Meta: this thread is personal canon. Please feel free to post suggestions, critiques, and comments here. Posts that fault the thread for failing to adhere to canon are completely missing the central premise, and will most likely be ignored.
Theme: in my campaign, two superpower dictatorships are fighting each other (Azalin at Darkon vs. Drakov at Falkovnia). They have minor variations in methodology, with Darkon focusing more on "soft dictatorship" (mind control, social engineering, and opiates for the masses) and Falkovnia more on "hard dictatorship" (physical repression, favors-based planned economy, military-first values).
However, I also wanted to provide a possible backstory of a quashed libertarian movement, where the ideals of liberty and freedom are distant memories from a collapsed revolution. I'm examining ways of establishing a long-ago Enlightenment movement, led by scholars and academics, which was overrun by the entrenched nobility and autocrats. It's reasonable that a player might look at the Cold War between two dictatorships and ask "What happened to the forces of freedom?" This alt-canon is an attempt to explain Ravenloft's history as "Been there, tried that... it ended poorly".
Edits have been made throughout to correct smartphone-generated errors.
Alt canon: Enlightenment, extinguished
Alt canon: Enlightenment, extinguished
Last edited by HuManBing on Sun Oct 13, 2013 12:44 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Re: Alt canon: Enlightenment, extinguished
Enlightenment extinguished
Geographic overview:
The higher-tech domains, as written, are closer to an Enlightenment libertarian social structure, but they still feature entrenched hereditary rulers. Nortenmark (Lamordia), Marésotes (Dementlieu), Cosabel (Mordent), and Praquadie (Richemulot) all have remnants of this social revolution and their current leaders must superficially pay lip service to it. Falkovnia and Darkon were unaffected, owing to their more robust centralized organs of repression. Both superpowers dedicated significant resources to quash the movement (largely succeeding), while also jockeying for influence in the post-revolution status quo (unclear success). Falkovnia made significant cultural and political inroads to Nortenmark, resulting in a grudging ally and cultural sibling nation.
Political ideology: imagine if the scholars and academics came up with the Bill of Rights and the American Constitution in Nortenmark. Then imagine that they gained traction with mundane supporters (peasants, immigrants, disenfranchised nobility), as well as exotic supporters (gunsmiths, arms dealers, and a family of doppelgangers). Initially a popular movement with libertarian ideals, the conflict turns bloody as it clashes with local and neighboring oligarchs. In the end, Darkon and Falkovnia fight a proxy war to destroy the fledgling democratic movement, and the surviving revolutionaries go into hiding, die in obscurity, or infiltrate their societies quietly.
Personal Canon History:
Background: In my campaign, the Darkonian-Falkovnian war of 655 was long, nasty, and highly damaging to the prestige of both nations' leaders. Drakov failed to score the knockout punch he needed to overthrow "Trandamere" (as Azalin is known by codename in the Falkovnian leadership), and Azalin's reliance upon the Creeping Death undead hordes to repulse Falkovnia's legions caused many Darkonians to lose faith in their leadership's competency, and instigated widespread doomsday despair that the Grey Realm had overwhelmed Darkon's leadership. After the bruising campaign, both nations sought alternative ways to undermine the other, and did so in neighboring domains.
They got their chance in 680. A mixed-race weapon trader named Wojciech Ghatrosz grew tired of the meaningless bandit deals in Nova Vaasa, Darkon, Gundarak, Falkovnia, and Barovia, and he decided to end his career on an uncharacteristically idealistic note. He came to sympathize with a fledgling Nortenmark intellectual movement called the Eleuthiarchy ("rule by freedom") and had struck up a rapport with several academic and factional leaders. The movement started off as a petition for redress to the ruler, Volksprinz Rahlen Dresneß, and quickly gathered momentum to a full blown ideology focused on removing the hereditary ruler and devolving power to locally elected leaders.
Ghatrosz befriended the movement's three leaders, Gustav Anhalt, Klaus Febrich, and Ragnar Theophilis. Crucially, he also won the trust of a master gunsmith, the blind craftsman Amund von Ströhm, whose guns could forever destroy the nobility's monopoly on the use of force - provided they could be adapted for mass production. The Eleuthiarchy spread from town to city in Nortenmark and the response from the Volksprinz was both sluggish and heavy handed, further costing it popular support.
In 682, the Eleuthiarchy had gained the general support of the Nortenmark public. In an aside, Ghatrosz married Petra Leboyik, a 12 year old Nortenmark wife, some forty years his junior, in this year.
By 684, the revolution had spread to Cosabel, Praquadie, and Marésotes. In native Nortenmark, the Volksprinz was doomed when a cabinet meeting of his barons saw a fullscale political defection to a rival faction headed by Baron von Aubrecker.
Geographic overview:
The higher-tech domains, as written, are closer to an Enlightenment libertarian social structure, but they still feature entrenched hereditary rulers. Nortenmark (Lamordia), Marésotes (Dementlieu), Cosabel (Mordent), and Praquadie (Richemulot) all have remnants of this social revolution and their current leaders must superficially pay lip service to it. Falkovnia and Darkon were unaffected, owing to their more robust centralized organs of repression. Both superpowers dedicated significant resources to quash the movement (largely succeeding), while also jockeying for influence in the post-revolution status quo (unclear success). Falkovnia made significant cultural and political inroads to Nortenmark, resulting in a grudging ally and cultural sibling nation.
Political ideology: imagine if the scholars and academics came up with the Bill of Rights and the American Constitution in Nortenmark. Then imagine that they gained traction with mundane supporters (peasants, immigrants, disenfranchised nobility), as well as exotic supporters (gunsmiths, arms dealers, and a family of doppelgangers). Initially a popular movement with libertarian ideals, the conflict turns bloody as it clashes with local and neighboring oligarchs. In the end, Darkon and Falkovnia fight a proxy war to destroy the fledgling democratic movement, and the surviving revolutionaries go into hiding, die in obscurity, or infiltrate their societies quietly.
Personal Canon History:
Background: In my campaign, the Darkonian-Falkovnian war of 655 was long, nasty, and highly damaging to the prestige of both nations' leaders. Drakov failed to score the knockout punch he needed to overthrow "Trandamere" (as Azalin is known by codename in the Falkovnian leadership), and Azalin's reliance upon the Creeping Death undead hordes to repulse Falkovnia's legions caused many Darkonians to lose faith in their leadership's competency, and instigated widespread doomsday despair that the Grey Realm had overwhelmed Darkon's leadership. After the bruising campaign, both nations sought alternative ways to undermine the other, and did so in neighboring domains.
They got their chance in 680. A mixed-race weapon trader named Wojciech Ghatrosz grew tired of the meaningless bandit deals in Nova Vaasa, Darkon, Gundarak, Falkovnia, and Barovia, and he decided to end his career on an uncharacteristically idealistic note. He came to sympathize with a fledgling Nortenmark intellectual movement called the Eleuthiarchy ("rule by freedom") and had struck up a rapport with several academic and factional leaders. The movement started off as a petition for redress to the ruler, Volksprinz Rahlen Dresneß, and quickly gathered momentum to a full blown ideology focused on removing the hereditary ruler and devolving power to locally elected leaders.
Ghatrosz befriended the movement's three leaders, Gustav Anhalt, Klaus Febrich, and Ragnar Theophilis. Crucially, he also won the trust of a master gunsmith, the blind craftsman Amund von Ströhm, whose guns could forever destroy the nobility's monopoly on the use of force - provided they could be adapted for mass production. The Eleuthiarchy spread from town to city in Nortenmark and the response from the Volksprinz was both sluggish and heavy handed, further costing it popular support.
In 682, the Eleuthiarchy had gained the general support of the Nortenmark public. In an aside, Ghatrosz married Petra Leboyik, a 12 year old Nortenmark wife, some forty years his junior, in this year.
By 684, the revolution had spread to Cosabel, Praquadie, and Marésotes. In native Nortenmark, the Volksprinz was doomed when a cabinet meeting of his barons saw a fullscale political defection to a rival faction headed by Baron von Aubrecker.
Last edited by HuManBing on Tue Jan 28, 2014 11:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Alt canon: Enlightenment, extinguished
The Arrival of the Alkris:
Further complicating the issue, the Eleuthiarchy gained the dubious support of a family of shapechangers - called Alkrisplenax in their native tongue, but "double walkers" (Doppelgängers) in the Falkovnian and Nortenmark language of Trecht. As the conflict against the nobles intensified, the doppelgangers infiltrated, assassinated, and appropriated enemy personalities. The cause of freedom and truth had begun its slide into deception and falsehood.
The superpowers respond:
In the early stages, Darkon's leadership had to hunker down to solidify control over its own porous border with Nortenmark, and spent most of the opening phases exerting support for its own baronial enforcers against the dangerous populist ideals. Aided by its state religion, The Eternal Order, Darkon successfully contained the social threats of democracy and libertarianism. By 685, Darkon's internal situation was secure enough for it to fully commit to Kargat activity outside its borders, but by that time they had lost valuable years of operations to the Falkovnian foreign policymakers.
By contrast, Drakov's absolute rule over Falkovnia enabled him to contain the movement domestically almost from the start. Falkovnian troops crossed the border into Nortenmark covertly to provide aid to the Volksprinz as early as 683, and when the von Aubrecker alliance seized the initiative away from the Volksprinz, Drakov successfully switched sides. As early mass-produced gunpowder weapons cut a swathe through the cavalry and pike formations of the barons, Drakov sent columns of military advisers over the border to shore up the tottering nobility. By late 683, the Nortenmark barons were desperate enough that they conceded a deal allowing Falkovnian troops to cross the border in force under Feldmarshall Leopold Polk. Polk's army quashed the rebellion's main military bases in the nation's southern cities over the next year and a half, and overran the university towns in 686. The Nortenmark Eleuthiarchy's last stand occurred in early 687, when the Falkovnian army assaulted the gunsmith's mountainside fortress at Ströhmheim, dismantling the smelters and destroying the metallurgy notes.
The success of the Falkovnian intervention in Dresneß gave the Falkovnian planners in Lekar an inflated sense of their army's effectiveness, as well as an overly optimistic view of their support in the aristocracy of their neighboring domains. Both miscalculations would cost the Falkovnian leadership in the remainder of the Eleuthiarchy campaigns.
Falkovnian overreach:
Although the birthplace of the Eleuthiarchy had been eliminated in Nortenmark, numerous splinter movements had exported down the western coast of the core, sparking similar populist revolutions in Cosabel, Marésotes, and Praquadie. The Falkovnian leadership assumed that these lesser movements, lacking the gunpowder weapon support of the Ströhmheim smelters, would be easy to overthrow.
However, the army moved faster than the diplomatic efforts could support. When Falkovnian forces intervened in Cosabel and Praquadie, they did so without the political support of the respective aristocracies. These interventions proved disastrous for all sides - noble houses, Eleuthiarchy rebels, and Falkovnian soldiers all found themselves embroiled in a three-way conflict with shifting opposition and unclear allegiances. Instead of facing ragtag libertarian militias, the Falkovnian troops found themselves dealing with hostile baronial and landowner levies in their unwilling host nations.
By 688, the rebels had been driven from most cities along the coast, and their rural support severely curtailed. In many cases, this freed up Cosablaise and Praquadien forces to clash directly with the Falkovnians. By late 688 and early 689, the Falkovnian forces had abandoned even the pretense of peacekeeping, and initiated fullscale invasion plans to unseat the "lords of misrule" and institute leadership change. This bogged down in inconclusive sieges and the despoiling of farmlands and crops. Falkovnia's domestic grain production lines were taxed to their limits to feed a distant army, whereas the native lords hunkered down in their forts and castles, willing to starve out the Falkovnians by attrition. Ironically, the gunpowder weapons of von Ströhm's smelters could have handed the Falkovnians a decisive victory against the stonework fortifications of their opposing forces, but the top leadership feared the destabilizing effects of firearms on the battlefield. It was easier to sell a war to their military colleges and academies where soldiers dealt death by blades and bravery, than a war where death came from anonymous massed musket fire.
Darkon intervenes:
By the decade's end, all belligerents were exhausted and the occupied territories were on the verge of economic and social collapse as an entire demographic of fighting-age males were maimed or killed, and several cumulative years of crops had gone unharvested. The main turning point came in 690, when the Kargat's preparations reached fruition, and the Darkonian leadership unleashed a series of debilitating surgical attacks in Nortenmark, Cosable, Marésotes, and Praquadie to weaken Falkovnian adventurism there. Most of the attacks were conducted under cover of night against high-value targets, assassinating or capturing key military or diplomatic personnel. Several false-flag operations further strained Nortenmark/Falkovnian tensions, including deniable attacks on civilian resources.
The second wave of Kargat operations took the form of destabilizing attacks in Falkovnia proper, including assassinations of civilian or infrastructure officials, poisoning the drinking water sources downstream in the Vuchar, and liberating and arming prisoner populaces of labor camps. A final wave manifested as a massed horde of undead crossing the border north of Stangengrad and besieging the city under remote leadership by several top-ranking Kargat operatives. These interventions thoroughly disrupted Falkovnian projection of military force, and the final wave convulsed the Falkovnian leadership, resulting in a complete recall of nearly all foreign forces almost overnight.
The last Falkovnian forces to leave foreign soil did so in 692, as an honor guard that departed from Nortenmark, returning it officially to the baronial rule of von Aubrecker. The overthrow of Volksprinz Rahlen Dresneß remains the only lasting international policy change accomplished by Falkovnian intervention - the Principality of Dresneß was renamed to "Nortenmark", deriving partially from its status as the "northern march" of Falkovnian statemaking ambitions.
Further complicating the issue, the Eleuthiarchy gained the dubious support of a family of shapechangers - called Alkrisplenax in their native tongue, but "double walkers" (Doppelgängers) in the Falkovnian and Nortenmark language of Trecht. As the conflict against the nobles intensified, the doppelgangers infiltrated, assassinated, and appropriated enemy personalities. The cause of freedom and truth had begun its slide into deception and falsehood.
The superpowers respond:
In the early stages, Darkon's leadership had to hunker down to solidify control over its own porous border with Nortenmark, and spent most of the opening phases exerting support for its own baronial enforcers against the dangerous populist ideals. Aided by its state religion, The Eternal Order, Darkon successfully contained the social threats of democracy and libertarianism. By 685, Darkon's internal situation was secure enough for it to fully commit to Kargat activity outside its borders, but by that time they had lost valuable years of operations to the Falkovnian foreign policymakers.
By contrast, Drakov's absolute rule over Falkovnia enabled him to contain the movement domestically almost from the start. Falkovnian troops crossed the border into Nortenmark covertly to provide aid to the Volksprinz as early as 683, and when the von Aubrecker alliance seized the initiative away from the Volksprinz, Drakov successfully switched sides. As early mass-produced gunpowder weapons cut a swathe through the cavalry and pike formations of the barons, Drakov sent columns of military advisers over the border to shore up the tottering nobility. By late 683, the Nortenmark barons were desperate enough that they conceded a deal allowing Falkovnian troops to cross the border in force under Feldmarshall Leopold Polk. Polk's army quashed the rebellion's main military bases in the nation's southern cities over the next year and a half, and overran the university towns in 686. The Nortenmark Eleuthiarchy's last stand occurred in early 687, when the Falkovnian army assaulted the gunsmith's mountainside fortress at Ströhmheim, dismantling the smelters and destroying the metallurgy notes.
The success of the Falkovnian intervention in Dresneß gave the Falkovnian planners in Lekar an inflated sense of their army's effectiveness, as well as an overly optimistic view of their support in the aristocracy of their neighboring domains. Both miscalculations would cost the Falkovnian leadership in the remainder of the Eleuthiarchy campaigns.
Falkovnian overreach:
Although the birthplace of the Eleuthiarchy had been eliminated in Nortenmark, numerous splinter movements had exported down the western coast of the core, sparking similar populist revolutions in Cosabel, Marésotes, and Praquadie. The Falkovnian leadership assumed that these lesser movements, lacking the gunpowder weapon support of the Ströhmheim smelters, would be easy to overthrow.
However, the army moved faster than the diplomatic efforts could support. When Falkovnian forces intervened in Cosabel and Praquadie, they did so without the political support of the respective aristocracies. These interventions proved disastrous for all sides - noble houses, Eleuthiarchy rebels, and Falkovnian soldiers all found themselves embroiled in a three-way conflict with shifting opposition and unclear allegiances. Instead of facing ragtag libertarian militias, the Falkovnian troops found themselves dealing with hostile baronial and landowner levies in their unwilling host nations.
By 688, the rebels had been driven from most cities along the coast, and their rural support severely curtailed. In many cases, this freed up Cosablaise and Praquadien forces to clash directly with the Falkovnians. By late 688 and early 689, the Falkovnian forces had abandoned even the pretense of peacekeeping, and initiated fullscale invasion plans to unseat the "lords of misrule" and institute leadership change. This bogged down in inconclusive sieges and the despoiling of farmlands and crops. Falkovnia's domestic grain production lines were taxed to their limits to feed a distant army, whereas the native lords hunkered down in their forts and castles, willing to starve out the Falkovnians by attrition. Ironically, the gunpowder weapons of von Ströhm's smelters could have handed the Falkovnians a decisive victory against the stonework fortifications of their opposing forces, but the top leadership feared the destabilizing effects of firearms on the battlefield. It was easier to sell a war to their military colleges and academies where soldiers dealt death by blades and bravery, than a war where death came from anonymous massed musket fire.
Darkon intervenes:
By the decade's end, all belligerents were exhausted and the occupied territories were on the verge of economic and social collapse as an entire demographic of fighting-age males were maimed or killed, and several cumulative years of crops had gone unharvested. The main turning point came in 690, when the Kargat's preparations reached fruition, and the Darkonian leadership unleashed a series of debilitating surgical attacks in Nortenmark, Cosable, Marésotes, and Praquadie to weaken Falkovnian adventurism there. Most of the attacks were conducted under cover of night against high-value targets, assassinating or capturing key military or diplomatic personnel. Several false-flag operations further strained Nortenmark/Falkovnian tensions, including deniable attacks on civilian resources.
The second wave of Kargat operations took the form of destabilizing attacks in Falkovnia proper, including assassinations of civilian or infrastructure officials, poisoning the drinking water sources downstream in the Vuchar, and liberating and arming prisoner populaces of labor camps. A final wave manifested as a massed horde of undead crossing the border north of Stangengrad and besieging the city under remote leadership by several top-ranking Kargat operatives. These interventions thoroughly disrupted Falkovnian projection of military force, and the final wave convulsed the Falkovnian leadership, resulting in a complete recall of nearly all foreign forces almost overnight.
The last Falkovnian forces to leave foreign soil did so in 692, as an honor guard that departed from Nortenmark, returning it officially to the baronial rule of von Aubrecker. The overthrow of Volksprinz Rahlen Dresneß remains the only lasting international policy change accomplished by Falkovnian intervention - the Principality of Dresneß was renamed to "Nortenmark", deriving partially from its status as the "northern march" of Falkovnian statemaking ambitions.
Last edited by HuManBing on Sun Oct 13, 2013 12:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Alt canon: Enlightenment, extinguished
Aftermath:
Volksprinz Dresneß disappeared and his remains were never conclusively located. It is rumored that the Alkris killed and replaced him - if this is true, his physical remains would likely have been entirely consumed by the imitating Alkris. His principality, formerly known as Fürstentum Dresneß, was renamed Nortenmark and administered by a baronial enclave led by von Aubrecker. The domain retains close cultural and trade tires with Falkovnia, but remains wary of its military ambitions thanks to Darkon's successful counteroperations.
Cosabel, Marésotes, and Praquadie all became staunchly anti-Falkovnian, though their gratitude towards Darkon remains lukewarm at best. Their national identities emphasize their defiance of Falkovnian aggression, and portray the Falkovnian leadership as impulsive, incompetent, and idiotically hidebound in its thinking. Not so coincidentally, gunpowder weapons remain a tightly-controlled industry in those nations.
At least two of the Alkris escaped the conflagration, and fled to Darkon and Falkovnia respectively to continue their interloper studies of the human condition. One became a passive student of humanity, collecting biological samples under a cover identity at a renowned Il Aluk brothel. The other made its way into the Falkovnian leadership apparatus, studying the nature of control and coercion in human society.
The three initial Eleuthiarchy conspirators - Anhalt, Theophilis, and Febrich - were executed by the ascendant von Aubrecker administration. The gunsmith von Ströhm committed suicide during Polk's assault on Ströhmheim.
The weapons-dealer's pre-teen wife, Petra Leboyik, fled to Darkon and eventually lost her memories, adopting a cover name.
Several of these characters remain key personnel in my campaign, even through to 735.
Volksprinz Dresneß disappeared and his remains were never conclusively located. It is rumored that the Alkris killed and replaced him - if this is true, his physical remains would likely have been entirely consumed by the imitating Alkris. His principality, formerly known as Fürstentum Dresneß, was renamed Nortenmark and administered by a baronial enclave led by von Aubrecker. The domain retains close cultural and trade tires with Falkovnia, but remains wary of its military ambitions thanks to Darkon's successful counteroperations.
Cosabel, Marésotes, and Praquadie all became staunchly anti-Falkovnian, though their gratitude towards Darkon remains lukewarm at best. Their national identities emphasize their defiance of Falkovnian aggression, and portray the Falkovnian leadership as impulsive, incompetent, and idiotically hidebound in its thinking. Not so coincidentally, gunpowder weapons remain a tightly-controlled industry in those nations.
At least two of the Alkris escaped the conflagration, and fled to Darkon and Falkovnia respectively to continue their interloper studies of the human condition. One became a passive student of humanity, collecting biological samples under a cover identity at a renowned Il Aluk brothel. The other made its way into the Falkovnian leadership apparatus, studying the nature of control and coercion in human society.
The three initial Eleuthiarchy conspirators - Anhalt, Theophilis, and Febrich - were executed by the ascendant von Aubrecker administration. The gunsmith von Ströhm committed suicide during Polk's assault on Ströhmheim.
The weapons-dealer's pre-teen wife, Petra Leboyik, fled to Darkon and eventually lost her memories, adopting a cover name.
Several of these characters remain key personnel in my campaign, even through to 735.
Re: Alt canon: Enlightenment, extinguished
A quick bump, to update with how I'm using this revolution in my campaign.
My girlfriend LomboDot wants to join the campaign in a limited sidequest. She's playing as a Chinese-style alchemist tracking down a Nortenmark citizen for non-fulfillment of a contract from fifty years ago.
Turns out, the contract was signed by several Hua (fantasy Chinese) merchants and Wojciech Ghatrosz (the arms dealer who started the insurrection, Sinicized as 郭伟切). The Hua empire is extremely stable, so a contract of fifty years duration is nothing unusual. However, in the dynamic western style nation of Nortenmark, fifty years saw a wealth of changes: the Prince Dresneß was overthrown, gunpowder weapons were produced and then banned, and Ghatrosz and his cronies were crushed and executed.
The funny thing is, the Hua merchants traded the recipe for gunpowder to the Nortenmark people, thus inadvertently causing the social upheavals which destroyed any possibility of enforcing the contract. LomboDot's character is going to experience an inversion of the westerner's culture shock upon encountering an eastern culture - she'll be struggling to deal with the social fluidity of Nortenmark, the concepts of traders being respected for their wealth (in Hua as in China, merchants typically ranked lowest of the four traditional classes, with scholars ranked topmost and farmers and soldiers as intermediates), and the startling realization that in fifty short years, a nation can depose its prince, re-institute baronial seigneural law, and firmly establish a rule by privileged aristocracy... and still seem chaotic and changeable to a Chinese person's viewpoint.
Oh, and Nortenmark is also going to conduct zeppelin raids against Darkon's western cities. So, there is that.
My girlfriend LomboDot wants to join the campaign in a limited sidequest. She's playing as a Chinese-style alchemist tracking down a Nortenmark citizen for non-fulfillment of a contract from fifty years ago.
Turns out, the contract was signed by several Hua (fantasy Chinese) merchants and Wojciech Ghatrosz (the arms dealer who started the insurrection, Sinicized as 郭伟切). The Hua empire is extremely stable, so a contract of fifty years duration is nothing unusual. However, in the dynamic western style nation of Nortenmark, fifty years saw a wealth of changes: the Prince Dresneß was overthrown, gunpowder weapons were produced and then banned, and Ghatrosz and his cronies were crushed and executed.
The funny thing is, the Hua merchants traded the recipe for gunpowder to the Nortenmark people, thus inadvertently causing the social upheavals which destroyed any possibility of enforcing the contract. LomboDot's character is going to experience an inversion of the westerner's culture shock upon encountering an eastern culture - she'll be struggling to deal with the social fluidity of Nortenmark, the concepts of traders being respected for their wealth (in Hua as in China, merchants typically ranked lowest of the four traditional classes, with scholars ranked topmost and farmers and soldiers as intermediates), and the startling realization that in fifty short years, a nation can depose its prince, re-institute baronial seigneural law, and firmly establish a rule by privileged aristocracy... and still seem chaotic and changeable to a Chinese person's viewpoint.
Oh, and Nortenmark is also going to conduct zeppelin raids against Darkon's western cities. So, there is that.
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Re: Alt canon: Enlightenment, extinguished
Cool alternate history!
Got me thinking of the French Revolution(s).
Maybe Invidia successfully implemented democratic change but with the rise of political parties came the Great Terror with executions en masse until autocracy was restored for the sake of stability or it all descended into failed state anarchy?
Got me thinking of the French Revolution(s).
Maybe Invidia successfully implemented democratic change but with the rise of political parties came the Great Terror with executions en masse until autocracy was restored for the sake of stability or it all descended into failed state anarchy?
"I kneel for no-one!"
Re: Alt canon: Enlightenment, extinguished
Absolutely, that's what I was definitely going for with the Nortenmark alt-canon. I like the trope of "promising dream, perverted by politics". It perfectly describes the French Revolution, the worldwide communist movement, and almost every single Chinese dynastic overthrow.
If you're mixing a quashed libertarian movement with the canon of Invidia being a current foreign-occupied or foreign-billeted region, then it takes on an even more tragic turn. A popular uprising not only failed to unseat an autocratic leader, but it led to the installation of a brutal foreign occupation.
If you're mixing a quashed libertarian movement with the canon of Invidia being a current foreign-occupied or foreign-billeted region, then it takes on an even more tragic turn. A popular uprising not only failed to unseat an autocratic leader, but it led to the installation of a brutal foreign occupation.
Re: Alt canon: Enlightenment, extinguished
Further update:
I hadn't quite realized it, but this story has fascinating potential for underlining the "four great inventions" associated with Chinese history.
Gunpowder is the great military force equalizer, putting peasant on an equal footing with knights.
The printing press is the great knowledge equalizer, spreading science and sedition to the masses.
Magnetism allows for airships to conduct operations even in clouded skies or at night.
Paper money breaks the stranglehold of the lords on gold and precious metals as currency.
Other cool stuff that we did with the Chinese merchants:
One of them distributed a printing press and altered it from Chinese characters to Gothic, to allow the Nortenmarkers to print out pamphlets and rebellion posters. Most of the presses were smashed by the barons at the end of the Eleuthiarchy.
The final planning room of the Eleuthiarchy leaders - Ghatrosz, Anhalt, Febrich, and Theophilis - was in a Swiss style chalet on a mountainside. The innkeeper walled it up beneath mortar and bricks and left it that way for two generations. The PCs had to convince him to open it up by using the old "torn postcard" trick - except in this case, instead of a torn postcard, it was a single torn piece of Hua paper money. Inside, the PCs found dusty old rifles, stacks of papers, military plans, maps, propaganda leaflets, and a declaration of individual rights against tyranny.
The Hua also brought the secret of silk, and the renegade Nortenmark baron, Ejlert Leichtenbach, has captured or employed all the remaining Hua to build airships with silk balloons, compass-oriented bearings, and gunpowder-based inertial bombs. The baron has come to an agreement with the Falkovnian spymaster, Yuri Mitrovic, to lead an air raid on Rivalis while the Falkovnians are in possession of Nartok. This is expected to draw Nortenmark into the war against Darkon as a fait accompli and increase the pressure on Azalin.
I hadn't quite realized it, but this story has fascinating potential for underlining the "four great inventions" associated with Chinese history.
Gunpowder is the great military force equalizer, putting peasant on an equal footing with knights.
The printing press is the great knowledge equalizer, spreading science and sedition to the masses.
Magnetism allows for airships to conduct operations even in clouded skies or at night.
Paper money breaks the stranglehold of the lords on gold and precious metals as currency.
Other cool stuff that we did with the Chinese merchants:
One of them distributed a printing press and altered it from Chinese characters to Gothic, to allow the Nortenmarkers to print out pamphlets and rebellion posters. Most of the presses were smashed by the barons at the end of the Eleuthiarchy.
The final planning room of the Eleuthiarchy leaders - Ghatrosz, Anhalt, Febrich, and Theophilis - was in a Swiss style chalet on a mountainside. The innkeeper walled it up beneath mortar and bricks and left it that way for two generations. The PCs had to convince him to open it up by using the old "torn postcard" trick - except in this case, instead of a torn postcard, it was a single torn piece of Hua paper money. Inside, the PCs found dusty old rifles, stacks of papers, military plans, maps, propaganda leaflets, and a declaration of individual rights against tyranny.
The Hua also brought the secret of silk, and the renegade Nortenmark baron, Ejlert Leichtenbach, has captured or employed all the remaining Hua to build airships with silk balloons, compass-oriented bearings, and gunpowder-based inertial bombs. The baron has come to an agreement with the Falkovnian spymaster, Yuri Mitrovic, to lead an air raid on Rivalis while the Falkovnians are in possession of Nartok. This is expected to draw Nortenmark into the war against Darkon as a fait accompli and increase the pressure on Azalin.