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To be fair, only ~ 1 project in a thousand (the top tenth of a percent) manages to rake in a million dollars or more - it'd have to be a wildly successful project to run our economy for half a year rather than just a successful one. Still, it is darkly amusing.
To be fair, only ~ 1 project in a thousand (the top tenth of a percent) manages to rake in a million dollars or more - it'd have to be a wildly successful project to run our economy for half a year rather than just a successful one. Still, it is darkly amusing.
Reddit appeal:
These people want to travel to Victoria to give them a drubbing but can't afford the gas.
Please donate the price of a Starbucks coffee to pay for a tanker of diesel to fuel their technicals!
If the Vics didn't control the Welland Canal, or if we'd been playing somewhere like Miami or Philadelphia with a seaport, there would actually have been a non-zero chance of that happening. Conflict in the age of social media must be wild.
Chicago really is Hard Mode.
So, what new crisis do you guys think will happen next turn?
I myself think that we'll have to spend action to integrate Victorian refugees or else see conflict flare up between Commonwealth people and the newly arriving Victorians migrating over due to the free movement provision.
Also, we'll need to spend more action on food than just resolving the current food crisis because with the victory we've achieved we are going to start getting flooded with people looking for a better life.
Hell, people that has been stuck in New York as the only safe harbor from Victorian shenanigans might well pack up and move to the Commonwealth because New York is crowded as fuck.
Some warlord/group will try his/their luck after the Declaration is found, because obviously they are entitled to it's custody as the true inheritors of the Old Country.Disease pandemic hits the nation. One of the several nuclear reactors in Illnois finally cooks off, whether naturally or "naturally".
Some other nut attempts to assassinate a government official.
Hell, people that has been stuck in New York as the only safe harbor from Victorian shenanigans might well pack up and move to the Commonwealth because New York is crowded as fuck.
Not bloody likely.
How many New Yorkers move to live in Wyoming? And Wyoming actually has first world facilities; the Commonwealth doesn't have reliable power, basic medical facilities are spotty, and even food supply is not yet at the point where it's taken for granted.
That's like moving from Tokyo to South Sudan because Japan is crowded. Not gonna happen.
If you see New Yorkers, they'll be aid workers, researchers and businesspeople, not immigrants.
Nah. Our embassy is going to have it's hands full with government to government negotiations.
But we'll need to streamline modalities for NGOs to help out.
MSF, Oxfam, Save The Children, the like.
Though I expect a bunch of NGOs have been quietly active for a long time; those satellite phones that Madame President laid her hands on were being funded by someone, and anyone working for an intelligence agency would not have exposed themself.
So you're looking at NGOs, news agencies and similar private entities.
I know they did.
But if IIRC, they mostly did it by shutting down in place and enshrouding the stations.
I dunno if they evacuated the nuclear material, or could do so safely.
Lamb Among Wolves/Sheep in the Big City Part 6: Family Matters
Reactions from an abuse victim, second-hand descriptions of massive boundary violations
With the same twist-pull-reach-CLUNK, the car began to rumble again, and moved forward. "While we finish the drive, why don't you tell more about what Papa's do, in your experience?"
"Oh. Right." Skip the fighting part. "Spring is renewal and inspection. He'd inspect the house for me, making sure that it had been kept in good condition. For males it was planting season, where Papa would oversee the plowing and planting."
"Did he plow and plant himself?"
"Oh no. Someone needs to oversee it." And, after all he was tired from protecting them, but that part was getting edited out. Simple, easy. She wouldn't need to make Mrs. Goldblum break her promise. "In the evening he retires and likes to tell stories and give moral lessons to the younger children. When dinner comes, he oversees the grace. Helping us to give thanks for the Garden's blessings."
"It sounds like the 'papas' of Andrew Division spent a lot of time overseeing."
"Yes?" Mary offered. She'd had similar conversations with newly arrived children, but this wasn't a child, why was she- Oh, Mary understood the lesson. Papas oversee. "But none of us do! I mean I didn't come with staff. Oh, the captain… he isn't really overseeing. I mean, he navigates. But I am in charge. I am sorry ma'am, I shouldn't have lied, if anyone oversaw this, it was me-"
"Mary? It's okay. I see what you're trying to do, and you don't need to. Let's get back to-" she paused again, and again that little flex of the jaw. "Papa."
Maybe she just really, really doesn't like Victorians? Yes, that made sense. They had hated them enough to invade.
"Sometimes, he hosts other Papas to show us off. He is really proud of his family." Mary smiled as she thought to better times. "He was always so happy to show us off. He really believed in the Garden. He talked about how he joined the army right after its founding, and saw what the Garden could become. His first year he spent with his sergeant, and after seeing the girl he had, he brought me the next next year. He said he wanted one right then and there, but knew you had to wait for the right Child, and he knew I was special." Mary had always been a little proud of that. Thinking about her Papa's love always made her feel better when she was alone. "A lot of new recruits feel they can't take Children, or aren't sure, but many of them talk about how they can't wait after seeing us."
Mrs. Goldblum just sat there, occasionally twitching the steering wheel a little to the left or right, or shifting a bit as the car's engine noise rose or slowed. When she spoke after Mary had been silent for a little while, she sounded perfectly calm.
"Go on, honey."
Her knuckles were pale, but she sounded calm. Maybe she was afraid, and trying to be brave. There were other cars on the other side of the road, and big trucks. The car was fast, and the cars coming at them seemed twice as fast, impossibly fast...
You can't kill people twice you can't kill people twice you can't kill people twice… The thought ran around the inside of Sara Goldblum's head in a fugue. Her hands hurt from gripping the textured plastic of the old steering wheel but she kept her face slack, her posture neutral. She forced herself, in perhaps the most difficult moment of her life in nearly thirty years, certainly in the past fifteen, to… sound… calm…
"Go on, honey."
Mary started again. "He likes to show us off. Sometimes, he has Rachel sing or offers to have Enoch make them new shoes. He has the boys take off their shirts, to show how strong they've become, how much each is growing. He usually jokes about how it was a shame that it wasn't appropriate for women."
The old fury screamed through Sara's head like a train through a tunnel and she sat there, still. I'm going to kill them. They don't get to survive being the people who do this.
"Sometimes, invites his friends to touch John and the others. And show how gentle we are, that our Orci-" Mary stopped, obviously spooked again- "That we don't commit violence, like shooting people," she added hastily.
And fighting an inner scream like she was digging someone else's grave at gunpoint again, Sara made herself… sound… flat… calm.
"All right, honey, you can go on."
And now she sounded eager, pleased. "Or he talks about how John and the others harvest so much, that even after the division's cut he has to give a share to the Remphs-" Sara started to goggle, realizing that the girl couldn't possibly know what that acronym stood for, and probably didn't know it was one- "in order for them to pack it for Victoria. We hel-"
And Mary stopped again, and Sara was so, so sorry they'd bothered to take prisoners at Detroit as she made a sharp right turn from memory and autopilot. And then the young ambassador went on.
"If everything goes well, he usually lets the younger children have a treat. Sometimes, he brings real sugar. Sometimes, if he's been away, he might even bring back a trinket or toy for the younger ones."
She sounded happy and this was getting harder; every time Sara so much as twitched it spooked the poor girl and she obviously didn't believe reassurances. So she sat, digging her fingers into the steering wheel and concentrating harder than she ever had. Since the moment in the '40s when she'd seen a steak knife and the back of John Rumford's neck four quick strides away and had to do… nothing… for the sake… of the plan...
Mary chattered on.
"Last year he brought Rachel a dress since she was thirteen and needed to start preparing for courting next year."
I will burn their country down around their ears.
"He cares a lot about making sure we got good marriages."
I will stand in the burning ruins of Augusta, like that bastard in New York talked about.
"The year I turned fifteen, he had more officers than I'd ever seen!" Mary laughed weakly.
It won't be enough.
"Rachel is a little nervous, but I was back then, as well…" Mary was quiet for a moment. "...Mrs. Goldblum, why are you crying?"
"Just… allergies."
A Few Minutes Later
The car stopped and Mary felt a jolt at the unexpected change. Goldblum had promised, and she'd done everything asked. As long as you did everything right, it was fine.
"Sorry, I used to be able to stop a car smoothly. We are here."
"Here?" Mary asked.
"Your lodgings, dear."
Oh right, that had been where they were going. Not... other places you went when a Papa needed to take you on a trip. Just lodgings, Mary, reached for the door, but found the handle didn't twist. "You need to pull the handle out and push the door," Goldblum instructed. Mary nodded, and opened it up and got out to look... at... her new lodgings.
Mary staired. She had seen, on some level, that the buildings were big in Chicago. Big. Big like hills or even mountains were big. She had seen the monumental crosses they left along the straights. But she hadn't been looking too hard, as she had needed to focus only on Goldblum when she was talking. And now, now she could see them up close, on foot. It gave her a sense of scale. The thing. It wasn't a building it was some… monument. It was over four stories. It was… six! Something so big, it was hardly believable, hardly real. And it wasn't even the largest here, and they were all buildings. Places, where people were going in and out and presumably, lived and worked!
"That's my house?" Mary was… no one could have that, it had to be shared but…. But how many people fit in something of that size?
"Not... only." Sara was climbing out of the car. "You… wouldn't have gotten many travelers passing through back home, come to think of it. We get more. So there are hotels, where the travelers can pay for a room to sleep in, or a suite- a set- of rooms. We expected to get some ambassadors we weren't expecting, so there will be a set of rooms set aside for you. I suppose you're lucky it's not last year; last year we had all the hotels full of refugees." She shook her head, with the hard winter look on her face.
"Oh, okay. Sometimes, when Papa's friends come back, they bring more Children than expected. It can be hard to fit everyone in until we have time to expand or renovate one of the buildings. John's been great about it, he's made sure that no one has more than seven at a time."
Mrs. Goldblum's head turned away. She must be very interested in the little pear tree they were walking past, as they crossed towards the enormous, hill-sized building, over from the big flat paved spot the cars were parked on- quite a lot of cars, a number that would say 'Army gathering' if they'd looked like soldiers' trucks, which they mostly didn't.
"Well, Mary, we've had a lot of kids come in in the last few years, too… Only their whole families come to us, to settle here. Looking for food and work, mostly. So we've had to get good at making room too, but these rooms are open and we've set some aside for you. They'll know which ones inside…" Her voice sounded… distant.
Something about that bugged Mary, as Sara lengthened her stride and held the door open, which of course was her telling Mary to go inside first. If they brought entire families to settle in Chicago, and not just children, how did they ensure that the new people acted right? How did they train the children, she wondered, but that wasn't something to ask, and so she entered the building.
The front room was enormous, house-sized. A man in a uniform looked at her from behind a long table to one side of the room. After she took a few confused steps, he spoke to her. "Are you here for the conference, ma'am?'
"Yes. I was told you have a room for me?" The man looked at her, then at Mrs. Goldblum, then there was an expression she recognized, of someone carefully controlling their face.
"Ah, you are with… Blue... Mountain, correct?"
"Yes." She answered, at least this was familiar. Her in someone else's home as her Papa, or now Mrs. Goldblum, brought her in, he even had that same controlled face of another Child greeting a Papa. It was almost comforting.
He leaned forward, offering her a small key. "You'll have Suite 632…" he trailed off. "Are you… okay, miss?"
"Oh of course" she answered. "Um… Mrs. Goldblum?" she said quietly.
But Mrs. Goldblum didn't answer, and when Mary glanced behind her, the older woman's attention was turned to a bunch of very fluffy-seeming chairs set off to the other side of the enormous room. There was a look at my silly daughter expression on her face. The affectionate kind.
Mrs. Goldblum was looking at a young woman with curly black hair, who was sitting in a chair, bent over a pad of papers with a pencil. She turned to push buttons on a yellow box about the size of a man's hand, looked at the box, frowned, and wrote something on the papers. She was obviously concentrating on the papers.
Mrs. Goldblum rubbed her chin, then smiled a smile that on a Child would have made Mary think oh no I have to stop them before they get in trouble. But Mrs. Goldblum was no Child. She walked very quietly across the floor, her skirt- scandalously short, ankle-showing, but obviously they didn't care about that kind of scandal here, even though they apparently DID care if you wore TOO MANY clothes- swaying slowly. She crept up behind the young woman and shouted "Boo!"
Oh, Mary hadn't realized that Mrs. Goldblum liked jokes. She carefully studied the other woman, she had to make sure that if Mrs. Goldblum ever did a joke, she reacted appropriately.
Silently, the woman with the dark curly hair jumped up- keeping her grip on the papers but dropping the pencil- and spun around, and shouted words that made Mary's eyes go round and her jaw slack with shock.
"MOM! When are you going to STOP DOING THAT?"
And Mrs. Goldblum responded with… impossible serenity and cheer, from… oh God was that her daughter saying that to her?
"When you're sneaky enough to do it to me, of course! You remember the deal!"
"Mom I am not some kind of commando I am an engineer and I am trying to get this work done without any reference files after SOMEONE called me away from the office at TWO IN THE AFTERNOON!"
Mary froze. Where was the punishment? She hadn't reacted to the prank. Nothing made funny Papas madder than someone not reacting. She'd yelled back. Talking like that! She was telling her what to do. What was Mary supposed to do in this? John was usually the one who was able to make a funny Papa laugh when a younger child hadn't learned yet. But he wasn't here, and this daughter was so old and it was too late and where was the discipline? It had to be coming, any second now.
Mrs. Goldblum stopped cold. Oh God here it comes and a horrible explosion of guilt flared in her chest when thank God it isn't me flicked across her brain and then Mrs. Goldblum opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened. Closed.
"Layla? I'm sorry, you're right. I don't know what I was thinking. It's been… I'll explain later. I need you to meet someone."
Still nothing. She didn't even sound angry. Not even the purposeful calm. Like… like what had happened hadn't mattered! Like she had been in the wrong! She sounded like the way John might talk to one of the younger ones when Papa hadn't been around for a while. And the daughter was coming over. Mrs. Goldblum was leading towards her this… this… terrifying mutant impossible bulletproof punishment-proof THING that walked in the shape of a woman! Who made Mrs. Goldblum talk like a Child. And Oh GOD Layla was wearing TROUSERS...
It was a lesson. It had to be. Mrs. Goldblum had let her daughter defy her, and was bringing her over so Mary could see, then there would be punishment, there had to be- any second Natural law would reassert itself.
Mrs. Goldblum spoke. "Mary? I'd like you to meet my daughter Layla. She's a few years older than you, and a draftswoman at Montoya Engineering." Her face looked… a little... like a Papa when he was showing off the Children's skills, though not quite? Then she started to look serious and sad, and turned back to Layla.
"Mary is the ambassador-" and Layla's dark eyebrows shot up high on her forehead- "from… Andrew's Garden."
"Wait, from- oh. Oh." Layla turned to Mary, as Mrs. Goldblum continued to do absolutely nothing. "Are you okay? You're safe here, it's okay now, they can't get you anymore-"
Was this what "going mad" felt like?
Maybe Mrs. Goldblum just… for... got... to punish her. Somehow. In less than fifteen seconds. Mary shouldn't bring it up, in case that reminded her. Of what she had forgotten. In fifteen seconds. No. No. Maybe Mary imagined it all. Maybe she was dreaming and she was about to wake up on the boat. Or she was back home, and find that Papa was just about to come home. Carefully, with hopefully drawing too much attention, Mary reached to her side and gave herself a small pinch.
"Hi Layla". Mary said. Smiling, just keep smiling, this will be fine. Then the next part registered. "Who is getting me?"
"Ah- er- no one, that's… the point…" And Mary felt a small, probably-orcish moment of satisfaction that the impossible mutant girl now looked surprised.
That same orcishness wanted to continue, and since the world was broken, why not? "Mrs Goldblum, it's so nice to meet your daughter. But I'm a bit confused at what she's saying? Could you explain?"
The… mama?… who by all sanity should be falling on her daughter like a ton of bricks looked at
Mary quite calmly and soberly. "She means to say that no one is going to hurt y- the Blue Mountain children." She corrected herself.
Which did not exclude her daughter, Mary noted. Maybe the punishment was later. Not something to do in from of a guest. A horrible feeling of guilt and having felt orcish about Layla flooded her. "Oh, of course. I know no one here is going to hurt us."
Mrs. Goldblum raised her finger… very… slowly...
Sara Goldblum, concentration camp escapee, partisan, militia commander, and founding member of both a political party masquerading as a joke and a joke masquerading as a political party, was hardly unfamiliar with the sense of horrifying realization.
That look Mary had given Layla. Several of them, in fact. That tone of recitation in her response to Sara's 'translation.' That thudding, leaden, unintentional weight on the word 'us.'
…Layla just tore a strip off me for acting like she was fifteen and I was still trying to make a fighter out of her. And Mary saw that. And now she thinks that I'm going to-
Sara was very, very good at hammering nausea right down into the ground, when she had to. She raised a finger and said. "That's right. No one is going to hurt any of you." Her head dipped in a probably-useless attempt to signal to Mary that of course that included Layla for the love of sanity. At least this wasn't as bad as listening to the poor girl go on about how- happy-
When the fox gnaws, smile. Sara rallied. "Now, I'd like to show Mary to her room, if that's all right?"
She glanced at Layla, who nodded, having had the grumpiness at the interruption shocked out of her, then nodded again at the head-twitch that invited her along. Still holding her clipboard, no less- but she quick-stepped back to her chair to pick up the pencil and calculator, then caught up with them as they approached the elevator.
"Now, Mary, did the man at the desk tell you the number of your room?"
"Yes, ma'am. Six-thirty-two, ma'am." Another one of those quick eye glances at Layla, then to Goldblum, too fast to notice if you weren't looking for it. That same -expression drop- before Mary's face reasserted a placid smile. Not anger this time, confusion.
"Well, we'll need to get into the elevator, then-" Sara recognized that I spent my whole life in two story buildings look and the way Mary's steps didn't naturally turn her to the sliding doors. "And that will lift us up to the sixth floor, where your rooms are. Six for sixth." Layla had caught up by now, and before Sara pushed the button, she turned to her.
"This is where I'd hoped you could come in. I think Mary may need someone closer to her own age to answer questions about Chicago, and-?" She looked the rest of the question at her daughter.
"Well… okay, we're a little ahead of schedule for the deadline." Layla frowned that frown that Sara knew, fondly, meant 'I'm an absurd perfectionist about my work and if I do it the way a mere mortal would, it'll be done about ten minutes after I sit back down at my desk and ahead of schedule.' So she could stop worrying about that, anyway.
"Okay." Layla turned to Mary. "Let me show you the rest of the way up…" Sara stepped aside from the elevator buttons. Hugging her daughter, she murmured to her, "there should be luggage and clothes coming up for her in an hour or so, and someone at the front desk will be able to get in touch with the State Department if things get… official. I'll be back in about two hours, okay?"
"Okay, mom." Layla pulled back from the hug, smiling. "Don't worry, we'll be OK." She turned, and pressed the elevator button. Doors slid open, doors slid closed…
And Sara Goldblum allowed herself to slump against the opposite wall of the corridor, just… staring blankly into space at last.
Once again thanks to @Simon_Jester for the writing for Sara and Layla.
Only so many times I can say this is pretty good without sounding like a broken record. But this is pretty good.
In a depicting the banality of horror kinda way.
A little surprised elevators still work in Chicago, but I guess machine shops never really went away.
I suspect Sara G is going to involve herself in Blue Mountain. For totally legitimate defense matters, of course. Nothing more.
But really, this is quite emotive. You're going to shame me into picking up a figurative pen.
Elevators are extremely simple, mechanically speaking. The basic technology hasn't really changed that much in a hundred years, so if you can make reasonably strong cables, and you have electricity, you have elevators.
Plus, of course, inevitably Chicago is putting up the delegates to the diplomatic convention in one of the best hotels in town. There may be a whole lot of ten story buildings in Chicago where the upper floors are largely abandoned because the elevators don't work, but this isn't one of those buildings.
I suspect Sara G is going to involve herself in Blue Mountain. For totally legitimate defense matters, of course. Nothing more.
I will note that Sara Goldblum does know how to delegate and trust others to handle things. She tends to channelize this kind of thing into the motivation to destroy the responsible parties and everything they've ever loved, and she already had that.
I'm actually a bit curious, are some of the massive buildings still operational in Chicago? Because there's a lot of office buildings that could be repurposed for housing, assuming they haven't been demolished and harvested. Also, if I can give my two cents, I think it would make sense if the ambassadors were placed in the Drake Hotel, and oldy hotel that's well known for its fanciness and big convention spaces.
I'm actually a bit curious, are some of the massive buildings still operational in Chicago? Because there's a lot of office buildings that could be repurposed for housing, assuming they haven't been demolished and harvested.
One problem is that I suspect that the electrical grid in Chicago is still... iffy. There's power, but blackouts and brownouts are probably far from unheard of.
Giant skyscrapers tend not to be very livable if the electricity cuts out frequently.
Also, some of those skyscrapers are probably still standing but have gone half a century or so with no maintenance. At this point people may be seriously concerned about them collapsing if occupied without retrofitting.
Also, if I can give my two cents, I think it would make sense if the ambassidors were placed in the Drake Hotel, and oldy hotel that's well known for its fanciness and big convention spaces.
A lot of the genuinely fancy hotels in Chicago have been at some point looted of their furnishings, or allowed to fall into disrepair, or shot up by Victorians using them as a barracks and actively encouraged to wreck the place. The surviving ones are relatively few and far between.
The known and expected ambassadors were placed in advance in a fancy hotel in... the Drake Hotel, or wherever in Chicago @PoptartProdigy thinks they should be.
The unexpected ambassadors (and note that the Blue Mountain folk didn't call ahead to tell us they were coming) have been pre-allocated overflow capacity in a hotel that has a very strong reputation for being good, but is not a surviving ritzy pre-Collapse hotel that somehow managed to preserve its business model.
That is to say, the one I portray, the "Light Feet Hotel."
You don't burn. You preserve what you can. So people may remember, and prevent it happening again.
Just return the favor, by figuratively stealing their children and people, by subverting them into precisely the sort of society their forbears attempted to destroy.
I will note that Sara Goldblum does know how to delegate and trust others to handle things. She tends to channelize this kind of thing into the motivation to destroy the responsible parties and everything they've ever loved, and she already had that.
Honestly, my overall mental picture of the leadership of Chicago is that they are far, far less 'professional' than we'd expect from modern heads of state. They are mostly people who were either of no great prominence or the string-pullers behind a figurehead during the 2040s-2072 period of Victorian domination.* In many cases, the combination of Victorians deliberately disrupting large organizations, and trust breaking down to Victorian informant networks, may be causing people to fall back on ties of family and friendship even when they're looking for people to put in charge of things.
So while some of them are pretty damn good at their jobs, and the radical shakeup of pre-Chicago Accords power structures and the imposition of parliamentary democracy has hopefully blown up the worst of the nepotism... it's probably not great, and I suspect one of the consequences of lacking the civil service and Efficient Bureaucracy national spirit is that personal leadership tends to thrive at the expense of organizational efficiency.
__________________
*(I infer this because a lot of them, e.g. many of the socialists, would have gotten purged pretty brutally if Victorians were passing through the city every year or two and fully aware of their leanings)
"I know we are desperate for any tool that we might get our hands on. But I worry what using this one will do to us." - Rebecca Curtis, November 3rd, 2048
The rush to preserve the Old World's knowledge had been hectic, the pace made frantic with fear of violence catching up to those who would in time become the Founders. So no one knew how exactly the Families had come to acquire, of all things, the recipe for Napalm B. And not a soul among them admitted to it.
Still, when time had eroded the Old Country's sense of stability, and the Families sought anything in their grasp that could secure their existence amid the New World of warlords and lawlessness, with the distant shadow of Victoria looming they begrudgingly accepted the merits of possession and sought means of production.
Fire is subject, after all, of a most viscerally primal fear to the living.
Even as work began on designing a means of delivery, the threefold issue of materials was at the forefront. Styrene, as a gelling agent. Gasoline, to burn true. And nitrogen, to propel the burning mixture.
Nitrogen was, luckily, a non-issue for the Families. Daniel Curtis' original welding company had prepared for supply shortfalls in shielding gas, and had procured before the Collapse a set of membrane nitrogen generators.
The issue of gasoline was solved alongside the concerns for fuel. The fermentation of mushrooms into butanol had given a workable substitute for both the formula and the engines of the Families' cars.
Styrene was where the Families found need to send an expedition into the greater state, to keep a sharp eye on suburban yards and pick over abandoned garden supply stores, of all places. Yet by the end, they had successfully secured multiple saplings and mature examples of sweetgum trees, the bark resin of which contained the substance naturally.
Even as the Chemist Family sought out the method to refinement, the Founding Family was piecing together the mechanics of the notorious tool of warfare largely from first principles, as (quite sensible) censorship had kept them from attaining the blueprints prior to the exodus. Alongside them were new shells to supply the scant few mortars recovered from the deserted National Guard armory at Sheridan, before the arrival of Victorians intent on dismantling all tools of resistance.
The only good part of having to test incendiaries in woodlands is that there is considerable incentive in attaining the greatest possible accuracy. The few live fire tests done when some would-be warlord or another wandered into Yellowstone, as a show of force to the rest of the state, were a comparative breeze.
A full 70 years after its abandonment by the Old Country, the flamethrower is reborn, to a new, less civil age of warfare.
Our democracy and government is not exactly fully developed by any means. It started as a military emergency provisional government under Burns. The first elections had to be delayed due to extreme political chaos. Now, we are a newborn odd parliamentary system with presidential touchings. I believe we are still under emergency rule although under elected civilians. It is questionable how wise it is to effectively combine the roles of prime minister and presidents into one office. Most parliamentary systems separate the positions of prime minister as head of government and president/constitutional monarch as head of state after all. The legislature is inexperienced and filled with divided idealistic firebrand activists who want to fulfill massive contradictory political wish lists and former warlords trying to ride the revivalist current. It is a miracle it has not collapsed into unending gridlock or runaway corruption yet. It seems some people outside the Commonwealth wonder if Burns and the military are puppeting the civilian government like an American version of the Beiyang republic. We are still a bit too dependent on the work and skill of individual leaders. Only recently have we secured the foreign intelligence network under the control of an agency instead it being the personal network of the late governor Audrey Johnson. Additionally, Audrey's drones are gone and we were unable to secure them before they were taken because of the governor's murder.
We will need military reform and academies eventually. Burns is old and won't live forever. We will need a proper census soon even if it would be outdated sooner due to the refugee wave so we have some idea to better distribute government funds and efforts while avoiding corruption and waste. We will need a proper bureaucracy and civil service as we expand. There is much work ahead to do.
