First and foremost was the intel on what had actually happened to Faron. The Cahok had been a bit coy about whose bones had been recovered from the ruins of the estate, but they had confirmed that at least some of Faron's family was still alive and that many of the bodies had actually been slaves who had died of other causes and been positioned in the manor before it had been set ablaze in a most thorough manner. That sort of thing would be useful with the Tortun going forward, in that it could be a good way to step around potential surprises when the full story became known at large, if it ever did. It probably would though with the revelation of exactly what was going on.
So...Faron is going to be the Anastasia of the era and the King Under the Mountain?
Because from the sound of it, once the story breaks there's going to be SUCH a great big shitstorm. The CCP are holding it for the perfect moment.
From what had been gathered, Roq and Ulthor had been able to inform and convince the remarkably diplomatic Tohmakre on what exactly were the advantages of the Syffryn powers over the locals, and she had been able to go to the various tribes and get them to sit down and listen. While they frequently disagreed about what was 'best', tens of thousands - hundreds of thousands! - had been talked around to the idea that effective resistance would require the adoption of certain elements of their aggressive neighbours to better counter them, but that if they did it on their own initiative they could reject the worst elements and do things on their own terms. More than that, while the system had clearly been forged based off of personal charisma and initiative, tremendous effort had gone into building institutional legitimacy despite radical social changes among diverse groups of people - people who had often had longstanding grudges against each other up until recently. This was perhaps the greatest asset, in that Tohmakre had the ability to get people to not just sit down and talk diplomatically, but to actually hash out their issues with each other and let them go in the face of a greater threat. Not just 'put them aside', but actually resolve their conflicts and agree to work together.
Read: Tohmakre is applying her Heroic Diplomacy to create CCP-brand Nationalism
and Industrialization, while having already seen how the Syffryn did it wrong and working to do it right.
Bonus: The UPM and New Hespranxia gives them perfect Outsiders to blame all the shit on and justify unity in the face of a deadly foe.
By all accounts, had the UPM actually followed their own courts that said that the tribes they had been trying to displace were citizens with the protection of the law, Tohmakre would have reined in Roq and Ulthor and the hawks among the Confederacy to continue working to expand their ability to peacefully confront the issues they had with that system, but she also recognized that anyone who would deny their basic humanity could not be spoken with and military force was required.
And here we see that the CCP are NOT Republican Zealots as had been claimed. Their fundamental beef is being treated as non-persons.
With the People recognizing the Pihtawak this had triggered a slow but steady cascade of others deciding that the UPM had not been dealing with 'savages' internally, but had aggressively and blatantly attacked a peaceful nation, who had responded firmly and comprehensively, but also with remarkable restraint. The UPM was progressively eating larger and larger amounts of shit for this as those who could gain an advantage by taking up this argument did so. This all culminated in the Hespranxer deciding that their wayward colony was now in a particularly weak position, as they were being bested by an actual nation and not temporarily embarrassed by a bunch of lucky tribals, and thus the home country would attempt to reclaim their colony. It was probably impossible, but extracting "back taxes" and further humiliating the hated prior dynasty were their own rewards, especially as it meant that the king could get his subjects pointed away from the Khemetri and their allies and towards a conflict less likely to boil over into a Great Power fight.
*Gulmaryn whistles as the fire burns merrily*
More than that, the Confederacy had inherited a large number of machines and installations that they knew that they did not have the infrastructure to maintain: the factories were all in the Northeast UPM for the most part, and the seas were too unstable to reliably get the parts from Syffryn or the People. As such, because the People had shown up first, they had also been given the opportunity to look over the loot first. While much of it was stuff they already knew about, the Cahok Riverboats were of considerable interest, as their steam engines were more advanced than a lot of the designs the People were using due to the rigours of being mounted in a boat. By all accounts the Sketch were playing around with steamship designs that were deep sea worthy, so while the People had a few toy examples of steam powered ships, these large commercial versions pushed forward designs considerably.
O.O
We got functional Steam Riverboats(which also explains SO FUCKING MUCH about how the Cahokians are doing ninja strikes all along the UPM, their naval tech was just too much better). This is great for us too, considering how much riverine shipping we have, once our local innovators figure shit out, we can expect a significant boost in productivity.
There were a number of other bonuses from the deal, including the fact that even though the Sketch, Kielmyr, and Vortuga were much better suited to do trade with the Confederacy the Confederacy also sent a few diplomatic packages their way pretty much because they could.
And thus a deal where normally the Gulmaryn couldn't play at all, were invited to the party because FIRST.
In other good news, the development of the gold finds in Kyberi were going quite well. Remarkably well in fact, as not only was the region rich in easily accessible gold, but in the mountains and hills of the region they had found major deposits of rare ores, already known to be valuable for a variety of industrial purposes. The big ones for the People were that small amounts of this ore could be blended into glass in order to reliably tint it colours between yellow and green, and the Kielmyr expressed interest in purchasing it for their own, somewhat circumspect, purposes. With the region already being developed for gold extraction, the rare ore could be brought in as well. Even better, the tinting process had been found to work with and in fact fairly reliably produce the strange optics that the scientists and engineers of the People were already quietly investigating.
Most fascinatingly, it had been discovered that unlike with other lenses and prisms, those doped with this ore were capable of producing the strange resonance effects with terrestrial light sources rather than the sun alone. This had produced much excitement among the researchers and glassmakers, and with such large quantities of ore to be had, the ability to much more reliably produce the optics would surely accelerate their projects considerably.
Okay so we know the Beyond the Rainbow had to do with UV spectrum, which light sources of the era produces in negligible amounts.
Assuming this is uranium, what we're leveraging should be the flourescence effect.
Then of course there was the question of how to pay for everything. The initial round of sales of crown corporations had gone remarkably well, and the combination of liquidation of assets and reduced expenses had caused the People's coffers to swell considerably at a time when they were burning through their funds on military expenditures, and there were now calls for further sales. While some were leery about the whole affair, there was considerable enthusiasm for the prospect of selling crown corporations to pay for expenses instead of raising war taxes, especially since while the People were accepting of the situation due to the war, there was also a significant undercurrent of discontent caused by the conflicts and the way the cities were getting crowded and dirty once again.
We really shouldn't sell too many more before the crash arrives...
Weirdly enough the conservatives and liberals were somewhat united in a desire to spend some of that money on educational improvements. The liberals because they wanted to invest in research in business to turn the People's already leading advantage in the mass production of glass and precision optics into absolute dominance of the field, and the conservatives because they had decided that if the king was going to invite in a bunch of foreigners then they would be taught to be proper Gylruv-Ymaryn. The Royalists obviously rolled their eyes at this and pointed to the active war... although there was a point to be made that there was an educational expense in training up new soldiers, especially those from Greater Khem seeking citizenship.
So...build shitloads of schools. Brainwash the migrants to be One Of Us, Make the best glass for the best sales, train the best soldiers so they can make the best votes.
Major Gold Mine: +1 SoL
World Leader – Glass: +2 SoL
Shiny~
Early Industrial Desert Warfare (20/30) [Military][Enviro]
Early 19th Century Ship Design (25/25) [Military][Naval]
Universal Rifling (4/???) [Military][Weaponry]
Practical Breechloading Rifles (5/???) [Military][Weaponry][Rare]
Military Engineering (5/???) [Military][Industrial]
Doctrine of Personal Initiative (11/30-40?) [Military][Specialist]
Industrial Machine Tools (12/???)[Industrial][Open]
Iron Railroad (4/35) [Industrial][Transport]
Cheap Iron (16/35) [Industrial]
High Pressure Steam (20/30) [Industrial][Power][Open]
Freedom of Trade (30/30) [Social][Business]
Academic Freedom (16/25-45?) [Social]
Mid 19th Century Math (0/30-40?) [Science][Open]
Mid 19th Century Logic (0/30-40?) [Science][Open]
Hiding in the Rainbow? (17/???)[Science][Unique]
Experimental Electricity (0/20-25?) [Science]
Early 19th Century Chemistry (14/25) [Science][Chemistry][Open]
Germ Theory of Disease (7/???)
Bolded Open techs are massive for us. We need all of these and we can't afford the dedicated R&D!
Sure, but if we have enough investment in their economy, means they can't go against us without completely wrecking their everything, which means we are effectively in control anyway.
Not really how nationalistic politics works. They would consider said investment to be anathema in their own right. And the losses of the crash would be papered over by looting the designated Evil groups.
Basically how every revolution did things in this time, and also how they could have well armed revolution after revolution. You do long term damage to population and productivity to free up bound resources in the current elite and rich.
The huge population of Kus could be resettled in the sparse north.
It might be a hard sell right now due to secessionist violence.
How would they begin to move so many people?
Ugh, no. Just no.
- We've already establishes that privatize can work when everything is rosy, and liberals will then ignore that it may not work like the 'no true scotsman' fallacy was a guiding principle.
- It defangs the fuck out of our ability to control/manage crown corporations, which are massive economic actors in our economy. Giving away monopolies which we need is just stupid.
- If we sell them now, we can't sell them later when we need to.
- Liberals will fight like a wounded animals if you mention 'nationalize' (they will utterly ignore that these are once public companies)
Finally;
- Liberals are virtually immune to considering unrestricted capitalism as having any modes of failure
Damned right. The Liberal principle says strongly that any liberals who failed to tank the crash were clearly insufficiently fit and thus you should further lower protections so that such unfit people will be outcompeted.
Sort of like how the Conservatives think any and all changes are the devil even after you show them that THEY are a change themselves.
The Sketch aren't going to like this. They've been making bank from the former Hex colonies and are the sole Syf power of note in the Americas, thus having large interests in keeping the Hex out. They'll likely make moves against them.
Well, that keeps them busy in that theater and paying less attention to their domestic economy and making them less interested in looting the Hung due to divided attention.
Vote wise...
[X] [Sale] 0 PW - Moderate sale (+2 temp SoL)
[X] [Front] Keep up pressure at sea
[X] [Front] Assist the Black Sheep with their problems
[X] [Edu] 5 PW - Empty the coffers (-1 SoL, -3 temp SoL, +1 Education, +1 Innovation, Scientific research boosted, +3 temp Armies, +1 temp Navies)
