Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

[4WheelSword]

thread policy Discussion of politics that does not directly relate to the Quest or to Quest votes are banned from hereon out. This thread policy will be enforced by the Moderation team. Do not ignore it.

 

[rikalous]

Neighbors: Watches Commonwealth go in with an army
Neighbors: Peace announced, watches Commonwealth leave.
Neighbors: "Weren't their less of you coming in last time?"
Commonwealth: "We made friends"
Neighbors: "You what?"

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"Burns decided just beating Victoria wasn't impossible enough. We needed to beat Victoria with negative casualties. Next he's got plans for an invasion of Russia."

 

[Thors_Alumni]

I had a thought about those polities that neighbor Victoria. Could it be possible that they could decide to revolt against Victoria and throw off its yolk while forming yet another anti Victorian faction.

 

[fasquardon]

It's like, if we'd been aggressive and pushed even farther out into New York, as a few of us advocated, these guerilla tactics by the Victorian militia would have been a lot harder to cope with. We'd be spread out. Our best divisions might have come physically into contact with larger formed Victorian units we couldn't pull away from easily. And these guys would be bushwhacking our supply columns.

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Spreading ourselves thin does indeed leave the army more vulnerable to Victorian attempts to fight 5th generation warfare. However, armies on the move are generally less vulnerable to attempts at asymetric warfare, since it is easy for an army on the move to act inside the decision loop of such a dispersed opponent.

Not to say that aggression will make us invulnerable, it's one factor among many.

Honestly our best option is to just back away and leave the city. We don't need it. We just need the canal. We caught Victory disease just like I was worried about and started seeking fights just because.

Fall back, stick to the plan.

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Don't need the city with the only actual port facilities when we have repeatedly been told how tenuous our logistics are? Actual port facilities VASTLY speeds the process of unloading ships, which means our supply ships can spend more time actually bringing supplies in, rather than spending long stretches waiting to be unloaded. One way or another, if we're to have a reasonable hope of success in this expedition, we need that port.

Also, I happen to think the original plan is awful, and basically exposes our expedition in the worst way to the terrible Victorian doctrine. Which is to say, invading them on a hope and a prayer may actually have put us in a position where their abysmal ideas on warfare actually work.

Much depends on the political dynamics of this contest, the willingness of Russia to bankroll Blackwell, the willingness of Blackwell and the CMC leaders to endure economic pain in order to draw out this contest, our ability to take the initiative and our choosing the correct ways to use our limited strength. Given our poor intel, this is a complete gamble and in the way of military gambles, the worst thing to do is be over-cautious.

Given the issues with our manufacturing base, the Commonwealth is almost certainly back to using steam engines for traction on railroads, insofar as it has them.

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That would require extensive changes to the rail infrastructure (at considerable cost) and re-training the people who work on the railroads. It's not that much harder to make a basic diesel engine, and diesel engines have the wonderful advantage of pretty much being able to run on anything if you tune 'em right (though liquid fuels are much easier to handle of course).

fasquardon

 

[uju32]

Honestly, having given it some thought, I see a second option.

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Time limit though.
We have those eight weeks before we decide to go home. Winter is coming.

There is merit to the hearts and minds thing, as a longerterm ploy to exacerbate divisions in Victorian society, and to draw refugees.
There's something to be said for being better administrators than their own native govt.

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That looks almost exactly like an AMX-40, which would also be a fairly good choice of the tank to adopt, while not being too bad in terms of production cost. We can also cheapen the composite considerably and just go fiberglass/corundum and throw some ERA on the front aspect to give it a chance. Maybe cram in a simple hydraulic autoloader to further save on mass/size and make it even cheaper for us to mass-produce.

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AMX-40?
*googles*
Ah, I see. That certainly looks like the US MPF program.
And the weight would be more appropriate to some of the surviving bridges in the disorganized US.

I do think we will need a full-fat Western-style MBT. Abrams or Leopard. The fact we'll be facing Vic T-72B3s and T-90s with Russian backing suggests we need to expect Soviet-style tank rushes, and you don't face those with fragile vehicles . Good tank crews are almost as valuable, and difficult to train, as pilots. Note how the Vics have thrown their tank crews away, and needs start from scratch, with no institutional knowledge.

Short of that, we probably are better off sticking a 105mm or 120mm on a Patria AMV or a Boxer 8x8 as fire support, and backing them up with 8x8s carrying non-line of sight ATGMs.

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There's been an arms race going on with Alexei doing his best imitation of a starving polar bear. Don't build, buy.

Both the C-17 Globemaster III and the Ilyushin IL-76 Candid have the payload to carry a Western MBT in one flight in their latest variants. The IL-76 in particular is currently operated in some numbers by private freight lines in the developing world because of the relative cheapness of Russian aircraft compared to Western heavy lifters. That's probably been inverted.

With the Russian Empire as the world hegemon and the relative weakness of other currencies, I suspect C-17s built in Cali or Brazil or Indonesia will be similarly cheaper, the way Candids are now.
Or Y-20s out of China; they have a big enough internal market to support it.

Two heavylifters flying twice weekly flights out of Cali or Bermuda would put 4 tanks, the equivalent of a platoon, on the ground every week.
In a year you'd have around 200, enough for a modern three-brigade combined arms division of ABCTs, which is about 180.
A Cold War heavy division, might have more. Might.

Charter heavylifters out of China or Indonesia or Brazil or France, none of which are Russosphere countries, and you can pull it off, even if Cali's heavylifters are too busy supplying their own needs or bombing their seasonal fires.

Alternatively, we don't actually have to import tanks in one piece.

Break it down into component pieces, fly or ship them in, assemble onsite at the tank factory you were hoping to build in the first place.
As long as you aren't aiming to fight a war tomorrow, it also serves double duty as giving your work force vital experience in pulling major maintenance on MBTs as a precursor to setting up your own production facilities.

For example? The Leopard 2A6M allegedly masses about 62.5 tons. 21 tons is turret. 41.5 tons was hull.
Break it down, and you end up with components like:
Engine+transmission massing ~4 tons
Rheinmetall 120mm L55 gun barrel massing 1.2 tons
Gun mount massing 3.3 tons
Pair of tracks ?(the M1 Abrams allegedly had tracks weighing 2-2.6 tons each)
Roadwheels???
Fire control equipment ????
ERA blocks????
Side skirts???
Applique/slat armor/modular armor ????

And so on.
The parts will fit in smaller volumes, so you can ship them in a wider variety of aircraft and ships. Possibly concealed in shipping containers with decoy packages, if you dont want to draw undue attention. North Korea does much the same thing with arms shipment.

The big ticket items that would require big movers would be the basic hull and turret.

Honestly our best option is to just back away and leave the city. We don't need it. We just need the canal. We caught Victory disease just like I was worried about and started seeking fights just because.

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We're not here to claim territory.
We're here to apply pressure, destabilize Victoria and inflict longterm economic damage while minimizing civilian suffering where we operate. Leaving their biggest port on the Erie alone was never really an option.

Cordoning off Buffalo really is not an option either.
Any soldiers will eat before the civilians, and starving civilians will still be blamed on us.
Similarly, not cordoning off Buffalo gives the Vics a strong point to operate out of, and allows military supplies to be built up literally across the river.

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Oh, quite so! That makes it much easier. The OTL population of Buffalo is about a quarter of a million, assuming lower populations for the city in general and the mass conscription the Victorians did, there could be as few as 120,000 people in Buffalo. Two infantry division are about 40,000~ personnel, so we could have a ratio of 1:3, soldiers to enemy civilians, and as you say the civilians in questions are mostly going to be old, young, infirm, or women who are culturally discouraged from fighting. I agree with the assessment from other users that what just happened was an attempt at asymetrial urban warfare, not guerilla warfare or partisan resistance.

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Rough math incoming:

In a population pyramid of a country, the population of males of conscription age (15-54) averages 40-50%.
Victoria is roughly 20 million people according to the QM; that's the 2019 estimate for the countries of Mali and Burkina Faso.
In the CIA Factbook, the 15-54 age cohort is 49.7% in Burkina Faso, and 45.61% in Mali

Africa :: Burkina Faso — The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency

Africa :: Mali — The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency

The CMC took an estimated 20,000 male conscripts from the city of Buffalo, being pretty much every man of conscriptable age, which means the entirety of the 15-54 male cohort. We'll assume those numbers are roughly accurate, and they didnt miss a significant number of males.
Using the percentage figures for Mali and BF, that puts the entire peacetime male population at 40-44.4 thousand people

Assuming roughly 50:50 parity between the sexes, we're looking at a total Buffalo population of 80-89,000 people before the CMC came, and 60-69,000 people now, mostly women and children and olds.
For reference, one of our divisions averages 15,000 soldiers. That's 1 soldier to roughly 4 civilians.

They don't have the numbers to manage an insurgency. City population is too small to fade into it, and Vic .
And any attempt to ship in adults from outside the city would stick out like a sore thumb.
Even to us.

I doubt the regular city inhabitants are very happy about being intentionally turned into an urban battleground by the same Vic militia who were apparently besieging them less than two weeks ago.
We just need to treat noncombatants better than the Vics do.

As for captured combatants? If they're not wearing uniforms or identifying marks as Vic military, we simply ship them back to the Commonwealth and put them in a separate detention camp(separate from actual PoWs) as separate bargaining chips. The better to pressure Blackwell into adopting the Geneva Accords and formalize the militia's role, or to exchange for war brides.

 

[PainRack]

Actually, not THAT much of a problem. Put it simply, Buffalo is looted and useless to us. If we move out, problem solved.

Meanwhile, we routed and captured enough militia that combined with our intelligence advantages, we can build a picture of what the Vic's are going to do

(Casting DnD influence positive modifiers to dice roll on QM )

Its not actually difficult to create field fortifications as long as someone else is giving you instructions and field plans.

Might wanna add a joke tag or emoji next time.

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That's.... Wrong. Very wrong. Trust me. Despite experience, we once decided to just eyeball it instead of walking the measurements and our wire was fucked. We prettied it up to pass but it would be easily dislodged.

And one of the reasons why it passed casual inspection but not the detailed one (but who cares, going home now bye bye ) was because the lieutenant was new.

To BE fair, we were simply too fucking arrogant, we literally been building these longer and more often than our instructers (8th and 9th reservesit tours ) but the reason why you walked it is because terrain fucks up casual measurement.

You CANT just give instructions. You need the troops to be trained to recognise the problems as it's being laid down and then rebuild it, BEFORE everything goes up for the full inspection. Or in our case, knowing how to prettify it.

We also discussing relatively simple levels of fortifications. Integrating Heavy weapons and minefields into it means it get more and more messy. Even things like calculation of supplies can go wrong if your troops fucked up, or for Victoria, if the QM fucks up, what's supposed to be a triple concertin barrier now becomes single or dual con.For dual, as long as you don't stretch it far enough, it's at least anti infantry but if there isn't enough posts due to QM fucking up, oops.

Sometimes, it doesn't even HAVE to be QM fucking up. It can be both. Your troops used too much sandbags and wire/posts because they weren't able to build optimally.



So... If the idea is to have something for the cameras, some basic training in 2 weeks might generate something that can pass off muster For anything more, well, you need a few months just so your troops get the experience of patrolling it, responding to attacks, movement, how to look for cover, angles of fire, insert things like range cards, FPL,etc etc etc.


Meanwhile.

GUERILLA WARFARE

No less than Che has prounced the city the death of the guerilla, as it's difficult for armed guerillas to support the resistance there.

Combined with ease of search and destroy, looting weapons caches, etc etc, yeah.

Iraq may seem like a counterpoint but that was because weapons were flowing into Iraq , be it via Iran or Egypt and etc. Who will sell to Blackwell? Weapons caches stored for use against us are weapons not available against the CMC. Unlike Vietnam, it is the insurgent who's caught between a insurgency and an armed conflict. We are not stuck defending against the VC and regular NVA units with tanks. Blackwell is.


So to summarise. Blackwell may be trying to pull off an insurgency, but he's basing it on the worst possible strategic factors. Whats important is if we can simply buy food and control the food of Buffalo and other parts of occupied territory, we win.
That's how the British won against the MCP, although a dedicated anti Yuan Min, honed by years under Japanese occupation campaign was needed. The cities like Johore was rapidly white and the armed resistance in Singapore never materialised, disappearing into strikes and riots instead .

Unlike Iraq. We got the numbers. We got the food. We control the economy. Even intelligence wise, with capture of militia and our active intelligence agency, much less the Vox populli, we can rapidly build up a picture of what the Vicks are doing.

In other words. Don't worry . We got this.

 

[PainRack]

Its not actually difficult to create field fortifications as long as someone else is giving you instructions and field plans.

Might wanna add a joke tag or emoji next time.

Click to shrink...

That's.... Wrong. Very wrong. Trust me. Despite experience, we once decided to just eyeball it instead of walking the measurements and our wire was fucked. We prettied it up to pass but it would be easily dislodged.

And one of the reasons why it passed casual inspection but not the detailed one (but who cares, going home now bye bye ) was because the lieutenant was new.

To BE fair, we were simply too fucking arrogant, we literally been building these longer and more often than our instructers (8th and 9th reservesit tours ) but the reason why you walked it is because terrain fucks up casual measurement.

You CANT just give instructions. You need the troops to be trained to recognise the problems as it's being laid down and then rebuild it, BEFORE everything goes up for the full inspection. Or in our case, knowing how to prettify it.

We also discussing relatively simple levels of fortifications. Integrating Heavy weapons and minefields into it means it get more and more messy. Even things like calculation of supplies can go wrong if your troops fucked up, or for Victoria, if the QM fucks up, what's supposed to be a triple concertin barrier now becomes single or dual con.For dual, as long as you don't stretch it far enough, it's at least anti infantry but if there isn't enough posts due to QM fucking up, oops.

Sometimes, it doesn't even HAVE to be QM fucking up. It can be both. Your troops used too much sandbags and wire/posts because they weren't able to build optimally.



So... If the idea is to have something for the cameras, some basic training in 2 weeks might generate something that can pass off muster For anything more, well, you need a few months just so your troops get the experience of patrolling it, responding to attacks, movement, how to look for cover, angles of fire, insert things like range cards, FPL,etc etc etc.

 

[Klaus-47]

That's.... Wrong. Very wrong. Trust me. Despite experience, we once decided to just eyeball it instead of walking the measurements and our wire was fucked. We prettied it up to pass but it would be easily dislodged.

And one of the reasons why it passed casual inspection but not the detailed one (but who cares, going home now bye bye ) was because the lieutenant was new.

To BE fair, we were simply too fucking arrogant, we literally been building these longer and more often than our instructers (8th and 9th reservesit tours ) but the reason why you walked it is because terrain fucks up casual measurement.

You CANT just give instructions. You need the troops to be trained to recognise the problems as it's being laid down and then rebuild it, BEFORE everything goes up for the full inspection. Or in our case, knowing how to prettify it.

We also discussing relatively simple levels of fortifications. Integrating Heavy weapons and minefields into it means it get more and more messy. Even things like calculation of supplies can go wrong if your troops fucked up, or for Victoria, if the QM fucks up, what's supposed to be a triple concertin barrier now becomes single or dual con.For dual, as long as you don't stretch it far enough, it's at least anti infantry but if there isn't enough posts due to QM fucking up, oops.

Sometimes, it doesn't even HAVE to be QM fucking up. It can be both. Your troops used too much sandbags and wire/posts because they weren't able to build optimally.



So... If the idea is to have something for the cameras, some basic training in 2 weeks might generate something that can pass off muster For anything more, well, you need a few months just so your troops get the experience of patrolling it, responding to attacks, movement, how to look for cover, angles of fire, insert things like range cards, FPL,etc etc etc.

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Good news! The victorians don't believe in quartermasters!

 

[PainRack]

Good news! The victorians don't believe in quartermasters!

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Exactly. Strangely competent can never muster more than a plus one, hindered more by our own lack of heavy weapons and troops quality

Take potshots and run away? The Iraqis soon learnt that American snipers and airpower made such attacks expensive , causing a mass switch to IEDs and mortars. Sniper attacks remained of course.

The real problem is IED. Still, in Iraq, Iraqi kids routinely gave away such ambushes for food and hey, this time, they speak English.

 

[clockworkchaos]

Time limit though.
We have those eight weeks before we decide to go home. Winter is coming.

There is merit to the hearts and minds thing, as a longerterm ploy to exacerbate divisions in Victorian society, and to draw refugees.
There's something to be said for being better administrators than their own native govt.

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First, to be clear as @Simon_Jester noted, any actions are contingent on making sure Buffalo is secure. It will most likely be acting as our primary logistic base unless a mass attack has our retreat across the river.

The main thing about would be all about selling fiction. With a lowered artillery usage from lower intensity fighting, we can afford more time. This is all about selling the fiction that this is actually, really an invasion with plans to stay. Towns would be taken, firmly secured, local governments replace-remodeled. Selling the idea that we are planning to remold Victorian society, and our slow advance is simply our natural machine-like plans.

The theoretical advantage is first is makes sure that the territory we take is firmly secured against insurgency. The second advantage is that when Blackwell talks about our technological prowess, he is rational. it is dangerous, it needs to be addressed, but he wants to address it rationally, take what is needed to defeat us. A problem, a dangerous one, but one that is rational. His response to our society, however.

There will be no "rescued" feminist wives taken by men thinking with their dicks instead of their faith this time. None of that here.

Every male and female component of the Machine State will need to be destroyed before sanity returns to God's land.

Even youths above a certain age will be tainted. Will be part of the machinations of the communal will. Poisoned by Culturally Maxist materialistic beliefs. Utterly beyond saving.

The adults and older whelps must be destroyed and only the youngest spared the sword.

Personally, I believe they should be forged into an army to replace the martyrs of Detroit. An army to stand testimony to God's inevitable victory."

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We are so dangerous that wives cannot be taken. Women, who would be single individuals with no training, isolated from everything they know, having just seen their country fall, are so dangerous as to be an existential threat. Blackwell understands our material danger, but, at a fundamental level, I don't think he fears death. It's tragic, but the body is only a vessel for the soul. But our culture, the annihilation of the soul into machine-men, that terrifies him. Every town we take cannot be retaken, because it has become another vector of infection. In many ways, it will be crueler than simply killing them, we will 'force' Blackwell to kill them himself.

Now, granted, there are two places this plan fails. First, if we are forced to retreat*, there will be massacres. We can't prevent those. Even if we agree to peace, he is likely to make use of the refugee clause to drive out the areas we took, but they will be alive, and that's better than their options for staying. Worse for us, if our propaganda doesn't work, we leave Blackwell with an area that is more intact than the rest of Victoria.

*Either through outright military defeat or Blackwell deciding we are advancing slow enough he can afford to take the Crusaders first.

 

[Rivenscryr]

As for captured combatants? If they're not wearing uniforms or identifying marks as Vic military, we simply ship them back to the Commonwealth and put them in a separate detention camp(separate from actual PoWs) as separate bargaining chips. The better to pressure Blackwell into adopting the Geneva Accords and formalize the militia's role, or to exchange for war brides.

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We'll want to see if they're willing to spill about the Inquisitors directing them, as without those coordinating the militia's attempt at bloodying us through asymmetric warfare/managing a network of whispers that no doubt would lead to reprisals on any Victorians who do give us information, the population will likely be more receptive to our efforts.

 

[Matsci]

Exactly. Strangely competent can never muster more than a plus one, hindered more by our own lack of heavy weapons and troops quality

Take potshots and run away? The Iraqis soon learnt that American snipers and airpower made such attacks expensive , causing a mass switch to IEDs and mortars. Sniper attacks remained of course.

The real problem is IED. Still, in Iraq, Iraqi kids routinely gave away such ambushes for food and hey, this time, they speak English.

Click to shrink...

Doesn't Burns have a ton of Anti-insurgency experience from middle east fighting?

 

[PoptartProdigy]

Dispatches for Buffalo
A Vox Popular Report on the Civil war.

Greetings everyone,

Negotiations seem to have broken down. Very much a he-said she-said. Both of them have given their statements.

[Recording of Male Voice]

"The Commonwealth Treaty is a hollow sham. A defeat of an expeditionary army is not the defeat of a nation, and the Commonwealth's so-called accomplishment of treacherously allying themselves with Toledo has swelled their heads. We offered terms that were more than generous, and they demanded the dismantlement of all Victoria was. We suffered a defeat, but we are not defeated.

The strength of Victoria has always, always been in her people, and if the Commonwealth tries to invade, we will drown them in an ocean of blood. Our people are not the weak negroes of Detroit who suckle up to the first teat offered to them, or the treacherous and greedy Cultural-Marxists of Toledo. If they will not deal with us fairly then the will not deal with us at all. We are strong. And if the Commonwealth comes, then let me say this.

We shall go on to the end. We shall defend our land, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

[Recording switches, Female Voice]

"For decades Victoria has rampaged across the continent, twice over we have sunk their navy. We seized their remaining air-force. We broke their army, more exist now as prisoners of war than out in the field. We annihilated the so-called 'Christian' Marines without a single loss. Victoria, has, lost.

Contrast that with us. Our air force has risen like a phoenix with the F-16's that Victoria once terrorized others with. Our navy lies untouched, I would claim it was bolstered with captured Victoria ships, but we never stoop to using such ships as war vessels. Our army swells with the addition of Toledo and Detroit. We destroyed Victoria with half of what we have now.

Our treaty did not require Victoria limit its army. Our treaty did not prevent Victoria from manufacture. Our only reparations were what was needed to rebuild what they destroyed. I doubt Mr. Smith has ever offered such a lenient treaty in all his time.

Victoria is sorely mistaken if it believes Erie will protect them."

[End Recording]

So, look of things is war's back on. No sure if the Commonwealth is bluffing or not. Nor their plans if not. But war may be back on. Mighty thing war. Though in truth, war's already on. Victoria's Civil war. Granted, I don't think most people have any sympathy for those at the top. But might be worth sparing a moment for those below. Regardless of who wins, the people fighting are the Victorian army, and the only thing more extreme. Doubt cities are gonna be taken cleanly. Doubt much of the harvest is going to come in. Victoria doesn't have an army, it's calling up all its militia instead.

Reporting on this war is going to be slightly different. Victorian's have shoot on sight orders for us, and even for people they don't know are us who are snooping. Freeing in some ways, I'm not worried as much bout annoying em so I won't be holding anything back. But does make it a might more difficult to report. Still news gets through. Whatever those in Augusta and Moscow wish, they can't control things nearly as well as they think.

CMC left Buffalo, taking what men and supplies they could, with Blackwell left holding an empty bag. And Buffalo is mighty empty right now, not much left but women and children. It's been looted thrice over. First came when Victoria needed to rebuild its navy, and fishing boats and sailors were sitting right there for impressment. Then again when a convoy was sent out to aid the army. Burns made that irrelevant, and they had to scramble back. The men made it, the supplies didn't. Then the CMC came, told the men to get moving or get shot, and took what little was left.

If the Commonwealth ain't bluffing. Buffalo is going to see a third army soon. Can't much not, only port on Lake Erie. Doesn't matter if by land or by lake, leaving Buffalo unattended is asking for trouble. Not really the first time they seen it, since the first shooting started there. Can't say there isn't a part of me that loves to imagine the look on their Admiral's faces when the realized the Commonwealth decided to come to them.

So tonight, let's talk Buffalo, painted once again, from a ground level a single story this time. I got more stories, but this one on its own is a might long. As before with Victoria, details are changed, some entirely made up, but I promise you the picture it paints is true.

Charity's husband is a shipping foreman. It might seem strange to you, to say what her husband's job is, but it really does say all. Maid, wife, widow, slave; ain't to many options for women in Victoria and husband tells us which. Now, despite what they would have you believe, it ain't all the same. The dedicated homemaker waiting and not going out of the kitchen except on festivals with her husband is all well for those with wealth, but when you got a harvest to come in, well no one is going to pay that much attention to the farm. Better to do shucking or indoors work, but if need be go out and harvest it's a bit of a disgrace, and to be pitied but it happens.

Foreman is a bit of a misnomer. It's watching over the cargo and making sure it gets placed where it needs to be placed, but it's also counting and accounting for it. Dedicated accountants are suspicious educated professions, not ideal in Victoria, especially not for a little railway towns like theirs was. This was Charities' secret shame. Her husband was good at directing, not so good at accounting. He'd record things, but then he'd take it home at night, and give it to her, and she'd square everything up. Make sure everything that was said was where it was said to be. Those sort of number's ain't very womanly in Victoria, in fact she was worried it might mean she had Jewish blood somewhere in her. But long as it was kept to the house, it was her own shame.

She wonder's if she could have done anything differently, when she started looking at the numbers. Seeing that the shipments didn't add up. She told her husband, and he, being an honest sort, went and talked to the mayor. He was a friend, they knew him, everybody knew everybody. She wonders if she just hadn't told her husband it would have been different or is she had told him to go straight to the inquisitor (apparently, they like to keep a few public members for reporting), rather than someone who had to be grifting.

As is they got shipped to Buffalo. You might think the mayor would try to call the inquisitor, accuse them of it, but well… attracting inquisitorial notice like that is a bad idea. They do like their through investigations. But a transfer to Buffalo is much less suspicious, they always need more shipping help, and just doesn't call the same sort of attention.

Charity was terrified. All of Victoria knows that all of Victoria is perfect, but some places are more perfect than others, and some less so. Buffalo is right on the lake. Victorian merchants and the army pass through all the time, which means that it's dangerously foreign influenced. Full of thieves and smugglers, and other things. Victoria needs it, cause it's where they bring the wealth of the continent that doesn't go straight through the Seaway.

Apparently, Victoria likes to ship food about to spoil into Victoria, while shipping their own food out. Makes sure nothing is wasted. Any art, machine-tools Victoria wants, amusements, brides, all of it passes through Buffalo. Everyone knows that Buffalo is rich, decadent. Not a place where good people go, not a place that people get transferred and come back, since you wouldn't want it infecting the rest of the gloriousness that is Victoria.

Buffalo was bigger than any town Charity had ever seen, which was, admittedly, one. But according to boys she knew, their town was big, even in Victoria, there was gossip about those small towns next door. Buffalo was huge. Now reliable estimations on Victorian demographics are hard enough, but our own people estimate Buffalo as, maybe, about half the size of Toledo. But for Charity is was incomprehensibly large. When her husband asked about meeting the mayor, he was laughed at.

Charity was terrified, wanted to keep in her house and never come out. Who knows what people here might do? It was too big to know everyone. You saw people you didn't know at all the time. She learned though. Was actually some of the wives of the dock workers who came to her. Her husband was, as I said, a good man, good at directing, and not unkind. Workers liked him, but the inquisitors are always looking out for problems in Buffalo, easy for them to focus on you if you look disloyal.

You know one of the things the city kept a careful track of was tickertape and flowers? Wouldn't want a parade of troops coming back home to not have those. Dangerous position that. If a division came back, and felt slighted because the Mathew division got flowers, but the Mark division only got tape, and how dare you hold the roses for the James Division? Well, someone could get shot. Sounds like I'm making this up, but according to those telling, this was deadly serious.

Was even worse for Charity. See a mere worker can get away with just standing there and cheering. But for someone a step up, even a foreman? Well better have your kids out there, waving flags, and thrown some flowers of your own, or have your kids offer them. Wouldn't want to appear to disloyal. Flowers are at a mighty premium in Buffalo.

So, Charity learned to budget carefully. Flowers were now a needed item, even keep some on hand for unexpected parades. Charity didn't have a green thumb, but her daughter, Chasity did. Growing the flowers became one of her responsibilities. Used to use the planters for some extra food, but flowers were the more needed item. Also had to sow flags along with clothes, thankfully Charity's needle thumb was better than her growing one, but time forced her to buy their first flag, everyone went slightly hungry that month. Flags are at a premium in Buffalo too.

Couple months in she received a visit from some nice men at the church reminding her that she should talk to her husband about donations. Charity was terrified. As we said before, Victoria doesn't expect to have to ask, you should know to donate. They'd been keeping up their donations, she was sure of it. Once again, it was the wives who explained it to her. Buffalo is rich, everyone knows that, so people are expected to donate a little more. They knew she and her husband weren't from here, which is probably why the got the warning, long as they upped it, they should be fine.

Wealth of the continent flows through Buffalo, but that don't mean it's rich. Some people are, those in power, those willing to do some smuggling, but those who don't, well her husband's salary hadn't changed, even with the extra expenses. Wasn't enough, no matter what she could do. So, she told her husband to check the items carefully. Victoria knew about spoilage. Only now, he should be a bit more careful. Separate the really spoiled from the about to, sort of spoiled, and the numbers she gave her husband now had slightly more spoilage. It wasn't that bad. It was food that would have spoiled. It wasn't the good stuff, more than once, she found herself sick to her stomach, or her kids. Even so, she felt a guilt wearing in her heart.

Then came the numbers problem. Sometimes, she couldn't make the numbers match. To few crates out from what they were supposed to have. Thought it might be stealing, but her husband never seemed to catch anyone. Even had him try to go on the ship first, and the crates were still seemingly to short. She even risked going to his work, going with him to show their children what daddy does, and counting herself. Still wrong. Our reporter asked about if maybe the reported crates were wrong. Charity was shocked they could even ask this. These shipments were from the military. Captured enemy supplies. They would never lie.

Seems strange to us, but the Victorian military and aid workers, always so much conveniently far away compared to Inquisitors and mayors and pastors, has an aura of perfection. They are good and honest, however much those parts of Victoria you have to interact with might lie. It couldn't be that.

Eventually, Charity thought about trying to direct someone else to the authorities. She could see that if something didn't happen, her husband, and because Victoria, his family, would be called in. Inquisitors, or at least nice men her husband didn't recognize, were at the docks. She prayed to God for a miracle. Got one, at least in her opinion. When she was talking with one of the other wives she found out that one of the dock workers, one who other's never thought of as happy (a danger in Victoria), disappeared. Maybe he ran, maybe he stowed away, maybe he was killed, but he was gone. She told her husband that he was behind it, that the numbers had told her so when she did the calculations. Numbers were rather voodoo to him, and he believed her.

She was actually thankful when the war was announced, because it met everyone's attention was elsewhere. The start of the deployment wasn't so bad, though as more and more came in, she started budgeting more and more for the victory parade. This was a gathering of a size she hadn't seen before. Had to ask if anyone had. Then came the communists.

She didn't even realize it when the fighting started. Things like that don't happen in Victoria. Fireworks, a boat accident. Saboteurs, (always talk of that). But people don't go and attack Victoria. Talk on it afterwards was gossip with other wives, in their homes. Even then, whispers only. Official talk was that it was nothing. First an attack fought off. Then a raid that was sunk out to sea. Then a raid that was sunk out to sea and didn't even do any damage.

Course, for no damage, there was suddenly a great impressment of ships, but this looting wasn't too bad for Buffalo. No ships coming in, but it was only for a month or two. Then came the convoy. Everything was fine, everything was fine you see. But there was a call for donations, and specified big ones, Victoria hates to specify like that, like it ain't all voluntary. Cars and trucks were the priority, but Charity gave away from her pantry, and made notes. Numbers looked bad now, they would probably go hungry for a bit. Might need more 'spoilage' when the ships came back.

They took her husband too. He was militia, it was what you did, as a good Victorian. No one thought he had the heart for the army, but militia was just fine. She worried about him, if he died, then she'd be without a husband. Victoria loves to exalt its war widows but is a might stingier on social services for em. She'd need to find a new husband, or one of the few jobs women could do, her eldest was Chasity, who was only nine, and female besides, no early jobs there. She feels as a good wife she should have been worried for his sake. He was kind to her and the kids, kind to everyone really. But somehow… somehow that fell to the wayside in comparison to the calculations of food.

The rumors began circulating. Something had happened, something was wrong. There had been a disaster out west. A division lost. A stalemate. Something, no one knew. Her husband came back, with tales of barbarians boldly attacking him, the food didn't. There was a tension, as everyone waited, no one dared to speak. Then the loudspeaker came on, claiming that the high generals had betrayed Victoria, even the CMC. Only Blackwell remained loyal. Charity didn't know much about people, though apparently his division was a might less inclined to get shooting for a lack of flowers and adulation.

Either way, didn't matter, the CMC came in within hours, killing those who resisted. She was grateful that her husband wasn't with his gun at the time. They announced that they were the real loyalists, and Blackwell the traitor. They didn't ask for donations. Supplies were to be handed over, house-to-house raids. Men conscripted. Her husband was gone again, and there was nothing. No food. No ships coming in. Winter was getting colder.

I could try to end this on a happy note. Give a story of how she got out. Could end it on a grim note, say how she told this story for a can of beans, her youngest already dead. I'd rather not, though, regardless of an individual, Buffalo has a lot more of Charity, and winter is soon.


----

Wanted to get this in before its revealed that the entire city is now zombies.

Click to shrink...

Haunting. A chilling ground-level view into the workings of Victoria.

Also, as is typical for the Dispatches, entirely canon.

Babylon On The St. Lawrence

Montreal, Victoria​

The Belle Epoque did little to advertise itself. Tucked away in an alley on the riverside, there was no signage save for a small plaque over the otherwise totally nondescript door. From there, down a few flights of stairs and down a similarly unassuming hallway. The only thing one might pick out as strange was the heavy steel door at the end of it. All told, it was hardly an inviting introduction. But then again, a business like the Bell Epoque had no business drawing attention to itself in a city run by the Victorians.

They frequented it too, of course, as the sea of flannel that immediately came into view when the heavy steel door finally swung open showed. They came, supposedly, for the food, although in reality they likely came more for the free choice of alcoholic beverage served with it, or the various young women hanging around the bar who proved very free with their affections towards any young soldier who bought them a meal and a drink as well. The younger troops blushed and awkwardly picked away at their poutine and tried not to pull faces as they sipped their scotch or gin, while the veterans left their meals forgotten and headed straight for the back rooms with their new paramours. Montreal was a long way from home, after all, and maintaining abstinence and a sobriety pledge was tough enough when you weren't stuck in a cold, Northern city full of people who held you in deep and eternal contempt.

It wasn't all Vicks of course. There were dockworkers from the port, though not as many now as there had been, and sailors in from cargo ships from the Great Lakes, although if the tide of dockworkers had ebbed they had reduced to a trickle. Locals went elsewhere, preferring to avoid rubbing shoulders with their occupiers when they were trying to unwind. And of course, there were the three young men in their suits. Always filling up at least one table, they chatted and drank and smoked, and both the Vicks and the other patrons gave them a respectful distance. There was an air of danger about them, an understanding that they weren't as likely to just roll over if a militiaman tried to throw his weight around. And it was only polite, after all. They owned the place.

"So anyway," says the tallest of the three, knocking back his scotch, "We get to the Basilica, Pierre sweating bullets the whole way, he heads up at the alter, out comes Marie all dolled up in her dress- gorgeous, y'know, I couldn't have been happier for him- and then right as she starts up the aisle an Inquisitor barges into the church!"

His two companions lean forward. "No shit!" "So what'd you do?" The tall man signals a waitress for another round. "Well, you know how Pierre gets when somebody messes with family, I had to drag him back down into his seat and jab him in the ribs to keep him from tearing the guy a new one. So I get up and ask 'Is there a problem? We're just having a wedding here, no pagan rituals or nothin'.' And he says, get this, 'Don't mind me. I'm just observing to make sure the proper rites are being performed.' Can you fuckin' believe that? 'Crusaders' my ass, they're fucking policing us to make sure we worship how Augusta wants us to."

"At a wedding?" The one on the left says. "Tabernak, these guys have no sense of decency." "Fuckin' A." agrees the other one. "So go on, Marco, what happened next?" They pause for a moment as the waitress arrives with their drinks. "Well," Marco continues, "Pierre, if you can believe it, almost forgot to practice the speech in English as well as French. If I hadn't busted his balls about it all through the wedding planning he'd have either had to speak French in front of the Inquisitor or say nothing at all." The other two pause for a moment to digest that verbal hand grenade. "Jesus, he could have gotten himself killed!"

"Yeah, that's what I told them. You want a light there, Armand?" The man on the right shook his head. "Nah, I'm good." "Okay. Francois?" the other man just waved it away. "Alright, so," Armand began, leaning forward. "What happened afterwards? Did you go to Davis?"

"Yeah, of course I did, I went straight to him like 'what the fuck?' right, because he promised me the churches wouldn't get any hassle. Guess what he tells me? He says that with all the shit going on with the CMC and the fact they got their asses kicked by the Commonwealth, the Inquisitors are breathing down his neck. He only has 'limited control', he says."

"Christ."

"Only fuckin' Vicks could lose most of their army and figure that they weren't being hardcore enough."

"You said it. So I figured we were gonna try and keep a low profile for a little while, y'know? We've dealt with Inquisitors before, after all. Just sit back and wait until we've got some leverage over 'em."

Francois nodded. "Seems like a good plan." Armand scoffed. "Yeah, we thought so too, until fuckin' Carcetti-"

"-Oh, don't get me started on that prick." Marco sighed, taking a long drag on his cigarette. A look of confusion crept across Francois' face. "Wait, what'd Carcetti do? I thought he'd been making a killing selling the surplus the Vicks dumped when they were marching home."

"Yeah, he was, but apparently that wasn't enough for him. He's not happy with just owning Toronto and splitting the rackets in Buffalo with the Postmen. So when the CMC march into the city, the dumb prick gets it into his head, "Hey, these guys have plenty of morphine they're not using, they need guns-"

"-No fucking way. There's no way Carcetti's that stupid."

Marco slammed his hand down on the table. "Carcetti went to the fucking commanding officer offering to sell the arms from the baggage train in exchange for their morphine." Again, the table was struck with horrified silence. Armand let out a low whistle. "Did he think the Vicks wouldn't recognize their own equipment?"

"I heard from one of the guys that got out of Buffalo that he made a half-assed attempt to scratch off the maker's marks and serial numbers. That didn't save him, though, I hear they shot him in the middle of fucking Fountain Plaza."

"And the rest of his guys?"

"Some shot. Most conscripted. The way I hear they just grabbed 20,000 guys and marched 'em into the woods. More cannon fodder to face Blackwell's militia. Anyway, that's why I invited Armand here, Francois. He says he's got a guy who can help us get out of this jam, I've got an idea of what we should have him do, and you've got the smuggling connections to get him where he needs to go. We sort this out, quietly."

The skepticism was plain on Francois' face. The halt to trade brought on by the war had squeezed him badly, and he was obviously loathe to gamble even more resources. "I dunno. Tell me about this guy of yours, Armand. Is he some button man or what?"

"Oh, he's better than that." Armand said. "Smart, tough, every job or racket I put him on, it runs just right. Y'know what happened to Charlie Brooks? He's the guy who pulled the trigger."

"He did Charlie Brooks? I thought that was some Russians from out of town. Spetsnaz types, that's what people were saying, the price of getting too deep into New York."

"Yeah, they think it was Spetsnaz because he shoots like one and he was smart enough to keep quiet about it. He doesn't like talking in general, but he can do that too or find a guy to do it for him when I need him to. If only he were Italian I'd adopt the kid straightaway. Anyway, you'll get a chance to meet him tonight."

"Here he is now." Marco said, and the three men turned to see a young man enter and swiftly kick the snow off his boots. He was built like an NHL defenseman, tall and broad-shouldered, with placid brown eyes and a lean, chiseled face. Armand waved and he swiftly went to join them.

"Monsieur Annunzia, Monsieur Bianchi." he said, nodding respectfully to Francois and Marco in turn. "Boss." he said, turning to address Armand as he stood and kissed him on both cheeks. "Gentlemen." Armand said. "This is Moose Dupont, he's a friend of ours."

"That's one hell of a name." Francois said, grinning. Moose looked unperturbed. "My mother was a big hockey fan." He said with a shrug, his face impassive. "I understand you have a job for me?"

Armand and Francois turned to Marco. "Look, I'm not sure how much you've heard about what's going on in Buffalo, but it's pretty bad. We've lost our main foothold in New York state and our primary contacts with the Victorians who distribute our heroin, meth and pornography to our customer base in Victoria proper. Now they're saying the Welland Canal might be sealed up, and that's killing our rackets at the docks. To top it all off, we've got Inquisitors sniffing around and our usual contacts in the administration can't protect us like they used to." He paused to make sure the gravity of the situation had sunk in, and found Moose's face remained as serious as ever.

"So we've talked about this, and what I figure right now is that for the short-to-medium-term, we're finished in Buffalo, and that means we're finished in most of Victoria until the war's over. It's just too dangerous to try and re-establish anything when we have no idea who's gonna be in charge next week. Once we can see a clear winner, we'll support them, but until then we have to look elsewhere, or we're starving." Another pause, this time gauging Francois and Armand's reactions. Both seemed willing to hear him out, though Francois still looked skeptical.

"So, where do we go? Well, before Buffalo went down Carcetti told me our friends in NYC got a look at the chick running the Commonwealth when she made her state visit, and they liked what they saw. They've gotten Detroit and Toledo by standing up to the Vicks, and they've got the kind of country my old man used to tell me about: democratic, industrialized, big urban population, so all on its own it's a pretty big market. But here's the real rub: This same guy who saw their President also has friends of friends in high places, and one of the rumors coming down is that they asked for a free trade clause with Victoria. And even more than that, Carcetti swore blind they've insisted on the Seaway being opened for international trade. To everyone."

That got a reaction. Moose blinked and let out a huff of surprise, while Francois let out a rather less reserved "Fuckin' A!" and exuberantly slammed his glass on the table. Montreal right now was a backwater: the busiest of Victoria's ports, but as Marco's father had once said, that was kind of like being the liveliest corpse in a morgue. But if this went through, all that trade from the interior and from the outside world coming down into the Lakes could only go through one place- Montreal.

And they owned Montreal.

"So, Moose." Marco continued. "Here's what you're gonna do. Francois' people are gonna put you on a boat or a truck or whatever and get your ass to Detroit. And you're gonna get the lay of the land there so we can start bringing in people there. Figure out who owns what, try and scout out a good place for us to set up shop, maybe a bar or even a proper club since the Commonwealth aren't such fuckin' prudes. And once you're done there, ideally after a couple of weeks, we're sending you on to Chicago to do the same thing. Find us or build us a front, we'll send the money. And then from there, you start doing what our grandfathers did. You give to charity, or better yet, set one up. The Vicks say these guys are communists, so maybe they've got unions. You get involved in those too. You shake hands, you meet politicians, celebrities, businessmen, whoever, and you pitch opening the Saint Lawrence to them like it's one of the Ten Commandments. You understand me?"

Moose paused for a moment, taking it all in. "It's the biggest job I've ever done." He said. "But if you give me the money and the men, I can do it no problem. It might get bloody, though, if we have to kick out whoever's already set up shop there."

"I'm told you've got no trouble with that sort of thing." Marco said coolly. "Look, this could make you, big-time. You'll have all three of the Montreal families behind you, and you'll be our man in the Commonwealth. So long as you pay back our investment, and you always remember who you work for. Comprenez vous?"

"Oui." Moose said, nodding. "When do I leave?" Marco turned to Francois. "How soon can you get him out?"

"Tonight." He said, his old caution now abandoned. He turned to Moose. "Head down to the docks around ten o'clock tonight. We'll get you on a boat to Hamilton, bring you overland from there." The young man turned lastly to Armand, who dismissed him with a nod. The table was subdued for awhile after: thinking about what had happened in Buffalo, about the Inquisitors barging into churches, the perils of an uncertain future. About the money that might be waiting on the far side of the Great Lakes, if only they could reach out and grasp it.

"We had an outfit in Buffalo before, didn't we?" Francois spoke up, glancing over at the bar thronging with militiamen. "In the old days, I mean. Before Victoria."

"Yeah, we did." Armand spoke up. "They had a special name for it too. They had different names for everywhere. I think they used to call the Buffalo families the Arm or something. Can't remember Chicago's for the life of me though."

"The Outfit." Marco said, stubbing out the remains of his cigarette in the chipped ashtray. The smoke still hang heavy in the air. "They called it the Outfit."

Click to shrink...

...hm...I really like this, but there are a couple of issues with canonicity. Which is a shame, because I want to canonize this. That said, I think that they'll be fairly simple, if you want the canon rating.

maintaining abstinence and a sobriety pledge was tough enough when you weren't stuck in a cold, Northern city

Click to shrink...

After what Victoria has done, Montreal is in no way describable as a city. The urban center has been leveled and given -- poorly, as ever -- over to farmland. Montreal is now a town of some 4,000 people. The Victorians made an example of Montreal. For instance:

But if this went through, all that trade from the interior and from the outside world coming down into the Lakes could only go through one place- Montreal.

Click to shrink...

While Montreal is the logical place for all that trade to come through, given its gorgeous positioning astride the St. Lawrence and Ottawa River junction, and so near the Richelieu and Saint-Francois outlets, the Victorians were very much not considering logic when they dismantled the city -- much less in the years since, as they have firmly kept it from reestablishing itself. They also have an ideological interest in not promoting the efficiency in trade and internal mobility that a trade nexus on that massive waterway junction provides.

Instead, Victoria has been forcing any and all riverine traffic that needs to interface with the international market through Quebec City. Anybody who wants to trade internally...well, small local docks were good enough for thousands of years of our ancestors, and they should be good enough for you as well! This is, obviously, a deeply artificial distinction, and it is enforced by strict legislation putting a hard cap on the population on Montreal and criminalizing dock facilities over a certain capacity. The town still handles a fair amount of internal trade, and they are prosperous from it, but there is a very card cap on how much they can benefit from the sin of abetting the movement of goods, people, and ideas.

Now, this is not a distinction that will, practically, hold up under the dual pressures of a sudden tidal wave of trade coming down the St. Lawrence and Blackwell attempting to render Victoria capable of fighting an industrial war, and I absolutely believe that the Québécois would be spiteful enough to maintain their determination to return Montreal to its former prominence and glory after so long, but they should probably evince some awareness that a renewed surge in trade will not necessarily, naturally, and inevitably correspond to a renewed prominence for Quebec, just given the fact that the Victorians presently exert no small effort to prevent just that.

So stuff like this-

Montreal right now was a backwater: the busiest of Victoria's ports, but as Marco's father had once said, that was kind of like being the liveliest corpse in a morgue.

Click to shrink...

-should be true, but Victoria has exerted themselves quite significantly preventing it from being true, in order to maintain Montreal as an example.

The Ballad of the Devil's Archer Part 1

<Translated from Finnish>

The Snipers Sight

2038

You looked out across the current battlefield with a hint of satisfaction. "Hmm, 437." Quietly you took a moment to observe the line of sight to see if anyone was hunting him so readily after the last one.

The glint told you everything you needed to know about how idiotic these guys were. You had expected an artillery or drone strike by now, but you didn't deserve that sort of reception...the Vicks did not believe in drones...but the Russian drone operators operating as contractors certainly did.

And you had been lucky so far...hell you'd been lucky for the last nine years of your job, a job that was not pretty, glamorous or safe. A Sniper was to be as detached as possible from a battle and cause as much harm as possible from its edge.

The rifle was perfectly weighted, flawless in craftsmanship and had been personally optimized to kill at long range.

The Barrett XM500 was an old and heavy rifle. Perfect for your line of work.

And the brass wanted someone dead...they wanted many people dead these days, and you were going to do it...One moment.

You saw the glint of the poor countersniper and fired. The pink mist told you everything, he was dead...and everything was as it should. "438...got five today, it's been a busy day."

Quietly you looked up and out across the battlefield, closed your left eye and surveyed the world around you. Atlanta was at your back, quiet and peaceful.

It was despite everything a quiet Saturday night, one that let the stars peak out across the sky. You looked at Atlanta and smiled. "Well, you'll be safe and sound tonight."

You had made the wise decision to move your family out to California with the other refugees and waited to fight the war on your own terms, and give them a home where they could sleep at night.

It had been nine years...with intermittent visits and family photos in between.

And it got lonely. "Well...at least the stars are out tonight." You still made sure your eye was closed as you counted with your weaker right eye. It was an exercise you developed as a teenager to make sure your depth perception wasn't thrown out of whack by anything important.

You started counting and lost count at around 300 as you heard an alarm.

"What in God's name." You looked out and peered with your right eye slightly as the flash of the mushroom cloud expanded.

You were 11 miles away...you'd be safe from the initial fallout...all you had to do was keep running west. You'd be blind in one eye now...and here you'd thought you lose it to a bullet.

It looked so...unnatural, so unnerving and so bright...you had seen pictures of Hiroshima and the records of the survivors describing the flash.

It was unspeakable...monstrous. As your eye went dark...you don't feel the pain of the flash as it burns your retina...but then again, you knew that it didn't feel pain.

You thought you heard the screams of the dying on the shockwaves as it rolled over you. It was terrifying.

"Would Russia allow the monster they created to use such evil? If they did...If they did there is no more hope. For any of us."

You crawled out of your hiding place and packed everything you had, even bandaging your eye.

It wouldn't be long before they came to kill the survivors...and they will kill them, you could mourn the dead later, once you're in a safer position and won't be able to hear the screams of the blinded men any longer.

------------------------

Nearly 15 miles of running later you sat down and finally let what had happened to you settle.

They were dead...they were all dead...THE FUCKING VICTORIANS killed them all!! Atlanta was a city of several million people and they killed them all!! Sure the plague had lowered that population by a good percentage but the Vicks had killed millions of people...if not immediately then in the next 20 years...radiation was a bitch like that.

"<Let it all out...LET IT ALL OUT!!>" You shouted as you heard the screams of the dying in your mind, you were crying as you felt the weight of what had happened hit you.

It was a technique your parents used on you when you were sad, and you had used it on your own children whenever they were scared or frightened.

Look at you now...a grown man crying like an infant.

What would your father think of you? "<Let it all out and the pain will leave like a winter breeze...spring will come again...spring will come again.>" It was part of a lullaby from Finland your mother used to sing...before the bad days...before the Northern Confederation came and took her life in the early days.

You curled up into a ball for five minutes "Victoria does not have nukes...Victoria doesn't have nukes...VICTORIA DOESN'T HAVE NUKES!!"

It was true no man, not even the tyrant Alexander would allow such an unstable attack dog like Victoria to possess nuclear weapons, he had learned a great deal from the lessons of rogue states like North Korea and Iran going off on their own to the detriment of the world.

Giving Vicks nukes was irresponsible at best, hazardous for all of humanity at worst.

And from what you knew about the CMC's Master in Russia, he was far from irresponsible with the world. Probably because he doesn't want to rule over a pile of ashes

You had to calm the hell down and reorient yourself...the stars are out tonight, let's count them.

You counted all the innumerable stars in the sky and calmed your mind and then started walking.

It was a long walk back...To the Republic.

It took you all of five months. You had found scattered units, formed new ones and fought the Northern Confederation all the way to the Rocky Mountains.

When you saw the Border guards you smiled. "Captain...I'm Lieutenant Adamska Arola, American Confederation Army...formerly of the 101st Airborne Division of Kentucky. We are all that is left of the Confederation Units near Atlanta."

You were saluted by the captain. " Lieutenant I bear good news for you and your men, You are not the only ones that made it out… We have the First Battalion, sixteenth infantry regiment among many others that ran after Atlanta went up in nuclear hellfire."

That was good news...very good news, the first bit of good news in 5 months.

You sighed. "I understand the need for a full debriefing sir...but If I may use a phone I and many other men, need to make a call."

------------------------------------------

You breathed in and let her answer her phone. "Hello…Arola residence...Hey put that down I'm on the phone...sorry, how may I help you."

"I'm coming home....sorry I'm late." You said shyly as you heard something clank into the ground.

"Oh god Adam..They said you were dead...and the fear of Radiation...and please tell me you are okay?" She sounded both in joy and terror.

"Doctors gave me a good bill of health...I don't have any issues from radiation, though the doctors say the Flash blinded my eye." You said sheepishly.

"Oh...are you coming home soon?" She said.

"After I talk to some of the officers and get my friends in order… then yes." You said smiling.

"The steak house you like is still open, you wanna make a reservation after we tire the kids out." She said calmly.

"That would be great...I'd love that." You said.

And so you got changed and put your rifle in its case… put it into the car you requested and then for the first time in nearly a decade you had come home and intended to stay.

If only you knew how bad things would get in the future.

Spoiler: Adam

Name:Adamska Arola the First.

Nickname: The Immortal Sniper of America. The Devil's Archer.

Description: A lean short man of 5'4 (Formally 5'5), with a strong body despite his considerable age but he's slowing down due to his life of action and constant traveling catching up to him. He is of Finnish descent and remembers the good old days of the United States of America at its peak. He is blind in one eye, the testament of being a survivor of the Battle of Atlanta. His entire adult life has been spent fighting the forces of the Collapse, from the Victorian's to the Russian's that hunt whomever is left.

Before the Collapse he was an Olympic level sharp shooter, and went to the Olympics three times.

He is notable for the 3 olympic medals he keeps on his person, 1 Bronze from the 2020 Olympics, 1 Silver from the 2024 Olympics and 1 Gold from the 2028 Olympics. His hobbies include skiing, Teaching children the Finnish Language and telling stories.

Biography: Adamska was born in late November 2002 (He is 75 years old) in the city of St Paul Minnesota to retired Finnish military reservists and remembers the last days of America as a superpower. He took up competitive sniping and sharpshooting at a young age, getting scouted for the US Olympic team and being a very successful shooter at home. Then the Collapse happened and he was drafted as a sniper.

He survived every war the American collapse threw at him. Over the course of his service, he has out sniped the likes of Blackfang Bill and The Blood Eyes (The six of them had a combined kill count of 575) and Russian Spetsnaz snipers teams (Considered the best sniper units on earth).

He alone over the course of his service (2029-2047) he had well over 457 confirmed kills by the Confederate Military, 200 Kills in the Pacific military and then at the height of his fame and in 2047 he disappeared into the Midwest in his own words to retire quietly.

The Tsar of Russia even attempted to hire him before he disappeared into the midwest, saying that a man of his talents is wasting away in a corpse of a nation.

Adamska...refused and the Tsar placed a bounty of Five Million Rubles on him as he fled into the midwest.

The Okhrana, Victorian Sharpshooters, and Russian proxy soldiers jumped at the opportunity to hunt "The Devil's Archer '' and for nearly an entire decade tales of sniper duels and a pile of soldiers and marksman littered the Midwest with dozens of variations of the same thing.

"Here the Devil's Archer stood, here...was where the men who hunted him died!!"

And then as if hounded by the march of time and energy...they stopped… his legend cemented and the fact his last "known" location was carpet-bombed made the whole of the world think he and his family were dead.

As of the 2060's he has all but disappeared from the face of the earth, occasionally with supposed sightings popping up across the Midwest, becoming something of an urban legend to the Midwest, but never truly confirmed if he was dead or alive.

An American Legend born from the death of a Nation, like a cowboy of old.

Family: He has 4 children, Arthur (Born 2025) Ashly (Born 2027) Ruby (Born 2029) Ben ( Born 2031). And 10 grandchildren and 2 Great Grandchildren. His wife of 42 years (Maria) is deceased, having died in 2071.

Political Affiliation: None...he is Apolitical for good reasons. His true calling is Sniping...politics get in the way of him doing his job.

AN: Inspired by the tales of Simo Hayha and Hellfire Burns...I had come to the obvious conclusion that America still had its hero's and Legends even as its nation turned into the closest thing to hell that they could hope for.

So I took it upon myself to fill those pages of Hero's and Villians.

Thank my Beta @Pittauro for edit work and fleshing out our next American myth alongside me.

Hey...The boss said there were people out there like Burns wandering around...I took that as an opportunity to fill in some blanks.

The Collapse gave rise to far too many monsters and villains...many that will never see the meaning of justice for their crimes.

Why can't this great tragedy have given us heroes to inspire and save us too?

Thank you...and good night.

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Hm, non-canon. Simo Hayha racked up that number of kills under some ludicrously specific circumstances, over an incredibly short period of time. Hundreds of kills is a lot. There's a reason the highest claims in history were during the Second World War. And open combat or not, the NAC and the Pacific Republic were...very much not the host to WWII-scale conflicts.

I do like the type of idea you're running with here, though!

Poptart's comments about Montreal the other day inspired me to make this:

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Hee, more for the memes collection!

 

[CthuluWasRight]

After what Victoria has done, Montreal is in no way describable as a city. The urban center has been leveled and given -- poorly, as ever -- over to farmland. Montreal is now a town of some 4,000 people. The Victorians made an example of Montreal. For instance:

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Holy shit. Alright, changing a few things around. Might as well shoot for canon status, eh?

 

[10ebbor10]

Instead, Victoria has been forcing any and all riverine traffic that needs to interface with the international market through Quebec City. Anybody who wants to trade internally...well, small local docks were good enough for thousands of years of our ancestors, and they should be good enough for you as well! This is, obviously, a deeply artificial distinction, and it is enforced by strict legislation putting a hard cap on the population on Montreal and criminalizing dock facilities over a certain capacity. The town still handles a fair amount of internal trade, and they are prosperous from it, but there is a very card cap on how much they can benefit from the sin of abetting the movement of goods, people, and ideas.

Now, this is not a distinction that will, practically, hold up under the dual pressures of a sudden tidal wave of trade coming down the St. Lawrence and Blackwell attempting to render Victoria capable of fighting an industrial war, and I absolutely believe that the Québécois would be spiteful enough to maintain their determination to return Montreal to its former prominence and glory after so long, but they should probably evince some awareness that a renewed surge in trade will not necessarily, naturally, and inevitably correspond to a renewed prominence for Quebec, just given the fact that the Victorians presently exert no small effort to prevent just that.

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I wonder if they would decide to cheat on this.
Victoria is probably not all that good with standardizing measures and all that (if they haven't returned to biblical units), so it's very much possible that you end up with the Montreal tonne, which happens to contain 20% more tonne per tonne.

 

[PoptartProdigy]

Holy shit. Alright, changing a few things around. Might as well shoot for canon status, eh?

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Yeah, they saw the Québécois first and foremost as a problem. And they decided one of the most eloquent ways to address that problem was to rip out its beating heart. And, as a bonus, it got rid of a vile city. Two-for-one, yeah?

Doesn't Burns have a ton of Anti-insurgency experience from middle east fighting?

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He was an enlisted soldier at the time, so...kinda?

I wonder if they would decide to cheat on this.
Victoria is probably not all that good with standardizing measures and all that (if they haven't returned to biblical units), so it's very much possible that you end up with the Montreal tonne, which happens to contain 20% more tonne per tonne.

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Y'know what, I absolutely see that happening, yeah.

 

[PainRack]

Doesn't Burns have a ton of Anti-insurgency experience from middle east fighting?

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Doesn't matter. The fact remains that Burns survived as an intact military force against Russian hunters and by being a semi warlord by gutting other warlords as seen in the omake. He has plenty of experience in the last few decades being both the insurgent AND fighting against warlords using the same assymetrical tactics of ambush .

The key now however is suiting tactics and strategy to our goals.

Our goal is to bring Blackwell back to the negotiating table.
We used the tool of invading Victorian home soil to try and bring him to the negotiating table.
Via
1.inflicting losses on his remaining forces.
2.inflicting material damage so his hold on power and the ability to fight the civil war is diminished.


He pulled a 4G tactics and did what Kosovo did, by withdrawing into guerilla warfare. This preserves his forces, which we already see are utterly incapable of withstanding us in the open field. From ambush , using IEDs, he retain enough threat that he can bleed us , extoll to Victorian's that he's fighting us and when we retreat, the brave martyrs that sacrificed themselves to defend the motherland, which allows him to hold on to power.


What's next ? I don't think we should expand our scope further, so, no specop plan to hunt and destroy long range targets and etc. We CAN go and fight and kill his militia, because Iraq showed that yes, you can fight and kill insurgents. However, that cost us lives too and heavy handedness, especially in artillery, which will be liberally used in a COIN battle because we lack the IFV and other gear to substitute means we lose popular support, both domestically, in Victoria space and worldwide.
Still, we CAN afford the losses and destroying the militia will inflict material losses to Blackwell. Adherents of Lind 4G ignore that modern states can effectively destroy and kill a commander fighters. It's the preventing a new one from rising that's problematic

Not so much of an issue here, but going balls to balls with insurgents means giving them all the cards and exposing us to lots of lives lost.

We can try and destroy other forces .. but that depends on Intel interrogation. Ultimately, for a guerilla movement to succeed, you need a conventional threat. Mao in cribbing off Sun Tzu uses the People War as being able to raise entire armies in the hinterland if needed to provide this conventional threat. So... Blackwell hedged this.


If not. We can destroy the material Blackwell needs to win the war. If it's an insurgency, there's still arms and weapons caches. We might not have the hi tech sensors and drones of the US military but with so much light infantry thanks to Toledero, we can set up clandestine OP to monitor and track down said caches.

On a larger scale, we can wreck war industries, such as railways for example.



Or alternatively, we can say well, we demolished Blackwell militia at the beaches and won. Let's go home, pulling civilians back home with us.

While this might not drive Blackwell to the negotiating table, it's also the one that most clearly illustrate to the world and North America that we won, cleanly and decisively. We won't get our humiliating peace treaty but so what ? We can DO IT AGAIN.

Incidentally. This is what I vote for. We did our job. We smashed vicks and their invulnerability and cost Blackwell troops and political support he need to crush the Crusaders.

Let's loot the industries, what left and evacuate civilians and go back.

 

[aceraptor]

Well. If Blackwell doesnt intend to contest us and only seek to use guerillas to outlast us then what is the point of taking the canal or the city?

People banked on the 'certainty' of bringing him back to the table quickly but if we can't then we are in for a long, painful build up since we won't be able to loot the Victorian economy for additional actions.

Getting some of what we wanted would have been good enough. But I guess we gotta work with how the thread votes.

I'm still annoyed that we have had to waste time and military action because people wanted to try a coin flip. Forcing Victoria to give a peace treaty that is clearly beneficial to the Commonwealth would have been humiliating as it is for the Vics.

Guess we can try smashing power stations and dams but do remember folks: the higher tech infrastructure in Victoria is owned and operated by Russians. We risk killing Russians and giving Russia a great pretext to fuck us if we try to smash Victorian energy infrastructure.

 

[Rivenscryr]

Guess we can try smashing power stations and dams but do remember folks: the higher tech infrastructure in Victoria is owned and operated by Russians. We risk killing Russians and giving Russia a great pretext to fuck us if we try to smash Victorian energy infrastructure.

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Now, I'm aware that the Tidal stations in the Bay of Fundy are Russian owned, but I didn't think the rest belonged to them. Some clarification please, @PoptartProdigy ?

 

[Klaus-47]

The disproportionate effort the Victorians put into suppressing not only their population, but also anything resembling prosperity is horrifying, its just that it kinda fades into all the other background horrors.

Meh, lets smash and loot what industry we can easily, then fuck off.

I don't think we can really do more damage to their food production then the milita callup will without nalpam or agent orange, and we don't want people to REALLY hate us.

 

[PoptartProdigy]

Now, I'm aware that the Tidal stations in the Bay of Fundy are Russian owned, but I didn't think the rest belonged to them. Some clarification please, @PoptartProdigy ?

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The Fundy network is Russian-owned, but otherwise, no, not particularly.

 

[Rivenscryr]

Wonderful. So we can wreck away!

 

[Gawain]

So I just wanted to ask this, are there any non Abrahamic faiths left in our region of North America. I can understand if there has been a large decrease with how Victoria likes killing anyone who doesn't practice what they do, but I would find it hard to believe that all non Abraham faiths have been reduced to a non-factor. Especially considering how we are a haven for the persecuted refugees.

 

[ExNihilo]

So I just wanted to ask this, are there any non Abrahamic faiths left in our region of North America. I can understand if there has been a large decrease with how Victoria likes killing anyone who doesn't practice what they do, but I would find it hard to believe that all non Abraham faiths have been reduced to a non-factor. Especially considering how we are a haven for the persecuted refugees.

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I can't imagine we don't have any Hindus, or Buddhists, or the like. There are a lot of Hindus, for instance, in Chicago today, and I'd be surprised if they're all gone.

 

[PoptartProdigy]

So I just wanted to ask this, are there any non Abrahamic faiths left in our region of North America. I can understand if there has been a large decrease with how Victoria likes killing anyone who doesn't practice what they do, but I would find it hard to believe that all non Abraham faiths have been reduced to a non-factor. Especially considering how we are a haven for the persecuted refugees.

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Y'know, before the Commonwealth was founded, most people would say that, outside of FCNY and the NCR, non-Abrahamic faiths are pretty much dead and gone as organized groups -- and that Jews mostly keep their heads down.

But you know, there's been this astounding amount of them coming into the Commonwealth, especially since Detroit. Funny, that.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I had a thought about those polities that neighbor Victoria. Could it be possible that they could decide to revolt against Victoria and throw off its yolk while forming yet another anti Victorian faction.

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Victoria has beaten the shit out of all those polities; about the only neighbor of any real size is the Free City of New York, and it's ultra-demilitarized at Victorian demand. More typical are city-states like Toronto, which are in turn very beaten-down and kept as weak as practical. I mean, can you list the specific individual city-states and factions that would join this alliance, and how they would coordinate?

Spreading ourselves thin does indeed leave the army more vulnerable to Victorian attempts to fight 5th generation warfare. However, armies on the move are generally less vulnerable to attempts at asymetric warfare, since it is easy for an army on the move to act inside the decision loop of such a dispersed opponent.

Not to say that aggression will make us invulnerable, it's one factor among many.

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The army itself may be less vulnerable, but the supply lines are decidedly not less vulnerable.

Don't need the city with the only actual port facilities when we have repeatedly been told how tenuous our logistics are? Actual port facilities VASTLY speeds the process of unloading ships, which means our supply ships can spend more time actually bringing supplies in, rather than spending long stretches waiting to be unloaded. One way or another, if we're to have a reasonable hope of success in this expedition, we need that port.

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The two big points:

1) There are at least limited port facilities on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, on or around the Welland Canal. As a supply port it's not great, but then we're trying to support an army of more like 50,000 soldiers, not 500,000.

2) Winter is coming. Lake Erie will ice up to the point where nothing gets through over water and our possession of a supply port becomes irrelevant.

Also, I happen to think the original plan is awful, and basically exposes our expedition in the worst way to the terrible Victorian doctrine. Which is to say, invading them on a hope and a prayer may actually have put us in a position where their abysmal ideas on warfare actually work.

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Well no, because the original plan occupied territory that was firmly defensible against anything the Victorians would be likely to spare until, oh, the middle of next year at the earliest.

Victorian doctrine, as we've seen, struggles to deal with the question of "so, if the enemy is well dug in over there and we are over here, how do we get from here to there?" It's based on the assumption that Victorian Heroes will always be able to move freely, attack anything they want, and bypass any military force they don't want to deal with. With, essentially, no effort put into explaining how or why that can be made to happen.

That would require extensive changes to the rail infrastructure (at considerable cost) and re-training the people who work on the railroads. It's not that much harder to make a basic diesel engine, and diesel engines have the wonderful advantage of pretty much being able to run on anything if you tune 'em right (though liquid fuels are much easier to handle of course).

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Our access to petroleum of any kind is extremely limited. Effectively speaking, in the area around the Commonwealth, our available fuels are wood, coal, and biodiesel. Biodiesel competes directly with food people need to live and the Commonwealth has food security problems. So biodiesel is right out.

There's a reason our warships are coal-fired, @fasquardon . It's not because your logic about diesel engines being better is wrong. It's because circa 2070 or so, the city-state of Chicago had no confidence in its ability to supply oil fuel to its gunboat fleet.

There would have predictably come some point at which the railroads in and around Commonwealth territory shut down for lack of fuel supplies. To continue in operation beyond that point would require engines capable of running on locally available fuel, even if that meant extensive changes. Building water tanks for steam engines beside an already existing right-of-way can be done by localized decentralized pillaged governments that run on the scale of city-states. Importing bulk quantities of diesel fuel cannot.

So yes, I am quite confident that we have seen a return to steam propulsion and steam engines in the Commonwealth. Not necessarily a total transition back to steam technology, but enough so that we have people who know how to work with it, which was the original point.

Actually, not THAT much of a problem. Put it simply, Buffalo is looted and useless to us. If we move out, problem solved.

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The port's useful, and if we end up stuck staying the winter (possible), just having buildings is important. You hear about armies "seeking winter quarters" for a reason; a lot of the usual portable shelter that an army uses to operate in the field isn't very tenable in winter with heavy snowfall, and you get bad health and a lot of unnecessary casualties and problems.

Of course, there are probably enough abandoned buildings that we can crudely prop up for shelter that it's not a big issue, but still.

The real problem is IED. Still, in Iraq, Iraqi kids routinely gave away such ambushes for food and hey, this time, they speak English.

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Sara Goldblum:

"Yeah, kids giving away the ambush for food can be a real pain in the ass. Sara started hoarding candy bar reserves when she could get them, as a war material."

First, to be clear as @Simon_Jester noted, any actions are contingent on making sure Buffalo is secure. It will most likely be acting as our primary logistic base unless a mass attack has our retreat across the river.

The main thing about would be all about selling fiction. With a lowered artillery usage from lower intensity fighting, we can afford more time. This is all about selling the fiction that this is actually, really an invasion with plans to stay. Towns would be taken, firmly secured, local governments replace-remodeled. Selling the idea that we are planning to remold Victorian society, and our slow advance is simply our natural machine-like plans.

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The big problem is that in the immediate short term, the winter is a long period of time when no supplies can get to Buffalo by water without an icebreaker. And I don't think we have any icebreakers.

( @PoptartProdigy , am I wrong? I believe we have no icebreakers capable of handling the Lakes' ice. I'd love to be wrong.)