Here we go, the first half of the final update before we start Volume II and the new thread! I was going to do two different updates, but I figured I could easily say everything I needed in just one nice summary of where we are so far. I will probably go ahead and create the Pinnacle Future thread within the next day or two, so keep your eyes peeled and don't forget to sub to the new thread when it does go live! Sorry it's taken so long to get these last few chapters out, but when you get a taste of what I have been planning FOR MONTHS in Vol II, I think you'll all be excited. I'll also be proof-reading and illustrating this chapter ASAP.
And so we come to a close of our studies of the Old Times. While the war in South America would continue rage for years, and Europe and Asia fell to the forces of violence and destruction yet again, that is a study for another time, a second volume of the history of the universe as we know it. Historians often will make a strong argument that time almost started over during the 1930s and 1940s, to a degree unseen since the Birth of Christ. A new era had arrived, the Birth of the Atom. It was the age of nuclear armaments, land battleships, jet planes, the Congo Sea, phage therapy, the wonders and monstrosities concocted by men in white coats in sterile rooms built upon the suffering of millions. The world's billions watched and waited and prayed for sanity to rule, for the endless suffering of the past century to be forgotten. And over it all sat the dictators of the world, be they Anglo-Saxon Pinnacle Men, devout Servants of the Pope, Caesar loyalists, Chinese warlords, or Indian revolutionaries. The 1930s began an era of hyper-activity on the world stage. Whereas before, in times past, countries would move slowly and conflicts usually experienced a slow burn before erupting, the Pinnacle Future would see an era of chaos, instability, and rabid warmongering by all factions involved. In the following paragraphs, it will be the responsibility of this author to showcase the few key moments that spurred on the new era of world history.
- THE AMERICAS -
The Republican Union of the late 1930s was in a unfortunate position. Operation Manifest Climax had backfired following the Neutrality Pact's Sunday punch on Point Pierce before the invasion was ready. The Supreme Marshal of the Grand Army of the Republic, Ambrose Jansen, had been purged in the fall of 1936 in the face of lackluster offensive operations that did little to please the bloodthirsty President Joe Steele. Acme Ashton, the so-called "Torchboy of Canada" in the Great World War, had risen to the occasion, but the elderly man was nearing 80 years and wanted nothing more than a quiet retirement. He would watch with millions of others as the Panama Canal was seized by the Pact and demolished with heavy explosives, crippling the economy of the region and triggering an economic depression across the country. Despite the efforts of the Banking Clan to keep face and talk up the war effort, many were taking their banknotes and converting them to gold and silver and preparing for the worst. In 1937, a secret defoliating agent was deployed by the ORRA Torchboys, the elite troopers placed in charge of eradicating the Amazon rain forest and the guerrillas that hid withing it. This defoliant, code-named "Black Bliss," had the unintentional effect of joining the northward winds and formed a hundred foot-tall wall of ash and poison that swept across Old Mexico. As a future Prophet, William Graham, accompanied his friend Andrew, soon to be an Apostle, south to Metropolis to help Andrew's family, the two men would see the riotous and anarchic nature of life in the wartime mega-city. Farmers and ranchers and miners and ordinary folk were overwhelming the city and law enforcement as they desperately tried to escape the brutal and deadly ash clouds. The valley wherein Metropolis was located shielded much of the city from its effects, but the storms continued north all the way to southern Texas and even the swamplands near New Antioch, where it thankfully bogged down and dissipated. Unfortunately, it dissipated into the water and wildlife, causing death and mutations in the local fauna.
Philadelphia, in mid-1937, knew full-well that Acme Ashton was on his way to Steele's ash-heap if he didn't do something quickly. Acme Ashton knew this. As his forces pressed further into South America, the successes there were made negligible by the ongoing crisis in Cuba, where Inferior laborers and political prisoners were attempting to set up an Infee republic. When Steele took the drastic action of signing Executive Order 12, following the seizure of the Panama Canal, and nationalized the Holy Order of the Sons of Tobias, the winds of change were finally blowing on the Cuban battlefield. HOST was one of the most elite and highly-trained private paramilitary units in the entire world and consisted exclusively of the many sons and grandsons of the Blind Christian Gentleman, Mr. Tobias. They were lead by Howard Lovecraft, the formerly insane seer of the Tobias Institute, as having a Tobiason lead HOST was considered too much of a national security risk and devoid of the checks and balances the Union lacked in its leadership but had, in abundance, with its bureaucratic nightmare of a political body and military. The loyalty to the Union was actually unquestionable, rivaled only by their loyalty to their own blood-brothers. HOST had never been used in an active war zone, but they had all been training for this moment, and each Tobiason considered his life the property of the Republican Union and Jehovah. In the summer of 1937, the Holy Order deployed in Cuba, landing at Point Pierce, still a stronghold of Union power on the island. Using their own self-funded weapons and equipment, and chanting their Enochian hymns, they declared Cuba to be the site of a black flag operation, meaning all Inferiors found resisting would instantly be executed.
Inferiors who failed to take up arms would be boarded onto prison barges and sold at auction in New Antioch around the clock to the Economic Clans. It was an ironic twist of fate to see men such as Huey Long, proprietor of the Kingfish Supermarket chain, bidding on human beings in what had formerly been New Orleans, the slaving capital of the Old South. But these weren't "slaves," at least, according to the well-heeled men in white suits promenading the cages of Inferiors with their lady-friends and business colleagues. These were "indentured Infees," now sole property of the Clans and companies which purchased them. ORRA would no longer rent them out, using Cuba as a base of operation. Keeping so many Infees together was deemed to be to great a risk now, so it was now the responsibility of the individual companies and corporations to corral and lock away their Voidlings when not needed for shampoo testing, medical research, or general and varied labor. There was a second reason for this grand "close-out" sale by ORRA in the late 1930s to early 1940s, and that second reason was the looming prospect of millions of Inferiors currently awaiting conquering in South America. Most of North America's Inferior population had been killed by the Cleansing Month and by spaying and neutering subsequent generations to keep their numbers in check. One of the most desirable reasons for companies to buy, buy, buy during the "Great Inferior Fire Sale" at the dawn of the Pinnacle Future was that all Inferiors currently listed in the S.I.N. Number database spoke English. The South Americans would very much be a Spanish-speaking lot, and ORRA would be needed to beat and whip understanding into the untold hordes of foreign prisoners.
But for the every-day Yankee in the late 1930s and early 1940s, at least north of the Black Bliss Dustbowl, life was still looking decent. The Destiny Road still connected the country, free land and government contracts were still ripe for the picking in the young states of Old Canada, and Johnny Gamble's Confederation of the Carolinas continued to exist as a quaint escape from the everyday mundane lives of wartime America. In places like Barnumsburg or Boston, aside from occasional reports of the neighbor boy from down the street being KIA in South America, life was still moving along. The regional layout of the GAR made sure local Legions fought in their territory, so most northern units had yet to deploy in South America until they were slowly marched south in the 1940s as the war picked up steam. When Eduist Brazil joined the fray in 1938, following the collapse of Gran Colombia, massively expanding the area of operations, it was clear to all Americans that the war was far from over and many more of their sons and daughters would fall in combat before victory could be achieved.
In Gran Colombia, the government was virtually nonexistent by late 1937, and Presidente Rolando Pliego was nowhere to be seen, possibly burned up by the Black Bliss and the Torchboys or perhaps lurking in a bunker somewhere hoping to live a few years on canned beans and boiled piss. The Gran Colombian parliament was, however, relocated to the much safer Peru. A military junta had been ruling Peru since the Lima Coup of 1891 and its subsequant 16-and-a-half purged generalissimos. For now, Juan Martin Freixa was the Atlas trying to keep the Neutrality Pact from falling, and his men seemed to have rallied around him in their noble crusade to prevent the eradication of their people, race, and history at the hands of the monstrous tyranny of the Republican Union. While Gran Colombia was a complete disaster and the forests were burning bright as day in the muggy southern nights, the Union was having far from a good time with the war, and hopes in Lima still focused on the idea that the Union could simply be exhausted and brought to terms. In a period of peace, Peru and what might remain of the the Pact could possibly lobby a foreign power to assist them in curtailing any further Yankee expansionism. The advent of the Great European Schism of 1934 made this feat more difficult, however, as roughly half the population of the Pact favored the Supercatholics, seeing them as an answer to Yankee fascism, and the other percentage favored the more moderate and modern Avignon Papacy and Caesar. Even in the face of complete destruction, Generalissimo Freixa worried that his Pact could eat itself through internal dissent caused by the divided papacy. Further complicating matters was Brazil's "People's Pope," the rabidly charismatic Pope Stefano. Despite the fact that the Beutelists and the Pact had fought shadow wars against each other during the aftermath of the Great World War, the Pact was calling upon and receiving Brazilian military aide, first in the form of ships and weaponry, and later in the form of actual troops beginning in 1939.
Brazil, operating under its bizarre Eduist philosophy, was now being ruled by Reynaldo Edu's successor and right-hand man, Tito Branco, an aging revolutionary with a full head of white hair. It was suspected by many that, in the event of his retirement or death, the new and wildly popular People's Pope Stefano would actually assume the mantle of emergency power and declare the country to be an Eduist theocracy, as none of Branco's adjutants seemed to hold a candle to Stefano's popularity. Gran Colombia would hold out till early 1937, thanks to the bravery and sacrifice of it citizens, and guerrillas would tough-out Black Bliss and forest fires to continually make life for Americans there a living hell. When its collapse was obviously near, Brazil's Eduist People's Army began to march west to meet their new Anglo-Saxon foe. Brazil was accomplishing an amazing amount of industry in the late 1930s, but industry in Brazil was not infinite, and they could not make bricks without straw or guns without steel. As resources dwindled, American bombing runs became more frequent, and the lack of trade partners in the era of three popes put them at a great disadvantage, it became clear to many Brazilians that they should prepare for a war of attrition armed with their wits and farm tools. Using bows, pitchforks, pistols and scythes, they readied themselves for the bloodbath the 1940s would bring.
As can be seen in the above paragraphs, the war in the Americas was all-consuming. The main reason for the war drums in the first place had been the desire of Joe Steele to declare Manifest Destiny complete in the Americas. Russian Alyaska could likely be bought from the Loomies if the entirety of the American hemisphere flew the Star-Spangled Banner. He wanted to see a united hemisphere before his death, more than anything, and to go down as the greatest, strongest, most pure-blooded Anglo-Saxon Pinnacle Man who had ever lived. A modern Moses or Father Abe, uniting his people against a common foe and bringing about total American dominion and unending living space for the Pinnacle Man of the Pinnacle Future. By the 1940s, he began to worry that these dreams would be unachievable. That is, until a certain bald mad doctor watched the detonation of Blubber Boy on February 22, 1944, out in the wilderness of the New Sinai Desert, known in times past as the Mojave....
- EUROPE AND AFRICA -
Coming soon, from the growing tensions between the NHRE and Europa, the hillbilly ingenuity of the Congo Sea Project, wild times in post-Churchill Britannnic Union, to the godless Illuminists watching as the world eats itself...
- ASIA -
Coming Soon, learn about the Chinese warlords, Indian revolutionaries, what the Middle East has been up to, CoCorea, and what a certain American shogun family is doing in Holy Nippon...
