feature film and require REAL patriots to star in our picture!

Only applicants living within the Nanjing Urban Area will be considered - this is a NANJING based production.

This is not paid work but does include a prison camp release (if applicable), food and a reduced number of hours of labour requirement. This is rated as “light, possibly inoculating bourgeois values, must be regularly checked for ideological deviations, work”.

We are looking for WOMEN and MEN who SPEAK FAR NORTHERN CHINESE and be of FAR NORTHERN CHINESE DESCENT and LOOK LIKE FAR NORTHERN CHINESE but are not FAR NORTHERN CHINESE.

Note: You must be able to supply a clear security assessment as proof of good standing with the government. Unfortunately spies and sabouteurs will be shot.

Payment details: 3 meals a day (includes meat on Friday and rice three times a week) and twelve hours of labour six days a week in a light labour setting.

Please only apply if you are genuinely of FAR NORTHERN CHINESE descent.

Any gender, strictly aged 30 to 40 living NANJING includes rehabilitation camps, reform camps, ideological reform camps, etc. If in doubt please still write in to inquire.

***

Far northern neighbours who live in perpetual twilight and snow! This is an opportunity to holiday in the warmth of beautiful and welcoming China!

We are casting for a new Sino-Pacifica Film! This film will show the warm relations that have always existed between our two countries. You will not be depicted as villains or thugs or merchants! But instead as noble friends of glorious China!

This is a paid holiday where you will enjoy the highest quality of accomodation in Nanjing and engage in light work six days a week to pay your way. Afterwards you will be sent on a tor of the country, all expenses paid.

We are looking for REAL SLAVIC PEOPLE who SPEAK RUSSIAN and have YELLOW HAIR and HIGH CHEEKBONES for this film.

Note: you must provide medical evidence that you are not an alcoholic, gambler or lust affected. China has very serious laws about the consumption of alcohol, the throwing of dice or use of cards and pre-martial and, in some cases, post-martial coitus.

Payment details: 3 meals a day of a western style, accomodation in the finest establishment in Nanjing and bodyguards, translators, minders and other misc entourage.

 

[Decamper]

Spoiler Coalition Demands :

1. The Ottoman State will immediately and completely withdraw from Persia.

2. The Ottoman State will relinquish sovereigty over united Kurdistan to Kurdish authorities as designated by coalition powers.

3. The Ottoman State will relinquish sovereignty over united Armenia to Armenian authorities as designated by coalition powers.

The Ottoman State confirms its submission to the above demands.

 

[JohannaK]

Peace in our time.

 

[tobiisagoodboy]

Italy happily also agrees to this and hopes for more prosperous trade and peace in the region.

 

[JohannaK]

Treaty of Odessa​

EGYPT, INDOSTAN, and RUSSIA, these powers united being henceforth defined as the Coalition Powers, alongside

ARMENIA, KURDISTAN, and PERSIA, these powers henceforth defined as the Liberated Nations, on the one part;

And the OTTOMAN STATE, on the other part;

Following the armistice conceded by the Coalition Powers unto the Ottoman State for the prompt negotiation of a Peace Treaty,

Following the firm wishes of the Coalition Powers that the state of war mediating between them and the Ottoman State should be terminated and replaced with a durable peace, and

Following the stern resolve of the Coalition Powers that any peace settlement must conclusively settle the issues that led to the onset of war, as outlined in the Joint Statement of 1894 and in the Declaration of War of the Coalition Powers on the Ottoman State of 1st January 1895,

The HIGH CONTRACTING PARTIES, through their properly appointed Plenipotentiaries and representatives, HAVE AGREED AS FOLLOWS:

From the coming into force of this treaty, the state of war will terminate,

From that moment and subject to the provisions of the present Treaty, official relations will be established between the Coalition Powers and the Ottoman State.

I. The Ottoman State shall effect a complete withdrawal from the internationally recognised territory of Persia, and relinquish all assets unlawfully acquired during its occupation.

II. The Ottoman State recognises the independent sovereignty of Armenia and will subsequently withdraw all forces from recognised Armenian territory, as well as relinquishing all of its public assets in Armenia to its sovereign administration.

III. The Ottoman State recognises the independent sovereignty of Kurdistan and will subsequently withdraw all forces from recognised Kurdish territory, as well as relinquishing all of its public assets in Kurdistan to its sovereign administration.

IV. Persia will, in the same spirit of peace of this Treaty and to prevent future bloodshed and internal strife, cede its Kurdish provinces to Kurdistan.

V. The Coalition Powers will verify the implementation of articles I-IV and supervise the restoration or transition to sovereign authorities in the Liberated Nations, and commit to preserve their integrity and independence.

The present Treaty, in Russian, Punjabi, and Arabic, shall be ratified. In case of divergence, the Russian text shall prevail.

This Treaty shall be considered to come into force upon ratification from all Coalition Powers on one side and from the Ottoman State on the other.

IN FAITH WHEREOF the Plenipotentiaries have signed the present Treaty.

Done at Odessa, the 5th day of February in 1895, in a single copy of which authorised copies will be distributed to each of the signatory powers.

Signed,
A.M. Kapoor, Minister Plenipotentiary and Ambassador to Russia
C.K. Singh, Minister Plenipotentiary