Separated at Birth: America and Drakia

[Born in the USSA]

So I have discovered this authors other WW3 epic on this site. I would ask on that thread but its long dead.Who are the combatants in that version of WW3? I assume all those nukes hitting the US in 2034 were Russian or Chinese but is that confirmed ?

Probably best to just send the author a DM

 

[Herucalmo]

(Sorry for the bump and the diatribe but I just had a crazy chain of logic just hit me)

Something darkly hilarious I've just thought of, in the heady early days of the Kobold regime bestriding the world and the first confused forays into what would become the Secret War, when Kobold supressed his domestic enemies in the Patriotist and the moribund old aristocracy and pruned them into acceptably obedient organs of the Kobold junta, is that until the fully-formed creation of the Militarist clubs Ulysses had been able to outflank all his enemies by always tacking to more ideological Societism and more extremism then they. And in his pre-Militarist monopoly on far Societism he could then be surprisingly flexible, as he and his faction defined what extreme Societism even was and what voice it gave to whatever policy came up as seen with him blatantly poaching old Decker's Bonded Labor rationalizations. What this means is that for a time Kobold and his actions was the ideology of Societism as much as "Saint" Stoker's were in the later half of his rule. And Kobold's party line is that Drakia would abandon Lindsey's old kitchen sink approach to foreign policy in favor of systemic organization for world Societism- through the Pact of Blood and other allies and eventually through the "mingling of the pinnacles of the races" and the rise of the one final Master Race to rule them all.

With that in mind and with the later non-militarist best korea bunker mentality and the apocalyptic salvation of the Militarists not quite taking hold yet, how was united global societism supposed to come together if it wasn't through being a "pure" fascist city on a hill for the world to flock too as the "machine state order" crumbles, or through the holy cleansing of fire and rods from god? Well were are the fertile grounds that Societism can grow and yet has not really expanded to? The only other places that had meaningful Societist politics were the old dominions of Australia and New Zealand, who were surrounded by the evil and rapacious hordes of Southest Asia and the Pacific Islands that clearly forced them to betray Societism and ally with America.

And yet as Societism is master over the old world of Europe(citation needed) and """new""" world of darkest Africa (citation needed) clearly Asia is where Kobomd needs to look to further amalagate industrial resources and populations to the empire's banner. Which also belays a more practical and materialistic reason, in that even before the Secret War Drakia was hopelessly outnumbered.

So this is all well and good but Drakia's best hopes for "eugenically superior Asians" died with the Japanese Civil War and the dissolution of what could have been an eastern Drakia into the weakened home isles and lackeys of India and America esposing republican democracy and multicultural equality. And then the Great Han Republic gets shivved in the gut by Situationism. Now Japan is fine ideologically speaking, and can be easily recontexualized in a Societist lens as the Honorary Japanese betray their pure superiors and are in turn betrayed by the "base handicapper masses" of non-east asians that Drakia would undoubtably put in racist caricatures as "black" ape-like subhumans. But what Drakia really desperately needed was what the old Japanese Empire had, what was now Free China. With China's resources Drakia could finally start fully explioting the resources of Russian Central Asia and Siberia, snag Afghanistan on the sly, and have much greater population parity with the AfD.

Situationism is the almost perfect total reject and inversion of Societism, it isn't just anti-Sociestist it in many ways is anti-Societism under one grand banner. So when the racist Drakian empire hears the bits and pieces of poorly translated news about Situationist China the total matter anti-matter implosion of homo ludens and homo drakensis leaves Free China an opaque void, with the Drakians completely stupified and and as unable to grasp any firm details of the new China as the proverbial blind man and the elephant's trunk. Even in the AfD there was almost certainly constantly straw-grasping and Kremlinology around Xian as surely there are "adults in the room" and this or that personality is the real power behind the throne and secretly laying the ground for American liberal capitalist democracy, or French national republicanism, or Indian state capitalist democracy, all for a truly embarassingly long time. How much moreso for the terrifyingly motivated reasoning of the Societists trying to work backwards to find someone they haven't alienated yet and seeing Free China reject the Jakarta Pact and declare official neutrality?

I can see it now, an explosion of orientalist specticle and racist Sinotology about the ancient dynasties of China and the "civilizing influence" of Britain and Russia and Japan and need of China to move past her current "archaic stages of development" to first allow the creation of differentiated "eugenically inferior handicappers" (Situationism) and "eugenically superior Custodians" (the secret Christian cabal that totes exists). With all this willful misthinking what kind of Polemarch wouldn't want to be the one to wedge apart their enemies and make a grand Nixonian diplomatic breakthrough with Free China?

I'm imagining the first Situation being the official presentation and accreditation of the Drakian envoy to a well-known and highly respected leader of the prostitution union playing the "Monkey King" role with the really rather astonishly poor understanding of Chinese by said envoy leading to a later formal apology by his government to the "Monkey King's concubine". And then ending with the climatic speech of the first Free Chinese consul admiring Drakia's "ancient western traditions" and "the harmonius dog-like taming of the Bonded" with an impromptu nod to one of the greatest ancient western sages on men and dogs and openly masterbating Diogenes-style. With the surprise post-climax kicker being to have allowed the Drakians to create an "Imperial Company of the Orient" to exclusively charter expositions and exchanges between the two and then buying up the debts of thousands of "model Servitors" to serve as chain dogs for Chinese Muslims and south Chinses minorities, and then setting them all free and swindling all the accounts set up in the greatest ride anglos have ever been taken on since the South Seas Company.

It's probably purging the orientalists and burying any hint of Drakian failure that let the Militarists finally get their foot in the door.

 

[Ephraim Ben Raphael]

Chapter 40

The dictator of Burma was a populist figure.

He lavished attention on his home district where he was genuinely well liked, and generally represented the interests of the ethnic Bamar majority in his country. Parts of the country that voted for him received the lion’s share of government funding and attention, while those that did not were left to languish, and he affiliated his regime as closely as possible to the Burmese national identity and traditional Bamar culture, equating criticism of his government with criticism of the nation whenever he could. To be sure, Burma held regular elections and had an active opposition, presenting itself to the world as just democratic enough that its authoritarianism never drew any response worse than simple criticism from New York, Dublin, or Rio de Janeiro. To be sure, those elections were either won by the dictator because the opposition was boycotting them, or won by the dictator because they had been rigged, and he followed India’s diplomatic lead while givinge New Delhi the economic concessions it wanted, but his government was stable and there was at least a large minority of Burmese who genuinely liked the guy.

When the Last War began, Burma joined the rest of the Alliance for Democracy in declaring war on the Pact… and then announced that due to the danger that Drakian bioweapons might already be spreading through the AfD it would be imposing incredibly strict anti-biowarfare measures that largely prevented it from offering more than token support to the war effort. The regime chose to do this for three reasons; there actually was some early evidence suggesting the possibility that something like Stone Dogs existed, Burma figured that the Alliance’s victory was inevitable without its help and wanted to use the threat of bioweapons as an excuse to avoid sacrificing Burmese lives and treasure if it didn’t have to, and because the dictator personally was a germaphobe and a bit of a hypochondriac. These extreme measures- derided by many as unnecessarily radical at the time- plus the fact that the Stone Dogs hadn’t yet spread to Burma, and a relatively light bombardment (the Pact targeted the capital at Mawlemyine and the major military complex at Yangon, but otherwise didn’t consider Burma a priority), meant that it was one of the best positioned non-Pact nations to address the Stone Dogs pandemic.

Burma wasn’t the only country where luck and swift action paid dividends.

A Burmese soldier stops a car at a border checkpoint, instructing it turn back.​

La Plata identified and took steps to respond to the Stone Dogs outbreak before anyone else, freezing domestic and international travel and limiting its participation in the war to air and naval support that had little direct contact with non-Platineans. Scandinavia, which hadn’t been a priority during the Stone Dogs deployment imposed similar controls. It was those two countries who were responsible for the creation of tests capable of identifying asymptomatic or not-yet-symptomatic carriers of the different viruses, enabling them to successfully prevent major outbreaks within their borders. Both nations promptly shared their medical breakthroughs, but for much of the world it was too late.

In France and Germany even the emergency mass-manufacture of tests could do little more than identify just how much their counter-biowarfare measures had failed.

The Stone Dogs killed in waves, beginning with a surge of deaths across continental Europe in the spring of 1982. The planned spring offensive was halted as national governments across the free world rapidly reassessed priorities and shifted their attention from the physical war to saving as many of their citizens as they could. Strategic bombing of Drakia and the rest of the Pact continued, but invasions would have to wait.

The OTL Spanish Flu killed around 30 million people and had a mortality rate that ranged from less than one percent to close to ten. The Black Death killed between 75 million and 200 million people and had a mortality rate of around 50%. The only real historical pandemic that can be compared in magnitude to the triple threat of the Stone Dogs was the spread of European diseases to the New World, killing 80-95% of Native American population. But that was over a period of a century and a half, and there is no historical precedent to the number of the Stone Dogs’ victims.

People died. And died. And died. And died.

A mass grave for Stone Dogs victims in the early days of the outbreak in Brazil, before they started burning bodies. While things were bad in Brazil, the Brazilian government survived, and with Platinean help eventually took control of the situation.​

One wave would end and there would be a period of relative respite, then it would begin again.

Of course, the invisible enemy was not unopposed. Medical professionals, civil and military authorities, the public and private sectors, ordinary people, scientists…. They rallied to care for the sick, raced to develop treatments, risked themselves to enforce quarantines, to deliver essential goods and services, and to maintain the complex threads that held up modern civilization. Nowhere did the death toll actually reach the 90% that the Noble Race’s best scientists had predicted for the Stone Dogs’ best-case scenario. Nowhere did countries stop doing everything they could to avenge the dead, for as long as they had the capabilities to do so and governments to authorize the strikes.

Ireland had local outbreaks- including a particularly nasty one in Dublin- but with Scandinavian help tracked the infected and kept the Stone Dogs confined to the areas where they had initially appeared. Lithuania- where the junta had made the phrase “army with a country” as literal as possible- used its unparalleled control over the population to manage the emergency even as its strategic location between Russia and Germany saw it subjected to devastating strategic attacks. Hungary and Poland- the other two states of the eastern border- were far less fortunate. There, war damage interfered badly with their response to the Stone Dogs, and members of their civil and military leadership were infected. In Poland it was the General of the Polish Air Force; Bartosz Janosik, who stepped up as leader of a military government focused on defending the country’s mountainous west and south, essentially abandoning the devastated lands east of the Dniestr river. In Hungary one Colonel Csanád ran an emergency government in Pressburg where a handful of surviving parliamentarians had fled Budapest.

At the heart of the Alliance strategy for holding Europe, France and Germany were priority targets for Drakian orbital strikes and strategic bombings. Civilians fled major cities subjected to kinetic, chemical, biological, incendiary, and conventional bombardment, spreading the Stone Dogs as they went. Efforts by European militaries to mobilize their armies and transport the personnel and equipment they needed for conventional offensives against the enemy only made a mockery of local quarantine efforts. As the viruses swept their populations law & order crumbled and the French and German governments fell apart. In France local and regional authorities survived in places (the French overseas departments were also unaffected) bereft of national leadership, but in Germany over three quarters of the population died, either from the Stone Dogs or other causes from the war.

Britain wasn’t targeted as badly as the Alliance’s actual European members for bombardment, but it did an even worse job responding to the Stone Dogs. British health experts asserted that the diseases hadn’t reached their island when they had and focused on external quarantine instead of internal controls. Two-thirds of Britons died as the White Island descended into lawless anarchy.

Contaminated by chemical and biological weapons, gutted by fire and conventional damage, decimated by the Stone Dogs, bereft of state authority, and abandoned by survivors seeking safety elsewhere, many major cities in Germany and Britain were left all but abandoned.​

In the end Scandinavian aid resulted in the creation of a small military government in Pomerania under the German Vice-Admiral Luca Haeusser (Haeusser, a Berliner, commented that the Danish firebombing of Berlin back in 1880 had been finally atoned for), but the rest of the German Confederation lacked any sort of governance. Ireland created a similar safe haven for British refugees who tested uninfected on the Isle of Mann. The Scandinavians helped local authorities in Brittany organize a provisional French government, and with the help of Stockholm it began trying to regain control of the French metropole and organize a defense against the Societists.

But by that point there was little they could do.

The Pact of Blood had suffered as well through 1982 and into 1983 as the Alliance for Democracy threw everything it could at them, and as Stone Dogs outbreaks burned through parts of Rhomania and Japan- both of which were insufficiently vaccinated and had their healthcare systems disrupted by war damage (Japan in particular). Gradually the pressure on them eased as the viruses hamstrung the Allied war effort and Alliance governments either collapsed or turned all of their attention towards combating the pandemic. There were few surviving space bombers and even fewer with access to functioning logistics capable of repairing them, refueling them, rearming them, and all of the world’s major space ports had been destroyed. When the Empire struck back in the second half of 1983 the skies had been quiet for months and it believed that with 27% of its pre-war industry, a military reduced to 38% of its pre-war size, a handful of space bombers flying from a pair of partially repaired bases, and a single functioning space gun that remained hidden from the bombardment, it was powerful enough to roll over what little remained of its enemies.

The Drakian and Russian troops who advanced beyond their borders did so as battered units forced to rely on foraging enemy territory to supplement a logistic base that could only intermittently supply them with ammunition and fuel, let alone the many other demands of a modern army. With much of the country depopulated Germany was unable to offer meaningful resistance and those elements of the French state that survived largely disintegrated before the invaders. Lithuania fought to the death, so did Janosik’s men in Poland, but they lacked the numbers hold on their own- Scandinavia at least smashed a small Russian offensive into Finland and Karelia. Hungary weighed its options as Drakian forces advanced from former Rumania, and surrendered to spare what was left of Hungary’s civilian population further suffering. The emergency government of the Czech State- already coping with the loss of a third of its population and barely in control of Prague- threw the American ambassador out a window when he tried to convince them to fight, and presented his body to the Russians. In exchange for a crate of vaccines, the promise of more, and some help restoring order, the Czechs became Drakia’s newest martial race and their country the Empire’s newest princely state.

By the start of 1983 the Allies in mainland Europe had fallen back to three pockets- Italy which had been badly weakened but not destroyed by the Stone Dogs, a buffer zone held by the Scandinavians in northern Germany south of Denmark, and the quarantine zone in Holland behind the water line defended by the Dutch military, a small Irish expeditionary force, and the combined survivors from a variety of French, American, and even German units. The plan was simply to hold out until Drakia’s logistics failed- its forces could keep themselves armed and fed for long, not with the damage to their industry- and then push back. It was not yet clear how bad things were in the United States and there was hope that America would be able to pull itself back together and send help, or China would intervene with its new wonder weapon. Imperial attempts to break into these pockets failed repeatedly, inspiring Colonel Ameen al-Fareed- commander of the relic US forces in Holland and a well-read man- to taunt the Societist commander with the message “You can’t break the machine” after one successful defense.

The Hollandse Waterlinie is a network of natural and artificial waterways that- when certain low-lying areas have been deliberately flooded- isolates most of Holland (including Amsterdam) behind a line of water-based defences. While of questionable utility in a modern war, this traditional defense proved effective at enabling the Dutch government to quarantine Holland from the Stone Dogs, and halted the advance of the Drakian invaders who were operating under the burden of ineffective logistics and a shortage of heavy equipment.​

In South Asia ragged Drakian forces marched through an almost depopulated Iran and were heading for India, when Chinese atmospheric bombers broke through threadbare Imperial air defense and dropped thirteen atomic bombs on the advancing Noble Race troop concentrations, the supply depots they had established across Iran, the (often ad-hoc) bases that they had been operating from in Drakian Mesopotamia, and any major cities in Mesopotamia and Kurdistan that the Chinese felt hadn’t been hit hard enough during the opening stage of the war. Another bomber also reached Africa on a one-way mission to destroy the Empire’s sole remaining space gun. This effectively annihilated the Noble Race’s forces in the east and ended any chance of an invasion of India. It briefly appeared that China was going to engage in a general nuclear decimation of Drakia and Russia, but that ended when the Chinese reached out to the Pact of Blood to propose a truce.

The truth was that Free China was in turmoil.

The committee of surviving congressmen and military leaders that had assumed power was only just regaining control over the Stone Dogs outbreaks that continued to rage in major Chinese cities under military isolation. Millions of refugees were spilling in from Vietnam and the former Confederation of East Asia where the government had collapsed entirely, any of them potential carriers of Stone Dogs or one of the other biological weapons deployed by Russia and Japan. Damage from Societist WMDs had been severe- Japan had been successful at dumping chemical and biological weapons (various nerve agents and anthrax, mostly) into the headwaters of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers. The problem would eventually correct itself as the rivers flushed the contaminants into the Pacific, but in the short term the source for over a quarter of China’s drinking water was toxic. About a fifth of the Chinese population was dead, and the country’s military was badly hamstrung. They might be able to deploy their remaining arsenal of nuclear weapons against additional Pact targets, but they were incapable of actually exploiting any damage that those weapons were able to cause. The Situationists did not believe that peace with the hated Societists was possible- if nothing else they were convinced that too long of a peace would risk Drakia developing and using another Stone Dogs-esque weapon against them, and they were hungry for vengeance for their dead comrades- but they needed a pause to focus internally or they risked seeing the number of dead Chinese double or even triple. Unlike the Europeans they knew exactly how bad things were in America and were not expecting any help from that quarter. When they had more bombs, when they had pieced their infrastructure back together, when they had restored order, then they could avenge their dead.

The Archon didn’t know how badly off China was, but he knew that the Empire also needed time to finish off its enemies on other fronts, recover some industrial capability, and figure out how to copy Ruyi Jingu Bang before it could afford to face the other Country of the Dragon. The deal was struck, and joined immediately after by Burma, Tibet, and Thailand.

A Chinese atomic bomb destroying the Kurdish city of Riha.​

The armistice between China and the Pact of Blood was the key turning point to the Final War. Drakia had lost its last space gun, but its handful of functioning bombers ensured that it held orbital superiority over its remaining rivals. It used this advantage to break through the defenses protecting the Italian peninsula, securing the surrender of the Italian Republic. Scandinavia, Ireland, and the Netherlands were a tougher nut to crack- they refused to surrender in the face of continued space bomber strikes, and even if they had surrendered the Empire lacked the ability to occupy them. Grudgingly, Jeremy Dart offered them a deal; they would cede no territory and make no compromises on their sovereignty, but would recognize Drakia’s territorial gains elsewhere (France, Germany, most of Britain, Iran, etc.) withdraw from the increasingly defunct Alliance for Democracy, and make peace. Like China, they did not see a permanent peace as possible- Dart’s actions left little doubt that the Noble Race would ever be truly satisfied by anything short of total conquest- but they saw little chance that prolonging the war at this point would increase their odds of victory. Their independence and sovereignty secure for now, they dropped out of the war.

From that point forward there was only one remaining major campaign to the Final War.

The Invasion of America.

The United States had been the number one priority target for Societist bombardment even before the Stone Dogs swept through its population. 122 million Americans were dead (out of a total population, you will recall, of 299 million), most from the viruses but many from a laundry-list of other causes related to the war. The complex insitutions needed to maintain modern civilization had been cut through, disrupting the basic processes that kept American society functioning, and much of the North American continent had fallen into anarchy. Despite this, America was still in the war. CLO Annette Dufour and the Alliance COG operation on the Moon had taken over much of the task of organizing and directing surviving American (and other Alliance) military assets, and Secretary of Peace Sandra Karlik had been sworn in as Acting President to co-ordinate what remained of the civil authorities. Karlik’s embattled administration was headquartered in a bunker in a Long Island suburb that had escaped the sheer hell that had rained down on New York in the early stages of the war. It was a former housing project for Great Pacific War veterans called Tannhäuser Gate, and it was the target for the Societist invasion- long imagined in books and film- of the United States of America.

The invasion force itself was relatively unimpressive.

The United States Capitol in New York burning during the opening round of the Final War.​

Even without any war damage whatsoever the logistics of launching an invasion across the Atlantic would have been titanic for the Empire of Drakia; with its navy shredded, its aerospace force decimated, its army in tatters, and most of its industrial base reduced to rubble it was all but impossible. The token invasion force carried by what remained of the Imperial Navy, a miss-matched collection of civilian ships, and even a handful of captured Alliance vessels, was commanded by the young general Godfrey Knight (newly promoted as men above him were killed) whose career had never been particularly helped or hurt by his mother being the youngest daughter of Lindsey Stoker. Knight’s forces were small but elite- the 3rd Legion of the Imperial Drakian Marines anchored the invasion- White Citizens to a man, backed by the Empire’s handful of functioning space bombers and a few atmospheric aircraft with the range to reach North America from Drakian Spain. While Societist forces advancing into Europe were forced to subsist at least partly by looting supplies as they went (a strategy that failed them when they came up against organized opposition), the transatlantic invaders would need to acquire virtually all of their food, medicine, and even fuel from local sources once their initial supplies were exhausted. Knight’s mission was not to occupy all of America, it was to occupy the non-toxic parts of Long Island and defeat the American leadership based there.

It was a symbolic invasion, intended to demonstrate how weak America was and open the way to an advantageous peace.

The invaders reached the shore of Long Island with just enough supplies for a single serious battle, at the end of which they would either stand victorious or be forced to flee back to Spain. At sea they faced a handful of Coast Guard and US Navy ships, on land they faced a patchwork force of US Army, US Marines, National Militia, Home Guard, New York state and local police, and civilian irregulars. The Acting President had evacuated her cabinet (including a certain elderly ex-naval officer who had come out of retirement to advise her), but she herself refused to leave. Her speech, broadcast over the airwaves just before the start of the fighting, would enter into the annals of American history;

“My fellow Americans-

No.

My fellow free peoples…

We have lost much to the Dragon; and we will lose more yet.

The Dragon knows we cannot be allowed to stand tall again. Where free citizens think, neither slave nor master can comprehend. Where free citizens labor neither slave nor master can equal. And where the free people of the Earth fight, neither slave nor master can overcome.

The Dragon knows: he must snuff us out, now, or in a decade or a century or however long it takes, we will snuff him out. The Dragon must come now, and the Dragon will come now.

I cannot promise victory. I cannot even promise vengeance.

But I can promise you this:

The Dragon will come.

And we will fight.”

(She went on from there, but it’s always the beginning that people remember.)

American soldiers equipped with combat exoskeletons fighting in the Battle of the Tannhäuser Gate​

The Battle of the Tannhäuser Gate lasted for a little over seventy hours during which the Americans fought with a fury born of desperation to push the invaders back. General Knight lamented that these specific Americans could not be “salvaged” to the Aspirants at least, that men of such obvious ability should be so misled by the ideology of handicapping and their loyalty to the Machine State. In the end however, America’s ability to mobilize and transport forces to respond to the invasion had been crippled, and the Societists had aerospace support while they did not. The Acting President never surrendered, instead presumably perishing in the incendiary bombing of her headquarters. Drakia had captured Long Island and the rubble of the temporary capital at the Tannhäuser Gate, and now broadcast its demands for surrender. While the Empire waited for a response it continued to use its handful of remaining space bombers to strike at the surviving civilian population across the continent.

They waited for about a week, as the remnants of the American state tried to figure out who had the authority to either vow determinedly to fight on or to grudgingly capitulate. Then a man appeared on the airwaves.

He was an old man, a wrinkled centenarian with liver-spotted skin and small tufts of white hair around his ears. He could only walk short distances with the aid of a cane (he refused to ever use a walker, and only consented to a wheelchair when he was out of the public eye), and had been the recipient of quite a bit in the way of medical interventions to keep him going in the years before the war. But when he spoke you could see the fire in his eye, hear the iron in his voice, and witness the ghost of the old charisma that had once made him one of the most powerful men in the world.

Arthur Klein, former Fleet Admiral, former advisor to the Imperial Drakian Navy, former commander for the forces of the Pan-European Jewish Homeland, former US Congressman, former advisor to the Acting President, oft a contender for the US Presidency but never a President himself, addressed the nation.

He began by lauding the sacrifices of Acting President Sandra Karlik and all the men and women who had fought so hard at the Tannhäuser Gate, and the sacrifices of all of the other American servicemen, women, and others who had fallen in the war so far. He mourned over a hundred million dead civilians- siblings, parents, and friends- and observed that America had never wanted this war, had not started it, and had only ever desired peace.

“But is time to spare the American people further suffering.”

Klein announced that he was declaring himself “Caesar of the new American Empire”, a Societist government for America, and suing for peace with the Empire of Drakia and the Pact of Blood. If Drakia would cease its hostilities against them and provide the American Empire with the ability to manufacture its own Stone Dogs vaccines, then it was prepared to “make accommodations”- by which he meant surrender. He concluded by acknowledging that a Societist government might seem frightening to many Americans, but proposed that any living Americans must be Superior by definition of having survived the war and the plague, and promised that as Caesar he would defend the freedom of all Americans to “succeed or fail based on their own merits”.

A different Drakian general might have rejected out of hand any peace offer short of unconditional surrender and in particular any offer from Klein, who had betrayed the Empire during the Great Patriotic War. Knight choose instead to pass it along to the Archon with his personal recommendation that Drakia accept, and after some consideration Dart approved it. The Noble Race was in no shape to actually try to invade and occupy all of the (former? Nah) United States, and even someone as fanatical as the Archon recognized the need to pause, consolidate, and recover after the pounding it had taken.

And so, on August 8, 1984, the Empire of Drakia and America (represented by the “American Empire”) signed an armistice, and Drakia handed over the instructions and biological samples needed to make Stone Dogs vaccines.

The actual peace treaty- making concessions of sovereignty and territory- would take time to be signed, the treaties with La Plata, Brazil, and the other Alliance odds-and-ends in which they made few concessions other than recognizing the Pact’s new territorial acquisitions and puppet governments, would take even longer. Dufour and the Lunar holdouts were still fighting, as were half-a-hundred groups of guerillas, partisans, and die-hards. Klein’s American Empire controlled only a small part of New England close to its capital at Plymouth and its legitimacy was rejected by two other major factions who claimed that they were the real government of America. Drakia’s infrastructure, economy, military, and administration had gaping holes in them, the deaths of so many high-ranking figures meant that quite a few people who had formerly been very junior (including a number of Honorary Whites) now occupied important offices, it had alienated its allies, convinced its enemies that anything other than a temporary peace to rearm was impossible, and dramatically over-extended itself, but none of that prevented Jeremy Dart from declaring victory from his Jerusalem bunker. The Alliance was or was about to become defunct, the American bogeyman had surrendered, the Chinese menace was looking inward, the Indian enemy was in anarchy, and the Country of the Dragon stood ascendant as the global hegemon.

“Today,” the Archon announced, “is the first day of the Final Society.”

The Final Society lasted for almost exactly fourteen months.

The next chapter will have a map of the post-war world, we'll also go into the damage caused by the war, the ongoing global ecological disaster (a long time coming, but the last war pushed it over the edge), the start of the anthropocene mass extinction, and if we have time the failure of the Final Society.​

 

[Whiteshore]

“Today,” the Archon announced, “is the first day of the Final Society.”

The Final Society lasted for almost exactly fourteen months.

Hopefully, the fourteen months ends with a Chinese nuclear weapon vaporizing Archon Dart. ensuring his legacy is confined to a shadow in a wall in Aurica.

 

[Ameroboto]

Me:

 

[karatachi]

Hopefully, the fourteen months ends with a Chinese nuclear weapon vaporizing Archon Dart. ensuring his legacy is confined to a shadow in a wall in Aurica.

No, he'll be killed by a Drakian before China even finishes recovering.

 

[Whiteshore]

No, he'll be killed by a Drakian before China even finishes recovering.

That would be even more karmic than China nuking him.

 

[pattontank12]

I swear I saw a Gears of War reference. Also Klien you bastard...

 

[Whiteshore]

So, what became of the members of President Karlik's cabinet who were evacuated along with Klein? Currently lying in mass graves after being "shot while trying to escape" when Klein became Caesar of America? Or are they leading the two rival governments?

 

[theclerk]

Per EBR over at SV in regards to Klein:

The upper echelons of the US government were hit badly (the Drakian ambassador was a carrier and managed to meet in person with a number of important people including the President), but Klein was unimportant enough not to move in those circles and already taking precautions against getting sick before the war because he knew his age made him vulnerable. He was important enough as an elder statesman and a bit of a legend, to become an advisor to the Secretary of Peace (a position of mid-level importance- think Health and Human Services+ Education) later once much of the leadership had been decapitated.

So from the looks of things, Klein wasn't responsible for most of the federal government getting sick, he just got extremely lucky again and had the foresight due to be at risk for most sicknesses due to his age.

 

[Simeon]

So, what became of the members of President Karlik's cabinet who were evacuated along with Klein? Currently lying in mass graves after being "shot while trying to escape" when Klein became Caesar of America? Or are they leading the two rival governments?

They were made in (implicit) consent of Klein as a part of his plan.

 

[Whiteshore]

I know that Klein is unlikely to have his Empire win, but in the event it does, what would Klein's Empire look like in terms of its ideology?

 

[Falecius]

Oh, Klein, you bastard.
(Wait, the general in charge of the invasion is his grandson).

 

[Deleted member 96212]

“Today,” the Archon announced, “is the first day of the Final Society.”

The Final Society lasted for almost exactly fourteen months.

Hopefully, the fourteen months ends with a Chinese nuclear weapon vaporizing Archon Dart. ensuring his legacy is confined to a shadow in a wall in Aurica.

I disagree, I'm darkly looking forward to Drakia finally eating its own.

While I'm sure many people are upset over the AfD's loss, personally I think it just makes Drakia's final fall all the sweeter. After achieving their war aims, after completing their apocalyptic, Turner Diaries esque race war, the thing that will do them in will be their own moral bankruptcy.

 

[Falecius]

I know that Klein is unlikely to have his Empire win, but in the event it does, what would Klein's Empire look like in terms of its ideology?

I think the ideology is "Faking Societism without even trying to implement it".

 

[Wertmon505]

Oh, Klein, you bastard.
(Wait, the general in charge of the invasion is his grandson).

Wait a minute. does that mean the shit he just pulled is EBR's "Klein's Last Act?". Considering the US was still being bombed he may have just spared the rest of the country from further bombardment.

 

[Simeon]

I think the ideology is "Faking Societism without even trying to implement it".

I thank then that we've come up with the concepts of dog whistles.

"We must remain vigilant as the agents of the Machine State plot to undermine the supremacy of the Society!"

 

[viper23]

“But is time to spare the American people further suffering.”

Go in peace, Emperor of the dead and the betrayed. May God give you a fitting end.

 

[Falecius]

Quick thought: will most of the surviving Free states allow polygamy (those who don't already) to accelerate demographic recovery? I assume that, even if Stone Dogs are gender blind, the overall losses must be fairly skewed toward males.

 

[Mister Abbadon]

I sense neither sibling will survive this.