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SV ISOT III: Third time’s the charm

Reader mode
Rule 2: Don’t Be Hateful
Oh I know what would get rid of the Zionist send the Nazis there so the Jews get a more radicalized Nazi regime that they BEG others for help
 
I think it's funny that everyone keeps writing "the Najavo considered going on an expedition but then decided against it".

Tbf I don't think they're in a position to build an oceangoing vessel. I imagine they've figured out they're in the southern hemisphere (maybe even Australia specifically?) by looking at a star map or something, which means that such a boat would be a major endeavour.
 
Nevis said:
I think it's funny that everyone keeps writing "the Najavo considered going on an expedition but then decided against it".

Tbf I don't think they're in a position to build an oceangoing vessel. I imagine they've figured out they're in the southern hemisphere (maybe even Australia specifically?) by looking at a star map or something, which means that such a boat would be a major endeavour.
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Originally I planned on putting Castile right next to them to shake things up but decided that Northern Europe could use a non-socialist power
 
They probably need an external enemy at this point, they've already gone up against civil unrest, crocodiles, disease, and drought, there is not much else you can do in terms of PvE
 
Nevis said:
They probably need an external enemy at this point, they've already gone up against civil unrest, crocodiles, disease, and drought, there is not much else you can do in terms of PvE
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Looking at the map, I get the feeling that the best bet for a first contact that isn't an ISOT would be sicillians charting more modern Somali boats and sailors to explore the rest of the Indian ocean to look for resources and colonisation opportunities, leaving supply depots and way stations along the west coastlines of Indonesia as they go (it'd take a while and a nearby ISOT would be better dramatically but if everyone has plans already in place for what they want to ISOT it'd be the best way for the Navajo to become aware of the wider world)
 
But what if... More crocodiles 🐊
Truly they are the ultimate literary device for adding conflict.

Though speaking of things I think everyone is doing, I feel like everyone has 'Japanese update where the word Isekai gets used' as like, their third or 4th choice and we're all in a standoff to see who runs out of other ideas first.

Maybe that's just me being a weeb lol.
 
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Nevis said:
But what if... More crocodiles 🐊
Truly they are the ultimate literary device for adding conflict.

Though speaking of things I think everyone is doing, I feel like everyone has 'Japanese update where the word Isekai gets used' as like, their third or 4th choice and we're all in a standoff to see who runs out of other ideas first.

Maybe that's just me being a weeb lol.
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If i cant think of a 2nd isot ill just add more crocs
 
I am genuinely surprised that you are struggling with a second already, Asia, Africa, and South America are basically empty.

Throw the Forbidden City like a frisbee and see where it lands on the map! Having it be like, any, dynasty could be something, but also having it be the PRC era tourist attraction could also be a funny source of confusion/misunderstandings.
 
@Guaire
Travis Ohio
Goblyn_strange
Shadowhisker
Kirook
Nevis
Lord Kenten
The atom
Waith
Miriam
Sadmusegirl
Notbirdofprey
Board 3659
FiskenisFishy
StarMaker674
 
Were there ever any major Aboriginal tribal groups that would make a good match?
 
A good match for what?

EDIT: My go-to suggestions for Indigenous Australian ISOTs are the Yolngu and/or the Gunditjmara, though both are pretty far away from the Navajo. The Noongar are closer, though still not directly bordering.

It's rather difficult to suggest ISOT candidates without context.
 
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Some ISOT ideas I thought I could share to contribute to the discussion on Navajo in Australia and their interacting with the wider world:

-Taui Tonga empire could realistically eventually meet the Navajo,
-Majapathit Empire (Indonesia Archipelago)
-Sunda Kingdom (Indonesian Archipelago)
-Rajah of Sarawak under the white rajahs (perhaps someone sends scouts from here to Australia as it was a british colony)
-Any Ancient Egyptian Kingdoms (ISOT them to the outback?)
-Akhenatens Egypt (Isot the Atenist to Australia in homage to the Scottishmongol a very awesome writer)
-Kingdom of Nabateans (Isot them to Australia, have them get to see the beautiful city of Petra)
-Casablanca 1941 (ISOT it to Perth, I didnt like the movie but the real place would cause chaos)
-Either Alexandria during Julius Ceasers siege or Alexandria during Napoleons siege (could isot it to be at where the Swan River meets the ocean)

Again these are just some ideas that have crossed my mind. None of these ideas I really intend to do but perhaps if others find them fun or helpful.
 
Guaire is giving up their turn so

@Travis Ohio
Goblyn_strange
Shadowhisker
Kirook
Nevis
Lord Kenten
The atom
Waith
Miriam
Sadmusegirl
Notbirdofprey
Board 3659
FiskenisFishy
StarMaker674
Guaire
DragonsandSong
 
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Year 15
  • Threadmarks
    • Howdy I have my turn written, yes I went overboard with mentioning all the black panther members, i got lost with how interesting they are. I wanted to ask if you could please do the map for my turn? Also I apologize if I messed up, this is my first ever attempt with doing a map game.

    Known as: Haiti

    • Government: Revolutionary autocracy under Toussaint Louverture

    • Capital: Cap-Haïtien (Cap-Français in 1801)

    • Technology Level: Early 19th century (agricultural and pre-industrial economy)

    • Year ISOTed from: 1801

    • Territory ISOTed: The entire island of Hispaniola as controlled by Toussaint Louverture in 1801 (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic)

    • Population: Roughly 630,000 (I have dyscalculia and math is not my friend,)
    1 Formerly Enslaved Africans French Speaking: 400,000
    2 Free People of Color French Speaking: 30,000
    3 White French Colonist French Speaking: 20,000
    4 Mulatto French Speaking:30,000
    5 Creoles Spanish Speaking: 120,000
    6 Formerly Enslaved Africans Spanish Speaking: 20,000
    7 White Spanish Colonist Spanish Speaking: 10,000

    • Religions:
    • Roman Catholicism (dominant)
    • Vodou (widely practiced, often syncretized with Catholicism)
    • Judaism (a small number of Sephardic Jews mainly prescient in trading hubs like Santo Domingo
    • Islam ( a minority of enslaved Africans were Muslims)

    • Languages:
    • Haitian Creole (majority in Western Hispaniola)
    • French (elite and administrative language)
    • Spanish (local administrative use in Eastern Hispaniola)
    • African languages (persisting among previously enslaved communities)

    • Head(s) of State:
    • Toussaint Louverture (Governor-General for Life)

    • Brief History:
    Haiti, under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture, had recently abolished slavery and established itself as a revolutionary stronghold against French colonialism. Louverture's government emphasized rebuilding the plantation economy through forced contracts with freedmen while maintaining nominal ties to France. The ISOT interrupts growing tensions between Haiti and Napoleon Bonaparte, transporting the revolutionary state and its population, resources, and infrastructure to the virgin Earth version of Java.

    Entity 2: The Black Panther Party

    • Nation/Entity Name: The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense

    • Commonly Known as: The Black Panther Party (BPP)

    • Government: Decentralized grassroots organization with a revolutionary framework

    • Capital: Oakland, California (pre-ISOT central base of operations)

    • Technology Level: Mid-20th century (modern medicine, weaponry, and communication)

    • Year ISOTed from: 1970

    • Territory ISOTed: All Panther-affiliated locations and infrastructure, including clinics, community centers, and supplies.

    • Population: Estimated 5,000 core members and affiliates,

    • Religions:
    • Christianity (dominant among members, Black Liberation Theology, Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, Pentecostal, Catholic, Progressive Catholic, Episcopalian, Holiness Movement, Presbyterian, Methodist, Jehovah's Witness)
    • Islam (Nation of Islam, Sunni) [Minority]
    • Atheism and secularism (secularism influential in ideology and or dominant in ideology)

    • Languages:
    • English (primary language)
    • African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, primary language)
    • Spanish
    • Spanglish
    • Arabic (among the members that practice Nation of Islam and or Sunni Islam for religious purposes)
    • French (international solidarity mostly)
    • Swahili (mostly phrases of symbolic importance like Uhuru)

    • Head(s) of State:
    • Huey P. Newton (co-founder) Minister of Defence
    • Bobby Seale (co-founder) Chairman
    • Eldridge Cleaver Minister of Information
    • Kathleen Cleaver Communications Secretary
    • David Hilliard Chief of Staff
    • Emory Douglas Minister of Culture
    • Asiata Shakur (JoAnne Chesimard) Member of the New York Chapter
    • Elaine Brown (BPP Member and organizer)
    • Geronimo Pratt (Elmer Pratt,) Deputy Minister of Defense
    • Fay Stender (Lawyer for the BPP)
    • Richard Aoki (Japanese American Field Marshal, internment camp survivor)
    • Ericka Huggins (Member of the New Haven Chapter)
    • William Lee Brent (BPP member and activist)
    • Frances Beal (activist and feminist that worked closely with the BPP)
    • George Jackson (member of the BPP and founder of the Black Guerrilla Family)
    • Bobby Rush (Deputy Minister of Defense, Illinois Chapter)
    • Fredrika Gore (activist and girlfriend, future wife of Huey Newton)
    • Reggie Schell (Leader of the Philadelphia Chapter)
    • Connie Matthews (Danish born activist, international coordinator for the BPP)
    • William "Billy" Jennings (Party Archivist)
    • Elaine Brown (activist, influential leader, worked on The Black Panther Newspaper)
    • Angela Davis (Activist, scholar, and ally)
    • George Murray (Minister of Education, teacher, professor)
    • Barbar Easley-Cox (Activist, active in multiple BPP chapters including Philadelphia and Oakland)
    • Mumia Abu-Jamal (Journalist and BPP Member)
    • Mike Tagawa (Japanese American medic in the US Air Force, activist, internment camp survivor)
    • Denise Oliver-Velez (Puerto Rican member of the BPP and Young Lords Party)

    • Brief History:
    Founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, the Black Panther Party rose to prominence advocating for racial justice, self-defense, and community empowerment. By 1970, the Party had expanded its influence nationally, operating free clinics, educational programs, and food distribution networks while confronting systemic racism and police brutality. The ISOT transports the Party and its infrastructure to virgin Earth Java, where they bring 20th-century organizational expertise and technology.


    Year 15: Haitian People's Republic and Panther Town

    Java: The Formation of the Haitian People's Republic
    The year opened with a monumental first encounter: Toussaint Louverture's revolutionary Haiti, transported to the lush island of Java, met the Black Panther Party, a mid-20th-century revolutionary organization. Coastal cities like Cap-Français and Santo Domingo, along with their connecting infrastructure, appeared along Java's northern shores, their streets bustling with early 19th-century life. Inland towns such as Hinche and Gonaïves re-emerged amid tropical rainforests. These settlements were steeped in agricultural economies and cultural traditions that now stood juxtaposed with Panther Town—a hub of revolutionary fervor, vehicles, community centers, schools, supplies, modern clinics, and mid-20th-century infrastructure.

    The initial meeting between Toussaint Louverture and Huey Newton, both iconic leaders of revolutionary movements separated by more than a century, set the tone for a transformative alliance. The two groups quickly recognized their shared struggles against oppression and exploitation, despite their temporal and cultural differences. This recognition gave birth to the Haitian People's Republic (HPR)—a coalition of Haitian governance and Panther organizational expertise.

    The Black Panther Party and its 5,000 members from 1970 immediately began assisting Haiti in modernizing its economy and infrastructure. Panther engineers introduced basic mechanical tools, modern agricultural practices, and water purification techniques. Clinics brought by the Panthers, staffed with doctors like Mumia Abu-Jamal and Richard Aoki, began treating diseases that had ravaged Haiti for decades. These clinics also served as training hubs, empowering Haitian doctors and nurses to incorporate modern medicine while respecting indigenous practices like Vodou healing.

    Agricultural modernization was a top priority. Panthers like Elaine Brown and Haitian agronomists worked together to establish cooperatives, replacing the harsh plantation contracts with collective farming methods. Using the Panthers' knowledge of urban community gardens, the Haitians developed communal rice paddies, boosting food security and reducing dependence on slave-like labor.

    Education saw a renaissance as Panther educators such as George Murray collaborated with Haitian intellectuals to establish quadrilingual schools. French, Haitian Creole, Spanish and English became the quad-lingual medium of instruction, symbolizing the union between 19th and 20th-century revolutionary ideals.

    Toussaint's autocratic tendencies were tempered by the Panthers' insistence on grassroots democracy. The Panther-organized People's Councils, composed of freedmen, former mulatto elites, and Panther representatives, became integral to the HPR's governance. These councils prioritized policies such as land redistribution, universal education, and accessible universal healthcare. Though clashes arose, especially with Haiti's former mulatto elite, Toussaint's pragmatic leadership and Newton's unifying rhetoric kept the alliance intact.

    The Panthers' influence extended to cultural shifts. Vodou, long suppressed, found acceptance within the HPR as a vital cultural and spiritual force. Panther activists like Angela Davis encouraged integrating African spiritual traditions into revolutionary identity, while Toussaint embraced the symbolic unification of Haiti's syncretic Catholic-Vodou heritage with the Panthers' Afrocentric philosophy. However for the time being the HPR still leans toward secularism to offer a fair education system and a secular atmosphere among the bureaucracy.

    Contact with the Navajo Nation
    By mid-year, the HPR established radio contact with the Navajo Nation, which had been ISOTed to Western Australia. The Navajo, led by their leader Annie Dodge, shared their own struggles of adaptation and survival, offering advice on sustainable practices in tropical climates. Discussions about indigenous sovereignty and resource management sparked ideas of a alliance or trade/technology sharing. The Navajo promised to send a delegation to Java to strengthen ties, while a small delegation of consisting of a formerly enslaved African turned BPP member named Mamadou Diallo, a free person of color named Marcel Deveroux, and a 1970 BPP member named Samson Allen a engineer, and a mulatta midwife trained in uptime midwifery practices, first aid, hygiene practices named Juana Buendia , setting the stage for a future coalition of the two societies. The delegation sent by the HPR were sent as an act of goodwill and were tasked with: building a modern-ish dock and radio station to better facilitate trade and communication between the HPR and the Navajo Nation. Fortunetly for the HPR, the Navajo Nation seemed pretty pleased to know they weren't the only ones in this world. Juana Buendia the midwife of humble mulatta origins from eastern Hispaniola was eager to share with Annie Dodge her own copies of 1970s medical text she brought with her.

    Global Developments

    West Asia: Babylonian Civil War and Warsaw Ghetto
    The Babylonian and Persian stalemate continued as both sides raced to develop rudimentary firearms from the limited knowledge brought by Warsaw defectors. Babylon suffered a significant blow when the Warsaw Ghetto Bundists, galvanized by their socialist ideology and frustration with Zionist control, launched a counter-coup. Bundist militias, armed with smuggled weapons, ousted the Zionists and reclaimed control over the Warsaw state, renouncing any claims to Palestine and reaffirming their commitment to secular socialism.

    Africa: Somali Ambitions and Carthaginian Intrigue
    Somaliland's expedition to control the Bab el-Mandeb Strait achieved partial success, securing the northern shores. Meanwhile, Carthage-Tyre thrived on Mediterranean chaos, its privateers growing wealthy from trafficking Greek slaves. The arrival of the Korean People's Association in North Africa added complexity, as Korean scouts began exchanging goods and expertise with Carthaginian merchants, planting the seeds of a future alliance.

    North America: Freedmen's Jamahiriya and FSWR
    The Freedmen's Jamahiriya faced growing internal tensions. The conflict between Christian and Muslim factions nearly erupted into violence before the Jamahiriya implemented strict secular governance policies, ensuring religious equality. Economic stability, driven by land reforms and industrial growth, allowed the Jamahiriya to fund educational programs aimed at reconciling the freed slave population with socialist ideals.
    The Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic (FSWR) enjoyed a year of consolidation, establishing trade ties in theory.. with the Jamahiriya and strengthening its naval presence in the Northern Pacific.

    Europe: Red Horseman's Reign
    Southern Europe's chaos deepened as the Neo-Roman and syndicalist-Sforza alliances clashed across Dalmatia. Syracuse descended further into civil war, its pro-fascist and pro-monarchist forces locked in a bloody struggle. In Iberia, Castile's arrival disrupted the fragile balance of power. Castilian monarchs, viewing their sudden isolation as divine intervention, began the slow process of exanding beyond their borders in the peninsula, bringing the attention of both the North Atlantic and Mediterranean .

    (@StarMaker764 can you please help/make the map part? I am sorry this is my first attempt at a isot map game)

    (I would also like to claim another turn if possible)
     
  • Threadmarks


    • Updated the map, some notes:
    1. I wasn't sure where the KPA was supposed to be so I have put them in northern Tunisia. They could be anywhere between Morocco and Libya though! :V
    1.5 On the topic of potentially inaccurate borders I free-handed Castile's borders and wasn't super strict about accuracy, if someone wants to redo them properly feel free
    1.79 Haiti might have also gotten some free clay, the update only mentions the northern coast of Java but I gave them the whole thing to be lazy.

    2. Some of those names are looking really crispy at this point, I should've probably redone all of them but, again, lazy.
     
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    Year 16
  • Threadmarks
    • I AM SO SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG. December was such a busy month for me but I really wanted to give this my all and really hope what I've written is enough to make up for the ridiculous wait at least a little.

    Nation/Entity Name: Island of Sumbawa
    Commonly Known as:
    Government: Dutch Colonial Administration
    Capital: N/A
    Technology Level: early 19th Century
    Year ISOTed from: 1815
    Territory ISOTed: Island of Sumbawa
    Population: 180,000
    Religions: Islam, Folk Religions, Hinduism, Christianity
    Languages: Various local languages
    Head(s) of State: Off island Dutch colonial administrators in Batavia. Many local figures of power
    Brief History: The island of Sumbawa had long been divided between numerous small local polities. Now a rich island of abundant natural resources, the island of Sumbawa was an object of European colonial desires. Trading many luxury resources off to wider global markets, most importantly recently being coffee introduced by the Dutch. Under the idyllic surface Mt.Tambora has been increasingly active; at the point of the island's translocation, on the brink of a truly cataclysmic eruption.

    Nation/Entity Name: The Island of Manhattan
    Commonly Known as: The City
    Government: City and Borough Council
    Capital: N/A
    Technology Level: late 20th Century
    Year ISOTed from: 1999
    Territory ISOTed: The Island of Manhattan
    Population: 1.4 million
    Religions: Atheism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Many minor
    Languages: English, most other Major and Minor languages in some portion
    Head(s) of State: Mayor Rudy Giuliani
    Brief History: Manhattan is at the centre of the largest city in the United States and one of the greatest in the world. It is easy to see New York as one of the proudest urban accomplishments of humanity. A centre of finance, culture, media, and art for the whole world. Despite these lofty heights and dazzling metropolis of dazzling towers, the island relies upon a rest of the world to be the centre of. Without it, the city is completely unable to supply itself and there is little purpose for almost all of its industries.
    -------------------------------

    The Arrival of the Islands of Death
    In a blinding flash of light like a blanket upon the sea the islands of Manhattan and Sumbawa, wrested from their respective times, found themselves transported into an as of yet untouched corner of this patchwork quilt of time and space entering its 16th year. The din of Manhattan clashed with the murmur of the vast waters now surrounding it for a brief moment after the translocation; before being hit by a shockwave from the north. In this direction, on Sumbawa, the native inhabitants and colonial interlopers took longer to notice their translocation through time, the immanently unfolding eruption of Mt.Tambora dominating their attention. The aura that shrouded Sumbawa in its arrival lifted in the instant the eruption's final shockwave pushed out. Like a harbinger of doom the column of smoke from the eruption reached across the horizon and into view for Manhattan before stretching across the sea like a cloak of death. On Sumbawa fire raged across the island amidst air thick with smog. South of this raging hellish inferno, Manhattan was free from lava flows and the worst of the eruption but similarly choked under thick clouds of ash.

    Within minutes of the eruption the shockwave washed across the entire island of Hispaniola-Java. Soon word of ashfall on the Santo Domingo side of the island reached the capital of Cap-Haïtien and the adjoining enclave of Panther-Town. By the time the republic's central committee dispatched a small naval scouting expedition, fishermen and trading vessels en route to the Navajo Nation brought word of a cataclysmic eruption in the Lesser Sunda arc and a metropolis of towers adrift in the middle of the sea. While the recent Haitian arrivals had sailed past the Lesser Sunda Islands in their early exploratory missions radiating outwards, once contact with the Navajo nation was established the bulk of maritime traffic gravitated southwards. While the majority of the Haitian pioneering efforts took place on the island of Java itself (filling in the gaps between the already sparse settlements of Haiti stretched across the vast island), excursions and early (often abortive) attempts at settlement onto Bali and the smaller islands immediately east of Java continued, but beyond Lombok by the end of year 15 not a single human foot had yet made landfall. The Panthers aboard the expedition soon sent word back to Panther-town that the island city was unmistakably Manhattan. In the time it had taken the Haitian scouts to arrive the island had descended into a grim shadow of itself. Famine and despair evident from the sea, the shoreline bore signs of different stages of desperate escape and conflict. In just two weeks less than a hundred thousand remained on Manhattan island, half a million more had fled to distant tropical shores aboard overcrowded rafts and small boats, the rest had perished in over the course of the cataclysmic fortnight.

    High above the rapidly descending disaster millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases injected into the upper atmosphere by the eruption circulated the globe, wrapping north eastwards across the northern hemisphere. From century storms, droughts, absent wet seasons, summer snows, autumnal ground freeze, and heatwaves, the atmospheric disruption brought widespread climatic chaos, agricultural disruption, and infrastructural damage. With the volume of greenhouse gases injected into the atmosphere reduced by Mt.Tambora being translocated just before the final eruption, missing the numerous pre-eruptions in the buildup, this sharp global climatic shift for the worse was still bad enough to later be named the Pale Death by historians. In response the world's societies saw a near universal shared sociological response despite the diverse regional situations, with a general urban centre population collapse and an accompanying rural exodus specifically into as of yet unpopulated and naturally abundant virgin lands.

    The Haitian expeditions to Manhattan found the island a depopulated dismal land bearing the scars of the truest depths of human suffering. Burnt, boarded up, pock marked with bulletholes, and strewn with bodies. Most of those that were unable to escape the island after the collapse of the short-lived emergency government fell prey to starvation, slavery, and cannibal gangs in the areas of the worst food insecurity. Small pockets of survivors managed to cling on around heavily fortified food stockpiles, but most food reserves made their way off the island aboard the exodus to the surrounding wilderness. Despite its grim state the island was a veritable treasure trove of resources and modern tech for Haiti's modernisation efforts. From high tech components to thousands upon thousands of tonnes of metals and building materials. This put Haiti in a rather difficult bind as they had to choose how to split their quite meager fleet between helping the scattered Manhattanite survivor colonies, still stalked by starvation, and scavenging the former metropolis to accelerate Haiti's development .

    In their first year in this new world Panther-town had made great strides in helping the young republic develop but had significantly drained their resources in doing so, their technology and equipment disassembled for parts or scattered across the island. Panther-town itself remained a substantial settlement, but had shrunk substantially as skilled panthers too spread across Hispaniola to offer support to the still extremely impoverished rural areas of the island. While the party's membership had grown the dispersal of their number away from the dual capital loosened their influence over the levers of centralised power in return for a deeper grassroots connection with the island's common people. This trade-off came at the cost of, when the debate of whether to prioritise looting Manhattan or helping the Manhattanites, the Panthers and their demand for a humanitarian approach were sidelined by Louverture's government.

    While Manhattanites that made their way to Hispaniola, the bulk of the survivors, were given sanctuary to freely find a place within Haitian society and survivors still trapped on the island free passage to Hispaniola, the independent refugee colonies scattered across the Indonesian islands were largely left to fend for themselves. While some of these settlements managed to establish a sustainable way of life, the desperation and conflict from which they were spawned followed them all through the rest of the year. Visiting Panther aid missions sent back footage of desperate polluted shanty towns, bone thin New Yorkers spear fishing aboard rafts, and swathes of slash and burnt jungle. With the demise of the heart of New York and the exodus of the Manhattanites taking the focus of the region, Sumbawa was left to the sidelines. Bearing the worst of the immediate impact of the disaster and lacking the aid from the Dutch out of Batavia they received in original history, the island struggled to muster any semblance of recovery. In the power vacuum a local noble rose to occupy the title of Emir of Sumbawa but his power extended little beyond his royal court, power falling mostly to local level figures.

    To Louverture and his central committee the choice to refuse to spend resources on aiding the independent Manhattanite settlements was a pragmatic one. Also, after learning how Haiti would suffer at the hands of the American Empire and how many who escaped Manhattan did so by trampling their way over the less fortunate, there was little love lost for the Americans who clung onto their independence. While Louverture recognised the tragedy of the situation his insistence on the pragmatism of focusing on the immense task at hand to modernise and develop the self-sufficiency of Haiti. The latter being quite a pressing matter as resources brought by the Panthers dwindled and the republic struggled without the foreign imports its entire economy was built around in its original context in the 1800s. While Louverture recognised that rural development was essential to developing the People's Republic he questioned the extent of the Panthers' focus on rural areas so early. Criticising their universal approach to development as naive and counterproductive, throughout the year his officials and the rural Panther support network would increasingly butt heads over resource allocation. While this never came to blows it substantially strained the relationship between his central government and the Panther Party membership. In the face of this tension, Newton and the Black Panther party tried their best to hold the two groups together. In their eyes a break with Louverture's administration would just sideline the Panther's and their mission, jeopardize their safety, and condemn Haiti to Bonapartism.

    The arrival of nearly 200,000 Manhattanite refugees, a large portion arriving in Cap-Haitien. This sudden influx caused significant strain and difficulty at first, but as they settled and found roles to fill they quickly became a vibrant and valuable part of Haitian society. Bringing late 20th century skills and knowledge they greatly accelerated the modernising project. The Cap-Haitien/ Panther-Town urban area growing into a bustling centre of innovation, culture, and development. Transforming from just a small colonial town into a city of scaffolding and cranes with a light rail line under construction.

    Despite often severe misalignment of ideals Newton and Louverture developed an increasingly close friendship over the course of year 16, despite the groups they represented becoming more and more at odds. The privileged position close to Louverture Newton gained came at the cost of others' the degree of access they once had. Soon alienated generals and figures of influence gathered to discuss how their leader had been stolen away by foreigners, and eventually in these discussions the idea of replacing him began to be floated. With one name rising above all others as an alternative, Dessalines.

    Once Louverture had learned of his trusted lieutenants role in his capture by the French and eventual death in original history, he had Dessalines removed from government and forced into civilian life. Afraid of his overzealous ambition and the depths of brutality history proved him capable of. While Dessalines privately was outraged by his dismissal, at the time he was isolated and had little recourse and was forced to stew in his resentment. So, when the faction of conspiring generals approached him, he jumped at the opportunity with almost desperation. While they bided their time in year 16 the "Sons of Ayiti" plotted in the background, waiting for their moment

    The white population of Haiti occupied an awkward position. With nowhere to flee to after the ISOT they felt trapped in a hostile land they no longer had any control over. While Louverture saw them as a valuable demographic and drew substantial ire courting their approval, they grew increasingly uninvested in the project of the People's Republic. Upon the discovery of the Navajo Nation some chose to flee south but most saw it as yet another state with no place for them (or more, a place for them to be seen as superior). The arrival of tens of thousands of generally anti-racist whites from Manhattan came as the last straw for these Haitian whites that refused to integrate and the bulk of the demographic finally abandoned Hispaniola. Some joined the diaspora in the Navajo nation, some went to the more successful independent Manhattanite settlements, but most joined the new community of Nouvelle France on the eastern coast of Sumatra. Quickly growing from nothing to thousands of people the new nation was chaotic, impoverished, but deeply ambitious. For the most part it existed off of Haiti's radar outside of general unease towards the prospect of both its success and failure. The Manhattanites that decided to join the settlement were either delighted or shocked to discover its deeply racist character, being a land defined by its refusal to move forward with the rest of the region.

    While the arrival of the newcomers in the past two years brought great relief to the Dine people, confirming they were not the last of humanity, they proved to be the biggest challenge the UDWC would face since the great droughts.

    While the Navajo received considerably fewer refugees than the Haitian People's Republic; thousands of Manhattanites made their way to the Navajo nation. Like in Haiti these newcomers placed stress on their host country. After settling in, most proved to be productive new citizens, helping to bolster the growth of the up until recently quite undeveloped coastal west. Despite this the kneejerk reaction against them persisted. The current prosperity the Dine enjoyed was one of careful sustainability and the Manhattanites, the abundance of post-modern New York not a distant memory for them, quickly were painted as a threat to this balance. While the New Yorkers within the Navajo Nation quickly settled in for the most part, the independent settlements on the northern coast and their struggle to achieve a sustainable way of life would soon probe to be the largest difficulty for the Dine in what would ultimately be another rather uneventful year for them. These settlements quickly over-hunted the northern coast they settled on, pushing them further south and into the hunting and grazing grounds of the northern Navajo communities. On numerous occasions this desperation fuelled poaching ended in violence, especially in circumstances when the target of these Manhattanite expeditions were Dine livestock. These outbursts of violence triggered cycles of violence and deepening mistrust as the year went on. Boiling hotter and hotter the situation inevitably exploded when news of a full-blown Manhattanite raid washed across the Navajo nation. While in truth the incident was no more than an attempted cattle rustle turned violent with more New Yorker casualties than Dine, rumours of a massacre and roaming bandits slaughtering homesteads swirled. The refugees, now settled into their new home, quickly found themselves in an incredibly dangerous situation as they became targets of random arbitrary violence at the hands of overzealous thugs taking advantage of the tense climate. On the American side of things Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York disgraced for the cataclysmic failure of his administration, attempted to use this chaotic political environment to rebuild his political career. In Libertalia, the largest and most successful independent American settlement in the site of what would be Darwin, he launched a political campaign for the colony council election in year 17. Basing his campaign upon a wider project of uniting the Manhattanite diaspora under one flag and reclaim the chunk of the Big Apple, the greatest city of earth, left adrift at sea. The year would end with no resolution to the deepening mistrust between the Dine and New Yorkers, a malaise of unease hanging over both sides.

    On Eastern Seas
    Sicilians cut through the deep blue of the Indian Ocean aboard rather historically anachronistic vessels. Upon arrival their fleet were little more than shore hugging early medieval vessels, triremes and cogs, at home in the calm inland waters of the Mediterranean. The only reason they had found Somaliland so quickly was because of the fact that their early vessels had spent so much of their first year in the Indian ocean being flung all across it by storms and winds of the like Sicilian sailors had never dealt with before. Contact with the Somali, and later Palestine through them, brought Sicillian shipwrights knowledge of maritime vessels nearly a millennia ahead of their own, and with this they developed sail vessels capable of cutting directly across the Indian Ocean remarkably quickly, opening up a whole world of opportunities for exploration and reliable maritime trade.

    Uptimer knowledge didn't just allow the Sicilians to fast forward through centuries of maritime technological development, but permeated through every aspect of their culture. Modern ideas of sociology, science, politics, and philosophy were dropped right into the centre of a society that hadn't even taken the first steps into the renaissance. The sheer steepness of the culture shock these ideas wrought upon the medieval Sicilian could have been enough for them to be entirely shut out, and at first they were, too taboo for any of the elite to risk losing their privileges to indulge in and too prohibited to disseminate down to the lower classes. It was the interest of Emperor Frederick that allowed the daring and inquisitive of the upper classes to open up to these foreign ideas from the future, as he specifically cultivated discussions surrounding state-craft. His personal library gathered books such as Machiavelli's The Prince, Marx's Das Kapital, Hobbes' Leviathan, Rousseau's Social Contract, textbooks of all topics, Ardent's The Origins of Totalitarianism, a great number of Vinyls (Frederick taking a specific liking to the genre of Jazz particularly the Ink Spots), a VHS copy of the Star Wars original trilogy and other classics of cinema, and countless other cultural artefacts. The first talented 20th century Arabic into 13th century Italian translator received a lucrative post in Frederick's imperial court; as it also slowly filled with the most open minds of Sicily, to engage in cultural discourse and state-building with the emperor.

    Alongside openly embracing transgressive cultural and political discourse Frederick II also relaxed the previously ramping pressure upon his kingdom's Muslim community. Using the demographic as friendly middle-men to receive Somali traders and envoys, and holding their protection as a bargaining chip that could always be withdrawn if the terms of trade were to turn. This sudden relaxing of restrictions slowed the exodus of Sicilian Muslims into rural isolated pockets or overseas that had carried over from before their translocation to India. This privileged position of being placed in front of Sicily's Muslim trading partners allowed their communities to embrace the influx of modern ideas to the fullest. While the other religious groups of Sicily remained quite isolated from the wider world, immigration between the Muslim communities of the Kingdom and the nearby Somali and Palestinian republics made them the most connected and cosmopolitan in Sicily by far.

    Since their arrival, lacking a Pope and a Rome, the Catholic clergy found themselves in disarray. Embroiled in constant squabbling amongst themselves over doctrinal drift, the faith's stance on modernity, and church hierarchy. In this disoriented state the Catholic structure could put up little opposition as Frederick II systemically targeted and eroded their power to build his own centralised absolutist control over Sicily. Given short leashes, the upper clergy had little choice but to conform and keep their heads low. Only the lower and rural clergy were able to resist and put up any real opposition. Radicalising the isolated rural peasantry where they could.

    Alongside the humanities Frederick II also encouraged research into the STEM fields to aid in Sicily's technological development. This new knowledge hadn't been applied to the wider kingdom beyond the dissemination of modern agricultural techniques; which came in incredibly useful as the Pale Death interrupted the flow of the weather in their new climate Sicilian farmers had just begun to adapt to. Instead in the kingdoms small number of universities the technological gap between Sicily and its trading partners was intently studied, in an attempt by the emperor to devise a development plan to modernise the kingdom as efficiently as possible.

    Somaliland continued to establish seaport outposts around the Indian Ocean. The outposts in the Bab al-Mandab Strait grew into bustling trade ports allowing maritime traffic from Palestine to Somaliland and Sicily to impressively increase as the year marched on. As more and more trading vessels made the route through the Persian Gulf to Babylon; small trading outposts on the coast of Oman, coast of India, and on Bahrain were established to ease the journey, and to monitor for any beginnings of piracy. Similar such stations were settled on Socotra and the Maldives, the former also receiving a number of agrarian settlements. Unique to the other settlements, a mostly military detachment set off to Zanzibar to establish a staging post to explore Southern Africa and the feasibility of a southern route to Europe.

    Not only did these bases allow the fledgling republic to become gatekeeper of both the Iranian Gulf and Red Sea, but their high military population allowed the homeland to send away its weapon stockpiles, disarm, and settle into the peace that was so suddenly thrust upon them. When Somaliland arrived its independence was declared but hadn't yet been built or even accepted in the hearts of the masses. The peculiarity of the republic's newfound isolation and their even stranger neighbours kept the populace in awe and allowed the peace to hold by default, as everyone put down their arms to get to work rebuilding and seizing new opportunities. Each year in this new world left the cities unrecognisable from the last, transforming from devastated ruins, into bustling hubs of activity and industrial expansion fed by Palestinian imports. The population flow towards the cities helped alleviate rural land pressures and reduce clan conflict. Shifting young men towards being workers and away from being soldiers in local militias.

    While the republic held, institutionally fleshed itself out, and maintained the status quo of peace; minor conflicts and aftershocks of the civil war inevitably flared up from time to time. When they did arise they often resulted in the lesser party opting to take their herds and everything they could carry and set off into the frontier, most selecting to go towards what once was Ethiopia. With life for these ranchers in exile on the frontier hard, and the trek out to Ethiopia even harder, this option of exile led to most conflicts being resolved through resolution with oversight from the council of elders. While the republic was still far off from multiparty democracy or official state institutions, the rulings of the elders held the clans together bound by truces and treaties.

    With these three major stabilising pillars of keeping the young republic calm and good climatic fortune, the Pale Death only lightly grazed Somaliland. Midsummer droughts hit portions of the East hard and accelerated urbanisation and exodus westwards into the Ethiopian plateau. A conflict between two sub-clans running on from year 15 expanded and by autumn required the improvised military of the republic to respond, but otherwise the peace held and the republic continued to flourish.

    The spectre of war looms over the Mediterranean
    By the opening of year 16 the civil war in Dalmatia had been dragging on for years, nearly approaching half a decade, and both sides were willing to play costly gambits to break through and finally end this. The first move came from the syndicalists in the form of a number of offensives in quick succession in the early months of the year, specifically focusing on encircling and capturing the heavily fortified industrial new-town of Diligentia in the centre of the Dalmatian coast. While, by the end of March these assaults had substantially weakened the city's defences, they had failed to break through and after a series of strong storms had already slowed the sudden arrival of heavy snow in April halting them entirely. Nonetheless these assaults had crippled the town's productive capabilities, leaving the fascists with only a handful of much smaller industrial new-towns in the south placing them in a desperate position production-wise if the war were to drag on any longer, and so it was time for the fascist Neo-Roman side of the conflict to prepare to play their gambit.

    Amidst brutal storms followed by the setting in of late May snows, the syndicalists were knocked into disarray. The central committee were thoroughly occupied with domestic affairs and trying to shape their half of the battered nation up to brave the impending food shortages. This distraction bought the fascists the time they needed to plan their manoeuvre. Once the Syndicalists were ready they resumed their offensive into the south of the province. Pushing quickly past Diligentia and into the new-towns at the southern tip of Dalmatia. They found the territory they captured undefended and razed, what remained of the populace willing to change sides after the fascists had "neutralised the valuability of their capture". The fascist and roman army had used the limited construction equipment at their disposal to carve a rudimentary dirt highway through the hinterland just outside the province's borders to flank round to Fiume. This route to the north had been left undefended as the Syndicalists expected an attack up the A-1 highway that cut along the coast through the province north to south, and had in turn spent considerable resources fortifying. Catching the syndicalists' northern garrisons by surprise, they launched a lightning offensive west through the northern region of the province, beelining towards Fiume. This rapid assault had to perfectly line up with the return of the Fiumi fleet, seized by the fascists when they lost the city to the Syndicalists; back from spending months being mothballed off the coast of Syracuse's port district, far from the conflict. The small collection of great war era vessels bombarded the city mercilessly upon their arrival. Catching the meagre syndicalist navy unprepared, they managed to cripple the fleet before it could even leave port, easily dispatching what remained of the force that managed to go out to meet them. On the heels of this sudden naval blockade and bombardment the coalesced fascist and roman army descended upon the city's suburbs.

    After numerous weeks of rounds of naval and artillery bombardment followed by urban warfare assaults on the remaining pockets of syndicalist resistance within the city and repeat, and with Nepos' Roman forces focused on holding back the Syndicalist forces from the rest of Northern Dalmatia, Fiume finally fell. The victory was achieved using inordinate brutality, leaving the city a shattered shell of its former self, entire blocks erased to dislodge the Syndicalist defenders. Pivoting their forces away from the capital after its capture, the legionaries joined the entrenched Roman forces defending the city from the rear, facing a strengthening offensive from the Syndicalists as the bulk of their military rushed north from the recently pacified south. The frontline became quickly entrenched as summer failed to provide any weather amicable for a campaign season. North Italian reinforcements arriving in early autumn (technologically inferior cannon fodder only sent in a rather duplicitous attempt by the Ambrosian lords to reduce the amount of mouths they had to feed and to temporarily exile the most violent of their society) allowed the fascists to further reinforce their defence of the city. Mostly using the additional forces as labour to use on reconstruction and bringing the city's shattered industry back to life.

    Winter was brutal for both sides. The country shattered by war, the extreme cold and famine of winter brought the populace to their knees. People from across the territory signed up en masse to fight on the promise of rations, to be quickly thrown at doomed offensives sometimes even without a weapon. The south was devastated, next to nothing remained. In the fascist occupied the ruins of the capital, what remained of its populace cowered, awaiting the end of the war. The Syndicalists held the least devastated part of the country in the centre of Dalmatia, but famine still stalked the populace they presided over. In the war of hearts the Fascists had turned the south against them and only ruled Fiume through fear. On the other hand the syndicalists were also seen as responsible for the devastation this war had wrought, and for the first time since Fiume's arrival, there was space opening for a movement other than the dominant two to sweep in.

    Taking advantage of this chaos, slaver ships from Greece and New Carthage stalked the coast. Attacking the desperate and the undefended, they abducted entire villages, the most common target being agrarian pagan communities that clung to the rural fringe to avoid the chaos of modernisation and the civil war.

    Amidst the cold and the fall of Dalmatia into anarchy Sforza found himself in an awkward position, to say the least. The forces he brought depleted, his former holdings in Northern Italy captured, and seen as an opportunistic warlord by the syndicalists; he had ended up at a dead-end in life. Snowed in in a Syndicalist fort for the winter with what remained of his army, he weighed up his options. A return to Northern Italy would be suicide, his rivals sure to get rid of him before he could re-establish himself. If he remained in Dalmatia and the syndicalists won his life would most likely end in obscurity; if the fascists won, death again. He had hoped to secure a long lasting future for his dynasty and now it seemed it would end sooner than it did in original history.

    Back in the republic Sforza had left behind, the alliance with the fascists of Fiume was changing the very foundations of Ambrosian society. The industrialisation of Northern Italy's cities had built a proletarian working class, and in the ideological vacuum such a radical change generated, Fiumi agitators took advantage. Happy to be away from the brutality of the conflict back home, the fascist agents rallied crowds of workers under the noses of the nobles of the republics, and in banquets and high society gatherings they proselytised members of the upper class too. The chaos of the Pale Death came to the fascists' advantage as they continued to pit the republic's populace against itself. In the face of food shortages and increasing poverty the agitators blamed the weakest of society. They told the crowds that for their society to survive these harsh times the "useless" would have to be purged, and so they gave the poisonous rhetoric for North Italian society to set at war with itself. Crowds went through the streets of the republic's largest cities and with near indiscriminate criteria targeting the most helpless in horrific massacres. The streets became unsafe, ruled by violence. Pushing hundreds out into the countryside where at least things were quieter.

    While the Ambrosian elite had been receptive to the ideology of the Fiumi agents up until that point, seeing fascism as an antidote to the allure of syndicalism to the lower masses, the brutality the fascist mobs had unleashed on their people drew deep outrage. Entire neighbourhoods were devastated and the social fabric of society wounded in a way that would take years to heal. Emboldened, the fascist mobs challenged the city guard and carved out territory within the republic's urban centres. The leaders of the movement quickly dividing the crowds and the captured turf amongst themselves, and descending into low level warfare amongst themselves. Even the Fiumi agents were shocked by the beast they had created.

    The Ambrosian Republic and Fiumi fascists remained allied and the former continued to help the latter in their war, but the damage the agitators had done to the relationship between the two was irreparable. The agents were eventually exiled home, voluntarily as they quickly sought to flee the disaster they had unleashed, and were placed on the frontline in punishment for their catastrophic failure. The Ambrosian Republic had entered year 16 strong and now limped into the next year, its countryside in disarray from the Pale Death and internal population displacement and its cities overrun by gang warfare.

    The Kingdom of Castille remained an isolated land. While trade with the wider world had introduced them to technological wonders, life had remained largely the same for the vast majority of the country's inhabitants. The mercantile and aristocratic elite of Bilbao and other northern coastal towns embraced the new world they found themselves in with it's new ideas and marvellous machines. While the rest of the population largely turned their backs towards what they could not understand and relied upon traditions to give them comfort in this slightly harder life; cut off from the trade networks of old, life had gotten poorer for all and especially those of the trade reliant urban centres. For these folks and herders on the border with limited grazing land, the virgin frontier presented an attractive opportunity.

    From this outward settlement the internal squabbling between the aristocracy worsened. The shake-up of prestige and influence through lost alliances and rivals in the outside world had already built a chaotic political environment amongst the elite. These land disputes gave the conflict considerable fuel but also the king an opportunity to rebalance the distribution of power through rewarding the loyal with swathes of unsettled Iberia. Seeking to seize on these grants and to substantiate their new titles, entire villages (often those worst hit by the Pale Death) were relocated to these mostly barren holdings. Here early independent homesteaders clashed with the incoming noble's subjects, with the latter tending to win and the former being forced to submit to their new liege and the taxes that came with that or leave.

    Greece remained a chaotic land when year 16 opened. Cut off from trade with most in the med, still deeply wounded by the famine of the year of their arrival, and the fighting between the Eleusinians and the remnants of the Delian league and the institution of slavery constantly destabilising forces. While the Eleusinian state had pushed for the annihilation of the Delian league at the opening of the conflict, they had intentionally slowed their advance as the war dragged on to keep the remaining independent cities open as easy targets for slave raids. These cities kept in a permanently weakened state but never finished off. Even within the state of Hellas cities raided one another. The increased appetite for and centrality of the slave markets needing hundreds every month to be dispossessed of their freedom as Greek society continued to stratify deeper and deeper between an unfree majority and a smaller and smaller oligarchic class.

    The Eleusinian State of Hellas had not only failed to modernise but had fallen backwards in development since their arrival. Athens and the other urban centres captured by the cult hadn't recovered from being sacked, the population was a mere fraction of its former self, and the countryside had become a dangerous place where safe passage was a distant memory. Amidst this deterioration the cult's slave compounds mass produced weaponry used to entrench this system of violence and export it across the Mediterranean. While the waters near Palestine were heavily policed the central and western Mediterranean saw increasingly bold slave raids as the Eleusinian slave markets demanded bodies.

    With the other powers that formerly had Greece the object of their ambition preoccupied with civil wars, Palestine saw a shift in their foreign policy stance towards the slavers of Hellas. The Eleusinian state in Hellas, a dangerous destabilising force for the entire region and its foundation the evil institution of slavery; intervention became an increasingly common topic of discussion in the halls of Palestinian power. This debate raged in secret with the pro- and anti- factions incredibly passionate. Those supporting saw allowing the Eleusinian state to continue as complicity in their slavery. While those against agreed that the Greek slavery was unacceptable, they argued that more war was the last thing the region needed. While at times it seemed neither side of the debate would come to agree, eventually a compromise was reached.

    While it had made strides in militarisation the Palestinian state was not ready for the risk that a direct confrontation with Hellas could extend to a larger conflict with a united front made up of the other reactionary states dotted around the Mediterranean. Instead the opportunity for action came from within Hellas. In the period soon after the Greeks' arrival,, a Palestinian delegation stayed in Athens for a short while. This diplomatic mission was quickly realised to be doomed to fail as the Greeks refused to abolish slavery and so in turn the Palestinian's refused to help with modernisation or establish trade relations. During the otherwise fruitless visit the Palestinian diplomats managed to build ties with a faction within the Eleusinian cult, of all groups. While the rest of the movement had embraced slavery as a crucial pillar of their world view, the Palestinians had managed to convince this group of lower class cultists to adopt the idea of universal equality alongside gender equality. The inevitable expulsion of the diplomats soon cut contact between the two groups and the Palestinians assumed that their influence on the small group of Greeks would fade. So it would come as a shock when what was assumed to be a slaving vessel ran into Palestinian territorial waters and was boarded, after their arrest the crew asked for the diplomats by name and two groups were once again reunited. The Greeks revealed that the Palestinians' radical lessons had inspired them to found the Cult of Marx. In their isolation the group had syncretised tales of leftist heroes with Greek gods such as Ponos and Penia into the god Marx. A new god representing the toil of labour and the poor masses of the from a time when all the gods even Zues the father and Heracles the son had faded in the face of the greed of the oligarchs and the rule of currency. While the way the Marxist cult had internalised their lessons perplexed them the Palestinians were glad that they had made an imprint on Greek society.

    The Marxists' vessel was sent back to Greece with a cache of weapons and a radio to organise regular shipments of both military and humanitarian aid shipments. While the faction was small at this point in time it was Greece's best hope for change and the end of the slaving of the Eleusinian order.

    While the care these covert operations needed took a lot of the central committee's focus, they also put significant diplomatic effort into building a closer bond with the other socialist states around the region. Hoping to organise an international movement for the defence of socialism and mutual aid. Palestinian diplomats attempted to court each socialist state and movement they had contact with to send a delegation to a meeting of the Fifth Internationale next year. The topic of collaborative modernisation to aid the socialist projects lagging behind and the need for militarisation and an official military alliance in the face of fascism's rise across Europe.

    Internally Palestine itself had a rather uneventful year, as its modernisation and development continued to advance with good pace. Agriculture was now substantially modernised and the population was now shifting from mostly rural undereducated peasants to a strong and independent urban proletariat, transitioning from subsistence agriculture to highly productive educated modernised specialised careers. The Palestinian economy became the centre of industry and development in the Mediterranean, each beat of its heart circulating the region with resources, development, and new ties of trade. Using the lessons they had learnt from the incredibly fruitful colonisation missions of the Sinai, Cyprus, and the northern Levant; the government began a new project of finally colonising the incredibly valuable agricultural land of the Nile in a loosely structured five year plan. Establishing a new bread basket of low labour demand mechanised industrialised agriculture.

    In the history of the original earth, Kim Chwa-chin was destined to die at the hands of a Japanese paid assassin just a year into his premiership, a loss that would contribute towards the dissolution of the autonomous prefecture less than a year later. His rule as head of the KPAM's military had been short and was pushed to prominence by the prefecture being under constant threat from banditry and imperial Japanese excursions. With the Japanese gone, the informal military of peasants' militias were able to focus on banditry and steadily push the scourge into decline, allowing Kim Chwa-chin and the more organised elements of the military to be able to use their manpower to aid large scale infrastructural engineering efforts. With this decline of the military and its leaders' prominence the central committee of the KPR became a competitive place, overrun by jockeying for dominance between middling figures. This infighting deepened over the year but failed to produce any figure ahead of the rest of the pack. A figure who rose to particular notoriety over year 16 was a young man claiming to be Kim Il Sung. Tales of the Korean socialist movement's future brought from Palestine being a popular topic of conversation. A world with Japan's empire destroyed, a communist China, Korea divided, and Juche. Despite being just 19 years old, propped up by a handful of careerist militia captains, and highly questionably even who he claims to be; following his "discovery" in July the young Kim drew increasing support and interest in the hinterland villages on the Algerian coast he was toured around.

    In its newfound isolated peace, the decentralised government structure of the KPR, centred around self-governance and village assemblies, was able to flourish. Independent village assemblies were able to organise farmers into relocating their entire livelihoods out of the agriculturally unproductive desert areas some portions of the prefecture found itself in. While the Pale Death didn't hit North Africa as hard as it did other regions, a harsher dry season and shorter wet season put more energy into this settlement push away from the arid areas. Entire wagon trains of disassembled villages made their way into the fertile regions of the Barbary Coast and across the med to the Baelerics, Sardinia, and the unpopulated western coast of Sicily. These settlements brought their connection with the central government of the KPR with them in the form of their village assemblies and militias, but still tended to fall out of the reach of full government taxation, straining the finances of the institutional development of a central government but also alleviating the strain brought upon peasants by the Pale Death.

    On the opposite side of Sicily, the year opened into a particularly brutal period of the Syracusan civil war. Vicious fascist offensives had managed to separate the pro-monarchists forces, with scattered militias dispersed amongst isolated pockets within the countryside and frontier and the bulk of Hieronymus' army trapped behind the walls of Syracuse city by a blackshirt siege. Their elite soldiers depleted after proving ineffective against the modern tactics and more efficient use of firearms by the fascists. The pro-monarchist militias in the countryside were better described as numerous disparate threads of anti-facist militias; from proto-socialists to traditionalists standing against the fascists' mission of Italian modernisation, This project being an attempt to force march the people of Sicily through history to catch up with their 20th century Italic counterparts in Fiume.

    While a small number of fascists included the adoption of Christianity alongside the linguistic and cultural changes of Italian Modernisation, the religion remained an awkward issue amongst the leadership of the Brotherhood of Syracuse; the overarching faction that held the fascist movement in Syracuse together through all being in subordination to them. Host Venturi's nominated representative on Sicily, since his focus shifted back to Dalmatia at the onset of their civil war, was a man named Alberto Ferro. A rather fanatical convert to fascism (even adopting an Italianised name, a practice popular amongst the most devoted fascists of Syracuse and Roman Dalmatia) recruited from the aristocracy from the city; he saw Christianity as a culturally backwards, feminine, and submissive and bore a burning disdain for the often quite high profile Christian missionaries. While some within the brotherhood's leadership had a more favourable perspective on Christianity, the majority fell in line with Ferro and adopted a futurist atheism.

    One of the most difficult episodes of the civil war for the monarchists came in May amidst brutal storms and a desperate chapter of the siege of the city. The stress of the siege was getting to everyone trapped within the walls and as the weather turned unseasonably harsh, the young king Hieronymous began to crack. The disparate council of nobles that had pried the king away from the rising Syracusan fascist figures and Fiumi delegation, began to see the king turn against them in spectacular public outbursts that could often be only described as tantrums. Believing he had made a close bond with the Fiumi fascist delegation and particularly Host-Venturi, Hieronymous began to publicly argue for surrender and that with his connections he could ensure none would be harmed. Quickly the council of nobles supporting him placed the king into a secluded house arrest, but his outbursts had already had a disastrous effect on morale.

    The defence shaken, a naval bombardment from the departing Fiumiun navy (which had been stationed, mothballed, just outside of the city) heavily damaged the walls, with breaches too wide to be plugged, and brought the fighting into the city itself. As the siege transformed into brutal urban fighting a trickle of surrenders cascaded into a rout as the rank and file of the monarchist forces finally gave in. The, at this point almost entirely depleted, elite royal guard pulled back to the palace for a last stand, but in just a few short hours they were dead; alongside their king (quickly and quietly executed amidst the chaos of battle) and those of the monarchist council that were unable to smuggle themselves out of city before its fall. As the fascist mob swept into the city the Archimedean University was among the many casualties of the destruction. Its campus was burned, the institution seen as intellectually feminine, the Brotherhood declaring they would replace it with an improved place of fascist modernist masculine learning. The majority of the University's students and staff had long since fled before the fall of the city; scattering off to Iceland, Palestine, and other such safe places for academia the school had made connections with. Some had stayed behind and among them was Archimedes. He lingered until the last moment, hoping to save as much of his work as possible, and as the last ship fled the city his whereabouts were unknown. In the chaos of the battles final hours he had managed to escape the city on a small vessel and was spotted by pirates from Tyre, who stalked the seas and the opportunities the chaos of the civil war presented. To the wider world he vanished off the face of the earth right around the fall of his university, and was in turn assumed dead. Being sold to the king Azemilcus to be kept as an involuntary advisor, hidden away from all but his royal court.

    While some within the brotherhood's leadership would've preferred to keep Hieronymus as a figurehead or at least use his execution as a year 0 moment for the transformation of Syracuse, his death shattered the resistance to their rise. While a number of militias continued the fight asymmetrically in the Syracusan hinterland, the majority quietly laid down their arms in the face of the seemingly unassailable fascist ascendance to hegemony over the island. In the wake of this hardfought peace and victory the brotherhood's motley army rampaged through the city in celebration, drinking it dry, looting, and terrorising the populace. The Brotherhood's thugs ruled streets overseeing the many hundreds of recently enslaved prisoner of war forced labourers as they did the gruelling work of rebuilding the city, the first building to be repaired being the city's palace from which the central committee of the Brotherhood reigned.

    As the fascists strengthened their commitment to state atheism and internally purged those deemed too christian, out in the hinterland the largest growing christian movement came to be that of the Socialists of Christ. A Catholic movement centred around the revolutionary militia led by a Cuban missionary, Sancho Castllano. His mission in Syracuse being a private affair with no connection to his homelands government, and incredibly successful despite that.

    The leadership of the Syracusan Brotherhood used this socialist militia and the arrival of the similarly leftist Koreans on the unsettled side of Sicily as the "other" to build their movement up in opposition to. Service to the fascist proto-state was integrated into every level of society, the influence of its propaganda inescapable. The Brotherhood centralised their control and organised their movement into a single membership with a single hierarchy spread across every industry and every aspect of social and political life. The militant side of this totalising state-party movement were increasingly radicalised against this socialist opposition, and soon by the years end the many fascist militias were itching for a fight with the remaining opposition forces and Korean settlers. While the central committee would prefer to get themselves to full strength before going to war again, many within the party leadership hoped for a conflagration point to allow them to feed their hungry war machine.

    Further from Korean settlement activity and hoping to continue to be able to secretly profit off of piracy in their neutrality. The Carthaginians sent amicable emissaries to the KPR to establish peaceful diplomatic relations and sketch out some sort of official trade relationship. Still internally concerned about the integrity of their frontier, they establish formal suzerainty over the many rural hinterland settlements they had up until now allowed quite a degree of sovereignty.

    The war in Mesopotamia was reaching a tiring stalemate. Despite the city being rocked by a coup and a counter-coup in quick succession, Warsaw's defensive frontline hadn't budged an inch since they had declared independence. That was quite for lack of trying on the Babylonian's part, as their fighting with the Achamenaids drew most of their attention. Leaving a skeleton crew defence on the Warsawian border. While the Babylonians and Iranians started the conflict with similar approaches to warfare, their differing circumstances had caused them to diverge in doctrine substantially. Holding the larger population of the two by a wide margin and inspired by observing how the Warsawians engaged in their defence, the Babylonians employed a strange mix of classical and 20th century infantry tactics. On the other hand the Achemenaids were forced to rely on a more asymmetrical focus on warfare relying upon their mounted former imperial garrison converted into guerrilla mounted riflemen. The dynamic between these two armies over the glacial movements of the war's campaign seasons had developed into the Babylonian army pushing out and digging in, and then the Achemenaids harassing their entrenched positions until the next Babylonian advance. The direction of movement in the conflict was firmly in the Babylonians advantage but a grindingly slow advance and deeply costly for both sides.

    It would be from this stagnation Warsaw would shock all sides by finally breaking the stalemate on their front. Seizing the moment of surprise the Warsawians released armour (little more than a biodiesel fuelled scrap metal armoured mobile artillery) onto the battlefield. Despite their poor design these heavy guns ripped through the Babylonian defences, striking terror into their hearts. Exactly the emotion the Warsawian military were hoping to elicit. Fearing total collapse the Babylonians quickly sent emissaries forth to Warsaw to discuss terms to end the conflict and to formally recognise the city-state as independent and sovereign. The negotiations pushed back and forth and dragged on for a few days but ultimately ended fruitfully. Hostilities ceased and the independent Warsaw Bund gained itself a clearly delineated territory.

    With fighting in the Warsaw front resolved the forces of Bel-Shimanni were able to focus their full strength against the Persians. With a heavy assault the Babylonians managed to decisively break through the Achemenaid frontline. The Persian forces quickly found themselves in disarray. After a daring assault managed to kill king Xerxes II and the most elite portion of his army, they were shattered. Hoping to ensure they never faced a revolt again, the Babylonians sought to make an example of the Achaemenids and began a brutal project of reprisals, sacking, and looting.

    In the face of brutal repression and the systematic slaughter of entire settlements the Achaemenid military retreat transformed into a full-blown exodus of the Persian population from the lands of the Babylonian empire out into the Iranian plateau. During the war pastoralists had ventured a little into the hinterlands surrounding Mesopotamia to graze their livestock in peace but very few settled here. Fearing outright extermination the Iranian refugees fled past these hinterland grazing grounds, deep into the untouched lands of the plateau. By the end of the year the Iranian population was shattered into isolated pastoralist communities scattered amongst the valleys of the plateau. While some looked to the future hoping this new home would allow them to rebuild their fallen empire, most were simply focused on survival.

    In awe of the brutality of the near total destruction of the Iranian people, the populace of Mesopotamia submitted to Bel-Shimanni's iron fisted rule. Shortly after the Babylonian army finished their destruction of the Achaemenid province they marched their way into Uruk and Eshnunna to ensure their subjugation. Their local garrisons outgunned and outmanned by the Babylonians, the existing rulers managed to retain their position but saw their autonomy greatly reduced and their tax burden substantially increased. The royal treasury replenished from the looting of the war and this increased extraction, the king funded the creation of a large industrial area intended to be a centre of research. Where Babylonian learned men would come together to make sense of and piece together the fragmented pieces of modern science shared by Warsaw.

    In the face of the setting in of this authoritarian regime that had already proven itself capable of genocide, the Jewish population of the empire began to flee. With life in the modern city difficult to adapt to. The majority of the Babylonian Jews decided to re-establish their communities in the hinterland, away from the chaos of Warsaw but still within its orbit and, most importantly, still under its protection. In Warsaw itself the many disparate social and political factions struggled to see eye to eye on how to build the peace. The brief Zionist regime had worn the LSPW to justify their brief capture of power in the city, and in turn thoroughly delegitimized it. For their counter-coup and in their quite militant wartime administration the bundists had reverted back to the dressings of the JFO. Now it was the task to do everything that had been done in year 8 again. Society needed demilitarising again. The constitution needed redrafting again. Warsaw had walked itself in an eight year circle to exorcise Zionism from its political climate. Those deposed by the Bundist coup pushed far from the levers of power and social influence. The most conceited and proud left into self imposed exile, establishing a small pocket of isolationist agrarian communities up on the southern shore of Lake Van deep into the wilderness of Anatolia. While debates about the new institutional structure to replace the provisional state the Warsaw Bund found itself in continued to swirl by year's end, progress was made by the labour unions as the city shifted from a wartime economy to a now relatively prosperous and industrially developed civilian economy.

    The long peace holds in Northern Europe
    The steady pace of industrialisation and modernisation continued in the Peasants Confederation and Greater Antilles. With oil and natural gas exploitation expanding out from Holland into the North Sea the quite urbanised coastal areas of the Peasants Confederation were seeing rapidly accelerating industrialisation. Meanwhile in the face of this increasing access to modern technology across the confederacy the often mostly German rural settlements in the interior were growing quite resistant to the tides of change. Despite the two groups being sharing quite a hybrid culture at this point, the fact that the English peasants had tended to adopt a more urbanised modern way of life and the Germans had clung to an agrarian rustic way was driving some cultural division in the country. This especially came to ahead as the economic difficulties of the Pale Death pushed both populations to move out into the frontier to settle the rest of Holland and up the Rhine into the agriculturally and industrially (resource wise) productive Ruhr valley. Here the two sub-cultures were back in close proximity like they had been when the confederacy first began, to chafe and re-hybridise after they had drifted.

    Meanwhile in Cuba a more social internal conflict was beginning to decisively tip over. As the republic had enjoyed peace and the need to militarisation had drifted since the expulsion of the colonial Spanish, the new generation of leftist thinkers coming up were becoming increasingly pacifist and anarchist. While the more militarist older wing of the party continued to hold power, socially and in intellectual political discourse anarchism and libertarian perspectives on socialism were increasingly at the cutting edge. This was also driven by the increasing importance of ecology and green politics within academia, as Cuba continued to grapple with their island's ecosystem struggling to adapt to the new climate. The Pale Death only accelerated the ecological rot that constantly bubbled across the Greater Antilles. Once vibrant jungles constantly decaying away into scrappy temperate prairie. The long persistent cold year 16 brought to Northern Europe accelerated this ecological collapse rapidly. While strides in ecology and biology studies and protective measures were able to protect agriculture and prevent a truly cataclysmic natural mass die-off, the geo-engineering solution to revitalise the island's natural environments was still out of reach.

    In the seven years Iceland had been in this new world it had built itself quite a stable position. Politically a VG - SD coalition dominated the Althing comfortably since the first election after their arrival. This leftist government presided over the nation's often painful but incredibly transformative transition away from globalised capitalism and into a world where they had just a handful of trading partners. With no access to technologically complicated parts modern luxuries could only be maintained if they were repairable, and so the Icelandic populace adapted their way of life to modularity and being only able to repair rather than replace. While reliant on food exports from Europe the Icelandic agricultural industry had adapted impressively to provide a diverse array of foodstuffs, with geothermal greenhouses able to provide produce that otherwise would've been completely lost. Despite these impressive strides in self-sufficiency, the Pale Death would come to hit Iceland hard . Their green and modernised economy allowed them to blunt the worst of the climatic shift but nonetheless the country suffered. With Cuban food exports focused towards the struggling Peasants Confederacy and agricultural production cut down to nearly nothing Iceland found itself facing rationing harsher than it did in the year of its arrival.

    In the seven years they had spent in this new world the Icelandic had clung to their island home, while some ventured off deep into Europe to explore and a heavy circuit of tourists flowed between them and the other nations of Northern Europe, a very few had seen any desire in leaving to establish colonies from scratch in distant wilderness. The small number who did headed south east to the Faroes. These islands became a testing ground for ways to make establishing new settlements comfortable for colonists and provide all essential resources from the get go. Houses were modularly built in Iceland, allowing quick assemblage of quality permanent structures in just weeks. The government aided the efforts by issuing large grants to . Efforts to focus on community level local electricity generation and water purification, rather than relying on centralised plants, also proved successful.

    The central town of this settlement project was New Tórshavn and had grown to an impressive urban centre. The town of around 5000 kept a relatively small footprint and high density, generating a bustling urban environment. Small villages dotted the rest of the archipelago, farmers operating by marking and tracking their flocks rather than attempting to delineate the land just yet.

    Life on the Faroes proved that starting a new life in a colony could be a good gig, especially for those who were struggling to find a path after the loss of the global economy had erased their career. So using the template for colonisation from Faroe the Icelandic government struck a deal with the Cubans to divide Ireland into two areas of settlement. After a couple months of respectful and constructive deliberation, hurried along by both countries' desperate need for agricultural expansion in the face of the Pale Death, western Ireland was ready for settlement. In the short months the island was open for Icelandic colonists in year 16 over twenty thousand made the move. With them a large portion of Icelandic cattle and sheep herd were also relocated to reduce the strain on the islands quite frozen over grazing grounds. While Ireland was the major focus of this sharp increase in colonisation efforts. The government also funded the construction of two refuelling and resupplying points for fisherman, to expand the waters the Icelandic fishing industry could cover, a quite small one on Greenland called íshellupunktur and a larger port town in Newfoundland called Nýtt-Vínland.

    In the midst of this massive spike in discussion of and involvement in colonial projects a small but influential pressure group were managing to catch the interest of public debate. When Iceland was wretched from the year 2008 it was the temporary home to over a hundred tourists from across the world, a large number of them American. From the tens of thousands of this diaspora, a couple thousand who grew too homesick to settle in formed the Citizens of America pressure group. Loudly lobbying the Icelandic government and general public through media stunts for the resources to rebuild the United States. While many in the very leftward shifting Icelandic public had no interest in reestablishing the United States of America, a very willing cohort of wannabe colonists was helpful for the Icelandic government and America had lots of very prosperous agricultural lands up for grabs. In the late months of the year the Icelandic government funded an expedition of three vessels off to North America, using the new colony of Nýtt-Vínland as a forward operating base for the project, to scout the Delmarva peninsula and plan its settlement. It would not be long before the expedition's radio signals amongst one another had caught the attention of Tripoli and diplomatic relations were established. While not official representatives of Iceland the expedition established official contact with the Freedmen's Republic and accepted a peaceful invitation to the capital. While many within the government were dismayed at the visitors proclamation that they wanted to rebuild the united states, and the Libyans were incredibly tense about how information about America's future would affect their socialist project, Gaddafi weighed in to grant the small population of Americans the land they desired in the Mid Atlantic, far off from the Jamahiriya's present territorial ambitions. What caught his attention much more was the news that the Americans brought of a continent apparently filled with other socialist states. Similarly news of the Jamahiriya brought much interest in Iceland once news of it reached them. Both sides hurriedly prepared diplomatic expeditions to set off shortly after the new year. Meanwhile the Americans used the last few weeks of year 16 to plan out their colonisation of the lands they had been granted, setting down the first foothold in the settlement of New Dover as the headquarters for the Provisional United States Resettlement Government. Little more than a town council and government grant holding fund so far, but hoping to be the foundation for the reestablishment of the United States of America. In the minds of some, from sea to shining sea.


    Malaise in North America
    By years' start Libya found itself increasingly isolated as attempts to establish meaningful trade links with the Finnish continued to fall flat due to the lack of any available land or sea route and the fuel costs of air transport between the two, and the lack of available aircraft that could make the flight especially on the Finnish side (their best planes being minor Pittsburgian jetliners retrofitted down to their technological level). Climatic disruption brought new trouble to an already overstretched agricultural sector for the growing young nation. The shift away from the plantation economy and its crops was not only an imperative to feed the populace but was one of the central ideological missions of the republic's coalition.

    When Union and Libyan forces met on the battlefield and joined their offensives against the confederates it was the freed who were the bulwark that supported the Libyans in their push to lead the drawing up of the shape of the republic after the slavers were crushed. In awe of the power of 20th century socialism on display, many white union soldiers and workers quickly translated their views on liberty and freedom to fit in line with this new flavour of radical politics. With a large territory and population to govern and such rapid development to manage, the Jamahiriya relied heavily on American ideological converts to socialism to flesh out its administration, needing countless talented bodies to fill out positions across every sector of the economy and state. This increased representation of freedmen within the governance of the Jamahiriya was beginning to ruffle quite a few feathers in Tripoli of those who feared the declining influence of Libyan's over the republic's government. These concerns were stifled as Gaddafi openly and vocally defended this shift as essential to integrate the city and former confederacy together. In the meantime, while the values of socialism hadn't yet been fully instilled upon the populace, Gaddafi was content that the city's economic influence as the heart of the republic's industry would keep them disproportionately influential in its future for a number more years to come.

    The republic's newly freed population proved to continue to be increasingly difficult to govern over year 16. The most difficult to govern being the rapidly increasing number of frontier settlers, after a life of slavery on the plantations these freedmen homesteaders sought to take their newfound freedom entirely into their own hands and had little interest in being just a small part of the grand projects of the republic's socialist mission. This didn't mean these frontiersmen were entirely individualist as a number of the more isolated frontier communities involved incredibly high political and social expectations. This growing tension between black freedmen agricultural workers on the frontier and to a lesser extent within the former confederate territories of the republic and specifically the Libyan aspects of the central government of the republic manifested in an increasing number of election losses for candidates aligned with the Jamahiriya. These seats were instead swept by tides of populism and spawned fiercely localist independent representatives that would go on to bitterly feuded with centralised bureaucrats and together formed a growing obstructionist and often even abstentionist bloc in the legislature both nationally and locally. While this populist discontent greatly hindered and concerned the republic's government it helped channel unrest away from sectarian conflict as tensions between christian and muslims communities simmered for this year at least. The worst flare ups of tension came as the Pale Death came to the republic and greatly reduced agricultural production. While increased centralised control over food distribution ensured famine did not occur in the areas with the worst hit harvests and food aid programmes caught thousands before they fell into starvation, widespread food shortages made life uncomfortable for most. This hardship fed into tensions flaring numerous times across the year. While these instances of unrest always fizzled once security services responded, they pushed the needle of public opinion towards anti-socialist populism each time they flared.

    Like much of the rest of the world the Freedmen's Republic's urban areas emptied out as demand for farmers skyrocketed in response to the Pale Death. Settlements on the frontier sprung up with a rapid and chaotic pace, the area of the fastest colonisation being along the banks up the Mississippi river. While frontier settlements from prior years were partially cut off from the republic's bureaucracy the furthest out frontier settlements of year 16's massive colonial push were by far the most isolated, some being even entirely cut off. In the most remote of these communities new threads of political extremism, ranging from African traditionalist rejuvenation movements to christian theocratic orders, arose. Though for the most part the Jamahiriya managed to keep some form of influence in the closer settlements, integrating the ones founded in earlier years and the most developed of the ones founded in year 16 directly into the republic.

    This accelerated rural to urban migration came on the back of the former urban areas of the confederacy already being in a state of collapse, after the devastation of the American Civil War and in the face of an exodus of White urban elites fearing reprisal and the death of the plantation economy. The urban populations that held on, mostly working class whites and middle class blacks freed before the end of the confederacy, managed to keep their cities alive through the slow adoption of 20th century industrial techniques and Ghadaffi himself promising to protect their goods from competition with superior Tripolitan products. Of the developing former confederate urban areas Atlanta had been recovering the strongest and after three years of development by the end of the year it was growing into a bustling metropolis of activity. Alongside being a hub of industrial development, filling in the gaps where Tripoli's industry was weaker, it also developed into a secondary administrative capital and the home of a newly developing socialist intellectual class. Social venues and clubs popular amongst the bureaucrat class and students and staff of the fledgling Atlanta People's University became host to vibrant political discourse. Here the beginnings of a socialist opposition to the Jamahiriya and Ghaddaffi began to spawn, opposition before being mostly coming from a reactionary christian angle. Fusing these threads of opposition to the government in Tripoli, a APU lecturer of political science and former slave Isaiah Gray established the Christian Workers Party. Formed late in the year and only represented by a single seat in Atlanta the party threatened the government out of Tripoli much more on an ideological level by breaking their monopoly on organised leftist politics.

    Despite the actions of the Jamahiriya managing to blunt the worst of the impact of the Pale Death, the republic left year 16 in a much shakier condition than it was 12 months prior. Previous steady development had slowed into a period of stagnation and recession and greatly impoverished the average citizen, in turn substantially souring the general perspective of government. While opposition to the Jamahiriya led out of Tripoli was still disunited and affected politics minimally, it had grown significantly across the year and just awaited a figure to unify it into a coherent movement for it to become a real existential threat to the republic's current government.

    While the Pale Death had bruised the Jamahiriya over year 16, it unleashed hell on the confederate remnants out in the American wilderness. These neo-confederate mostly small agrarian settlements were already struggling in the years since their arrival, made up of decrepit assembled shacks and with medieval levels of technological development. It didn't take much to push them over the edge into full blown collapse and as their crops were hit by unseasonal snow in April things began to deteriorate rapidly. Events of mass death caused by crop failure had already been occurring as isolated incidents in prior years, but the effects of the Pale Death brought famine conditions to all neo-confederate settlements. By winter things were incredibly bleak. The majority of neo-confederate communities had collapsed. Refugees were straining the barely surviving remaining communities, with the collapse of one settlement often leaving many accepted imprisonment to be let back into the Freedmen's Republic. Facing a harsh winter with paltry food reserves it was likely that all remaining neo-confederates communities could be extinct by the other end of winter in year 17.

    The Iron City Breaks
    The Pale Death came to the Pacific coast in early April as a mix of record showers in the south and a frigid end to a long false spring up north. Since the arrival of the Socialist Republic up north Pittsburgh had long grown to rely on their neighbour's growing agricultural exports in return for a steady supply of steel northwards. Despite the frigid relations between the two this trade was a life support system of Pittsburgh's industry, on a constant and steady decline since the city's arrival 11 years ago. The city never quite settled into its newfound position in the world, each year it was left a lesser remnant of what it had once been. When Finland's false spring repeated again in May, followed by unseasonal freezing fog and summer snows in June, already reduced agricultural exports south entirely cut off and without its lifeline the bottom fell out from under the mayoral dictatorship that held the city together.

    The political structure in Pittsburgh that had formed immediately following the city's arrival had continually deteriorated like the city itself, falling upon crutch after crutch to keep itself alive. From the war with the Tlaxcans, meddling in religious institutions, failed attempts at negotiation with the NAACP and unions, McCarthyist purges, and a loveless trade alliance with the Finnish. When the air itself froze and the last grain ship came in summer the regime had run out of crutches to fall back on and its collapse came quickly and brutally.

    The police, the backbone of the mayor's order, had already left in large numbers out west to settle around Gold City, and in the face of bread riots in nearly every neighbourhood and an unsuccessful brutal crackdown they folded like a paper tiger. From just placard protests at first the situation spiralled and spiralled over the course of the next few weeks into a full blown multifront civil war, the mayor's faction pushed back into a minute enclave in the city centre fighting enemies from across the political spectrum. Pressed on all sides the Mayors regime fell with a hasty firing squad execution by a rebel strikeforce in the dead of night. Demoralised much of his forces followed many other Pittsburghians in the exodus out of the city or folded into the other scattered reactionary factions, the largest being the Rejuvenated Holy Opposition (RHO) which held one foot in the city and the other out in the rural hinterland and frontier.

    Only united by their shared primary focus on deposing the mayor the leftist and rightist sides of the opposition quickly ended up at eachothers throats. Despite this disunited but stiff reactionary resistance dominating the east and outskirts of the city, after many years of repression leftist forces finally held the city centre, but presided over ruins. These numerous leftist factions organised themselves into a loose coalition under the name of the Progressive People's Front (PPF). Made up of Democrat reformists, trade unionists, Finnish inspired Bolshevik revolutionaries, Finnish inspired Social Democrats, and hastily assembled citizens militias; this coalition was pretty shaky. While its inherent disunity threatened to tear it apart nearly every day, its decentralised structure allowed it to more or less hold together through the many tribulations of the year and focus on the challenge of keeping the city alive through winter. Shedding small neighbourhoods and hinterland militias here and there like an exhaust vent when tensions rose too high.

    In the latter half of the year the urban fighting became too costly alongside the fighting and the reactionary militias, now surrounding the city by the start of autumn, fell dormant. Still a wartime coalition the PPF still had to engage in some state building to keep what remained of the city's population (barely a few tens of thousands) fed, housed, and warm. Clustered amongst local spheres of power projection by dozens of public, social, and political institutions, the politics of food stockpiles and distribution was the thread that held the PPF together. The factions that secured the largest food hoards in the fighting and with the best logistical bureaucracy were the ones that courted the largest supporter bases by year's end.

    While the PPF's command structure managed to cling on to life in the heart of the metropolis throughout the peak of the conflict and on into its grinding tail, the city's population sloughed off away into the lightly settled rural fringe and beyond in droves. Agrarian settlement was initially a major priority of the city to establish agricultural self sufficiency. These brutalist industrial-agricultural settlements scattered around Pittsburgh, often built from disassembled buildings from the city, reassembled amidst clear cut forest ready for cultivation, were the frontline for the latter half of the conflict once the Mayoral forces had fallen. The eastern settlements were the site of the most bloody fighting over summer as a number of the PPF's better equipped militias, holdouts of the mayoral police militia, and a RHO army faced off in a three way fight. By the start of the unofficial ceasefire in autumn the PPF had pushed out little, the police were entrenched, and the RHO had made substantial gains across the hinterland but little in the prefab farmer towns. A charismatic religious movement and coalition of militias, the RHO was an army, political movement, and a religious movement rolled into one, led from the embattled suburbs of Pittsburgh by a former priest who was one in a long chain of usurping the title of Pope. Its presence helped scattered pockets of homesteaders and pioneers to quickly coalesce into established settlements by offering security and a religious institution to centre community upon.

    Beyond these industrial-agricultural settlements before the war there was not much more than homesteaders and apocalypse cults in the hills until one reached Gold City, but as the urban core collapsed under its weight settlers radiated out in all directions. Mostly small scattered rural subsistence communities barely eking by, more developed rural clusters formed along the road to what had grown from an impressive extractive primary industry frontier town into what was now Gold County. A chaotically expanding rural patchwork, dotted with small nuclei of industry. The county was both a libertarian paradise and a police state, rural living and clustered slums, and run by cutthroat frontiersman capitalism and communal council republics. The Gold County Police Department was the only governing organisation that spanned the whole county, formed by banded together former PCB union members the makeshift police force acted like rangers of old and expended much of their energy on keeping the roads within and to the territory safe from banditry. Beyond the long arm of the GCPD and short reach of the PPF trapped in Pittsburgh city, communities and homesteader clusters had to rely on their own rifles to keep themselves safe. Desperate bandits, some armed with little more than sharpened sticks roamed the wilderness, rumours of cannibal gangs spread through the informal news network between villages. By winter the communities that still survived had hardened and life by roaming banditry or man-hunting diminished substantially. While violence in the frontier and in the city had settled, both regions faced a grim winter. The doors of the houses of those who could not make it were simply boarded up. Winter harvests were sown and reaped whenever they could be. Herds were culled down to breeding reserves. Not a single Pittsburghian of the scattered population went through the harsh cold months at the end of the year without tightening their belt.

    Now an enclave surrounded by Pittsburghians spread thin and sparse, the Tlaxcallan's fared moderately better in the face of this year's tough adversity. While the modernisation of the confederacy to be more in line with their American and Finnish neighbours was well underway, the majority of the population remained subsistence farmers. Gradual improvements in agricultural production had freed up more and more workers to perform specialist work, but it was still a while away until an urban proletarian class would form. The pale cold march across North America would arrest this development but not undo the confederacy like the regime to its south. Roaming Pittsburgian bandits and homesteaders pushed Tlaxcallan's in from the hinterlands and left its major communities bruised from raids but as emigration from Pittsburgh settled down and the slow frozen months of winter settled in; the Tlaxcallan Confederacy, its government, and the vast majority of its people had survived with scarce but enough food stores to keep them through to spring.

    To the north amidst howling blizzards the giant of the Pacific coast slumbered, exhausted. The Pale Death had thrown the brunt of its might against Finland but the republic's agricultural development of years prior and deeply entrenched position in its new home allowed it to weather the worst of its situation. Government issued rationing orders, though deeply unpopular, allowed the republic to end the year with ample food stockpiles to face the rest of winter. The true saving grace were actions within the agricultural sector, often in direct opposition to orders from the Red Guard, by workers themselves. These tensions over management grew as the year drew on as the government overstretched its capacity for economic planning in an attempt to control the crisis. Vindicated, workers demanded higher decentralisation and cuts to centralised bureaucracy. In the minor elections held across the republic that year social democrats lost seats across the board nearly everywhere they stood. Most who won were independent candidates, mostly protest figures elected on a manifesto of addressing local issues, but other parties managed to capitalise on the incumbent slump. Of the ascendant parties, the newly formed amidst the chaos Nationalist Agrarian Peoples Party drew concern from nearly every other faction of the Finnish political system. Being an openly reactionary, even monarchy restorationist on its fringes, anti-socialist party. It's politics based upon a call to renew traditional values and to protect the church from the "evil bolshevik plot to turn Finland atheist". While The NAPP's support was small so far and the party's organisation and internal coalition new and chaotic, its rise broke a taboo that had held in Finnish politics since their arrival in North America. By questioning the very heart of the FSWR's foundation and calling for a new Republic the NAPP placed the government in a precarious legitimacy position.

    In the last weeks of the year one of the prickliest scandals hit the governing party, coming from within their coalition. Independent press papers were running the story that through close personal bonds within the party key figures of the Social Democrats were skirting their own rationing laws and living in secret luxury. Hoping to earn back public trust the government quickly launched independent internal investigations in response and quickly managed to uncover evidence of a few cases of corrupt individuals. The government punished these individuals severely with suspension and hefty prison sentences, arguing that these were isolated cases completely out of line with the party's values. These discoveries only confirmed to the public's assumptions that their assumptions that the party was rife with corruption were true and faith failed to rebuild. The most severe reaction came from the Communist Party. With this scandal permanently smearing their reputation their alliance with the Social Democrats was now political poison and so on the 17th of December the communists officially exited government to join the opposition. Left in a minority government it was now inevitable that the Social Democrats would not be able to survive long and once parliament was back from winter recess, they would soon have to call elections shortly after the new year.

    With the government of Finland wrapped up in deadlock and focused on reorganising the republic's economy to survive the Pale Death, the trade delegation from the Jamahiriya found themselves ignored and sidelined. As the year went on it became increasingly difficult for them to organise meetings with anyone but the most junior figures within the Finnish government. Eventually the prime minister, whilst embroiled in the corruption scandals of late december, deigned the delegation with a meeting in which he cut it straight with them that no progress would be made on a trade agreement until a new government formed out of the next election. After this depressingly short and blunt meeting, the delegation returned to their embassy, a year of their lives entirely wasted.

    With Finland stagnating, Pittsburgh shattered, and Tlaxcala wounded the pacific coast left year 16 in the worst state it had ever seen; but with destruction comes change and forces that had previously ossified progress had burned away. Across the region those who had fought their way through the hell of a year would trudge through to the next year with determination to seize this abundance of change once the ice thawed.

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