Empire of the Bear: A History-Book After the End AAR

[GangsterSynod]

Suggested listening
In discussing the late years of the First Californian Empire, scholars have tended to do so through two distinct approaches and their corresponding distinct frames of reference. Scholars such as William Green and Annaliese Krakowski, tending as they did to emphasize the effects of Imperial personalities, stressed Hetch the Lame as a “man out of time” (the title of Krakowski’s book), a man with the personality and skillset of a strong Emperor at a time when such an approach was fundamentally untenable, a man who, while courageous, competent, and humble, lacked the political astuteness or flexibility to avert disaster and betrayal. Scholars in the tradition of Grace Mbembe, however, deemphasize Imperial personality and instead center “The Big One” and the administrative, economic, and cultural responses to it in explain ‘Imperial decline’ (itself a problematic term to some extent). While it is to be hoped that the reader has, through the earlier portions of this work, garnered some appreciation for the ways in which imperial personalities were fundamental in shaping California, it is also to be hoped that the reader realizes that personality and “imperial strength” was just one of many factors that influenced the development of Empire, and not by any means one of the most important. A strong Emperor might have been necessary for a strong, thriving period of Empire, but it was not a sufficient condition for imperial strength. Hetch’s life--and the history of “The Big One”--provide a useful demonstration of this point, further our story chronologically, and allow us to consider the changing geopolitical world of the Westcoast and, therefore, of the history of the First and Second Yudkow Empires, in a more complete light.

The San Andreas Fault runs through Old American California and through Old Mexican Baja California. The Pacific Plate and the North American Plate collide at the Fault, glide past each other, build up friction and strain that—violently—releases at unpredictable times. Earthquakes along the Fault have occurred for millions of years, but to varying degrees of severity. Many earthquakes are felt by nobody at all, their effects so slight only machines detect them. Larger earthquakes are felt every few decades, causing minor damage. Truly monumental earthquakes, however, are much rarer, at least from a human perspective (they are rather common when considering geological timescales, however). One such earthquake occurred in 2565, the second year of Hetch’s reign. We do not know exactly how bad it was, largely because the Empire’s bureaucratic infrastructure had been so damaged by the quake that it could not effectively evaluate it. What we do have and can know, though, suggests it was truly catastrophic. San Francisco and Los Angeles were if not effectively destroyed, very close to that state, and homesteads from Cascadia to Baja were devastated by the quake and its almost equally punishing aftershocks. Fires ravaged the ruins and burnt the redwood forests and water spilling from lakes and rivers caused sudden and severe floods. Clearly thousands died, thousands more suffered severe injuries, hundreds of thousands were displaced, and hundreds of thousands more livelihoods were threatened. Put simply, it must have seemed completely apocalyptic to the many affected. This was a situation even the well-functioning bureaucracy of Elton I would have had extreme difficulty solving. Hetch’s bureaucracy was, to say the least, not well-functioning. The twin poles of the Protectorate of the North and the Imamate of Socal had de facto complete local autonomy and vied for actual authority over the state as a whole, and each had their fierce partisans in the Imperial court and the administration of California. The actual affairs of state were marginalized; for the partisans of the bureaucracy, their actual jobs were to secure the dominance of their faction and the ruin of their opponents and to ensure that the office of the Emperor could not regain or retain real power. This second objective was the only one that the two factions could agree upon, and it was a task of extreme importance because there was a very real chance that Hetch in fact could have.

Hetch was by all accounts a natural leader and tactician. He read voraciously, studying not only the Old World classics that survived the Event but also the writings of earlier Emperors, Presley in particular. From Presley, however, he took only tactics; his personality was far more similar to his father Elton II or even his grandfather Reuben. Insofar as a ruler raised to believe they were a divine figure could be, he was down to earth and familiar with the peasantry. We know, for instance, that his closest relationships in his 750-strong personal retinue were not with the lowborn test-taking but traditionally wealthy prominent Sacramentan Wing-Leaders* or their similar subordinate Subwing-Leaders. Rather, he was most associated with the almost completely poor, provincial lowborn veteran Leaders of Twenty, who, in commanding not more than twenty troops and being therefore required to be in the thick of fighting, were often closest to the realities of combat as it was actually practiced. He was popular with his personal retinue and had the potential to be popular with the standing Imperial armies practically commanded by the two bureaucratic factions. He was not as controllable as the old Anti-Reubenists who decided who would succeed Elton II and who now vied for power hoped. He couldn’t be killed; to kill the Emperor would be a taboo beyond imagining, one which could provoke peasant rebellion. He was, therefore, a danger to be kept amused whenever possible, surrounded by entertainment, art, and court life, forbidden from leaving the Imperial Quarter of Sacramento, all to ensure that he could not pose a threat. The great earthquake of 2565, however, was a cataclysm at a scale that demanded an Imperial response, and Hetch attempted to seize upon it to regain practical power. Crowds of maimed, displaced people from the ruined coastal cities and homesteaders with devastated harvests and pens full of dead animals marched, aggrieved and desperate, to the gates of Sacramento. Hetch, escaping out of the Quarter after nightfall, along with a few friends, went to join them.

*By this point, while all Californians bar the members of the House Yudkow were technically lowborn, as the old nobility had been abolished with the founding of the Empire and the institution of the Exam, the traditionally wealthy, prominent bureaucratic families were for all intents and purposes nobility in their own right.

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Sorry, thought I'd have an update out before now, but real life distracted me. Sorry about the fuzzy pic. Part Two up tomorrow!

Congratulations on finishing undergrad!

Excellent! Hope all goes well with graduation, and welcome to the real world

Eagerly awaiting the next chapter as well!

Congratulations on your successes! Two upcoming chapters, Oh Happy Day! Please take Care.

Congratulations!

Thanks so much, guys! Also, RE the comments towards the top of the page and instability, all I can say is that I hope you're all ready for Part 2.

 

[GangsterSynod]

Suggested Listening
When Hetch escaped Sacramento to join the aggrieved peasants at its gates, he solidified the bond or the cult between Emperor and peasantry that previous Emperors, most notably Elton, had attempted to develop since the Empire’s founding. In an apocalyptic, transformational time for the peasantry, the Emperor himself stood by them. The peasants who had demanded aid from the residents of marble houses on marble streets and who had been refused by the administration* rallied around Hetch. When he promised the peasants Imperial aid should they restore the office of the Emperor to true power and cast out the “unchill malefactors of evil” lurking in the capital, they followed.

Sacramento could almost certainly have withstood a siege on paper. Its walls could keep out practically any invader while food and water stockpiles could keep defenders in comfort for months. But three salient factors faced the defenders. One: a concerted siege of Imperial Sacramento was unprecedented. Two: the duly crowned Emperor of All the Californias was outside their gates demanding to be let in. Three: the defenders were split into two factions highly unused to working together on much of anything. Essentially, organizational paralysis, evident here as in so many other instances during this era, set in. Individual groups of defenders were left to their own devices and to those of their immediate commanding officers. While it seems that many took the initiative to perform standard defensive procedures such as firing projectiles at the peasants massed below, others were wracked by indecision. Most importantly, one group appeared to open one of Sacramento’s gates and allow the peasants inside. We do not know how Hetch’s personal retinue figured into this; it is plausible, probable even, that they were the openers of the gate, but the sources are lacking regarding their role during the 36-hour-long “siege” of Sacramento. Regardless of the specifics of the siege, Hetch entered the city at the head of an army of peasants, executing the old anti-Reubenists who had kept him a powerless prisoner in the Imperial Quarter. The Governatus position had been vacant since the dual polarization of the bureaucracy in the dying days of Elton II, but the Imam of Socal and the Protector of the North had both been in Sacramento, and their heads both fell to Elton’s blades. When the news spread, the aftereffects were almost as dramatic as the physical aftershocks of the Big One.

The news invigorated the anti-Californian movements in Baja and Cascadia. In Cascadia, these rebellions had never really died, but they returned to relevance under Nance Freeland, the “Evergreen Queen”, a charismatic leader who claimed to be the granddaughter of the last Cascadian queen. Nance cleverly exploited the chaos in California as a result of the earthquake and the events of Sacramento and the resulting power vacuum and confusion in Portland to reignite the cause in a truly organized, cohesive fashion. Calling members of the associated resistance movements and Cascadian clans to a meeting along the lines of the one convened in La Paz by the Bajan resistance of Presley’s day, a leadership structure and plan of attack was agreed. The Green Sash Rebellion had begun, and Californian rule in Cascadia was soon to crumble.

The news also sparked turmoil in Baja. La Paz, always the dominant power on the peninsula, had rebuilt itself somewhat in the years after Presley’s sack, and the dominant mercantile oligarchy of the city seized its opportunity, albeit somewhat more peacefully. The Imperial Prefect of Baja Sur was given a sinecure and a house in the city and still technically ruled the Prefecture in the name of the Emperor, but the real power was vested in the La Paz City Council, representing the upper crust of the city. On a flimsy pretext having to do with piracy, La Paz successfully warred with the severely weakened Tijuana-Diego, receiving the city’s surrender after a short, nearly bloodless siege and unifying the peninsula behind the Republic of La Paz. Baja was, then, technically still part of the Empire and the Imperial system, but they paid no homage, material or otherwise, to Sacramento and in fact seemed to fund and encourage pirates’ coastal raids on Socal and Goldengate. They also stayed out of the conflict between Hetch and the bureaucratic factions. Given Presley’s tremendous difficulty in attacking Baja and the other threats that lurked at every side, all the other Californian combatants virtually ignored the peninsula. Baja had effectively seceded from the Empire with almost no violence.

Changes 2568-2570. Arrows in second map indicate direction of most of the fighting among the warring powers.​

Hetch, meanwhile, moved through the Winelands and the upper Valley to the coast, recruiting displaced peasants along the way to the banner of the Golden Bear and the House Yudkow. Hetch promised financial security for the families of those who would march with him, with the money coming out of the Imperial coffers and of the cities of Socal and Cascadia that his victorious army would loot. He and his armies, large and enthusiastic but largely poorly-trained and equipped, marched south to Socal, looting and burning the scattered settlements in their way. Hetch’s aim was to annul the Peace of Los Angeles, to decouple the Imamate from the rulership of Socal and from Imperial influence. Had he aimed lower, been more willing to accept Imamite Socal as a powerful reality, he might have been able to exploit the administrative uncertainty of the Imamate and the military shambles left as a legacy of the earthquake to enforce some kind of negotiated peace, perhaps even without engaging in any decisive battles. But Hetch marched to Socal with a patchwork, improvised army made up of largely untrained peasants, with only a few hardened soldiers. Despite this, Hetch’s tactics actually proved relatively successful, largely producing battlefield stalemates but grand-strategic victories. Despite the ruined cities and devastated countryside, the ill-disciplined and fearful recruits that made up his army, Los Angeles was getting closer.

It was lucky for Imam Salih, the new Imam and claimant to the position of Governatus, that Hetch had had a child on campaign, and that Brad Barstow, one of the friends of Hetch’s who had escaped from the Imperial Quarter with him, dreamed not only of influence but of land. A deal of some kind—the particulars vary according to the account—was struck; Barstow was to kidnap Hetch’s son Chad in exchange for formal, fully hereditary noble title and fully hereditary land. This was a radical step. No title had in theory been hereditary since the founding of the Empire, and even practically, few titles were inherited, mostly at the scale of a few acres of farmland. This was a demand for feudalism, the first in the Empire, so far as can be ascertained. It would not by any means be the last.

Barstow’s plan was a simple one. Late at night, he would gain entrance to the Emperor’s tent complex by telling the guard that he had received urgent tactical news that Hetch needed to hear. Once inside the complex, while the Emperor and Empress slept, he would stealthily locate Chad, ride some ways out of the Imperial camp, and deliver him to agents of the Imamate, who would bring the infant to the Socalian camp. So far as we can tell, this all proceeded very smoothly, but as Barstow was handing Chad to the Socalian riders, Hetch or the Empress woke up and discovered their missing child. As Barstow rode back into camp nonchalantly, he was summoned before a Hetch utterly consumed with rage. He began to beat his old friend severely and drew his dagger back for the killing blow. Barstow, flailing and desperate, managed to turn the dagger back on Hetch, severing the tendons of his right leg and causing him to bleed out heavily. Barstow was quickly struck down for his crime and Hetch survived, but the ultimatum from the Socalian camp that followed “made the Emperor wish that he might have died in that tent and not had to face the decidedly unrighteous doom of Socal”. In exchange for Chad’s life and safety, Salih demanded that Hetch turn himself over to the Socalians, declare that his actions from the day of his escape were the actions of a man having a mental break, and “willingly atone through voluntary self-imprisonment for the crimes committed while and because the Most Totally Righteous Emperor of All the Californias was outside his mind”. Hetch accepted. He would live in a lushly-appointed prison in the basement of the Imperial Palace for the rest of his long life. Salih and his successors returned to ruling the much-changed state.

The earthquake had longer-term ramifications. It drove peasants from cities back to the countryside, and the mass of peasants who were promised aid and loot and who never received significant degrees of either only added to that number. As cities declined in population and the numbers of prosperous Californians declined accordingly, markets for the luxury goods of the Coffee Current dropped precipitously, and the vast sums of money that the Empire was making off of Brazilian trade dried up almost completely. As a result, though Baja and Cascadia had become essentially independent, administration on the scale of the Empire as it had been was nevertheless now far too expensive for the state to afford, and, to raise funds and cut costs, the Empire began to rapidly decentralize and feudalize itself. Prefectures and Subprefectures were being sold to the highest bidders, as were prestigious military commands. Exams still occurred, but they were essentially disregarded. The flawed meritocracy that the Empire had operated under for the previous centuries essentially no longer existed by 2580. The new hereditary Prefects, Subprefects, and the most radical rank of all, Kings, instituted in 2581, were in practice so distant and distinct from the central imperial bureaucracy that most of them were in practice autonomous, with some of them not sending much more than token homage each year.

Rough Map Illustrating Degrees of Imperial (Socalian) Control​

In addition to the changes in political structure came a change in social relations. The peasants who had remained mostly quiescent and isolated during the first few centuries of the Celestial Empire had become invested in the politics of Sacramento and in the Imperial cult thanks in large part to the great earthquake. The influx of the urban poor to the countryside ensured that land became more in demand and gave leverage to the new hereditary rulers in assigning and leasing that land. There were more peasants than ever before, more of them were poorer than ever before, and along with that poverty came desperation and rebellion. There were at least ten instances from 2570-2590 in which peasant leaders claiming to be the true Hetch, having escaped his jailers, organized significant risings. We know of thirty-nine general significant risings and/or agitations during this period. In short, homesteaders had become less isolated, more aware of their collective power and potential influence, angrier at their immediate rulers, and more enamored with Ceticism and the Emperor than ever during this period. Earthquakes leave aftershocks.

*It is unclear if this was a deliberate decision or if the total polarization and chaos among the Sacramentan bureaucracy led to a lack of decision, but certainly the peasants treated whatever message may or may not have been communicated from the city gates as a refusal of their demands.
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So here we are, only four days late.

The Big One is a suitably cataclysmic moment in Californian history, and every earthquake is followed by a series of aftershocks -- in this case as much metaphorical as literal, though apparently no less damaging if that cliffhanger foreshadows what I think it does. I get a feeling that the conflict between the court's two major factions and an Emperor who refuses to stay on his leash will have its own earth-shaking consequences, ones that may inflict more damage to the stability of the Empire than the earthquake ever could on its own.

I wonder, did that cliffhanger foreshadow what you thought it did? Obviously I'm playing pretty fast and loose with what I understand is AtE canon and have been since I started, but hopefully you weren't disappointed.

Between the massive earthquake, ominous noises about the emperor looking to rebuild his power and that map, I’d say California is in for a rough few years of it. To put it mildly. Will Hetch rise to the occasion? Will he come to ruin amie waves of his own making? Or are we in for a total breakdown in social relations everywhere and an ensuing chaotic free-for-all? Either way, time to keep eyes firmly fixed on the West Coast…

Hmm. Breakdown, yes, I think that would be fair. Though I'm not going into too many details, I have to imagine that things were about as apocalyptic and nasty as the Black Death made them in our world, and the implications for social and economic history would be just as profound as the ones after the real Black Plague (though pretty much reversed, since the depopulation of the Plague caused demand for labor to vastly outstrip supply, putting peasants in much better bargaining positions).

 

[GangsterSynod]

suggested listening
The story of the reign of Chad Yudkow is essentially a story of diminishing returns fought over all the harder precisely because they were diminishing, as the deepening feudalization and poverty of the Empire led to a vicious cycle in which the remaining scraps of wealth, influence, and prestige became ever more sought-after. Paradoxically, as the Emperor’s power decreased precipitously, the appearance of being in Imperial favor became increasingly important. Decreased expenses such as the lack of a truly Imperial military (except for the new Hawaiian Guard, charged with the personal protection/perpetual imprisonment of the Imperial person) contributed to an ever-more-opulent Imperial court and palace. While narratives of decadence and toughness, of imperial decay and barbarian vigor, are generally extremely flawed historically to the point of incoherence, in this particular instance it must be said that decay and decadence were related. The opulence of the Imperial court was a direct, rational consequence of the decay of not only practical Imperial power, but of control of any one person or group over the Empire.

During the reign of Chad, a quite remarkable and bewildering series of coincidences, betrayals, reprisals, and promises, the vast majority of which we do not and probably never will fully understand, ended the reign of the Imamate over Socal and of the office of the Governatus. By the rule of cui bono, some of the participants in the plot must have included William Carmine, the son of one of the new breed of hereditary Prefects and something of a charming court fixer; Will Steely; one of the most powerful and ruthless new class of Prefects, the La Paz City Council; and very likely the Emperor himself. Hetch had had multiple boys survive into adulthood. Chad had inherited the throne, but he seems to have been by all accounts an incredibly unlikable person; even the most ‘party-line’ chroniclers rarely deny this. He was emotionally unstable, capricious, sadistic, prone to sudden fits of rage that routinely ended in broken bones and occasionally in dead bodies, none too bright, and martially incompetent. While the Emperor had almost no real power and could be confined to the Palace for the foreseeable future, every day that Chad was Emperor caused disquiet in some elements of the Socalian bureaucracy that he might go “off-message”: say the wrong word to or, worse yet, physically attack a foreign envoy, thrusting an unprepared Empire into a war it could not possibly win. The peasantry were still restive, too, and a word from their beloved Emperor, spread through some loyal retainer, might have provoked them into a large rising against the bureaucracy and their local lords. Chad must have worried that his position was under threat given these other viable candidates, that he might suffer a mysterious, sudden illness and never recover. Two of his four brothers, Vladimir and Bradley, were likely too competent to be chosen by a hypothetical conspiracy, though their competence made them dangers in their own right. This left Thaddeus and Galahad, similar in their significant degree of religiosity but different in their attitudes to power. Galahad was very much an ascetic figure uncomfortable with authorities and hierarchies, whereas Thaddeus was by all accounts interested in the Throne if not actively scheming on his own right to eliminate Chad. In order for Chad’s position to be secure, they had to be removed from the equation. Carmine evidently played the role of the interlocutor, bringing all the parties of the plot together and keeping their arrangements secret. Steely, for his part, provided the military and financial backing. Their help, however, came with a price. That price was that the Imamate had to be dealt with along with the Emperor’s brothers, and the spoils, both political and economic, to be divvied up between them, with Carmine becoming the ruler of Socal and Steely becoming Governatus and claiming the lands in the Valley that the Imamate held. Surely Chad must have known that Carmine and Steely would, despite their protestations, attempt to keep just as tight a leash on his authority as the Imams had previous Emperors. Most likely his hope was that they would themselves vie for ultimate control over the Emperor once they ascended to power, leaving him free to attempt to do the same in his own right.

The three main drivers of the plot then set to action. Carmine sailed to La Paz and Steely returned to his lands in Motherlode, preparing his armies. We do not know what, precisely, Carmine negotiated in La Paz, but, given that a delegation traveled to Brazil in 2595 to negotiate resumption of the Coffee Current trade, set to flow through La Paz and Tijuana-Diego only, his negotiations appeared to have been successful. Certainly the mercenary armies that suddenly appeared on the Socal/Baja border in March 2594 seem to confirm this. Marching up into Socal as Steely’s armies marched down from the Valley, the forces of the Two Williams’ Plot met very little resistance from a confused, flanked Socalian military, which they quickly and efficiently routed at Vandenburg and Camp Pendleton. A short siege of Los Angeles followed, and on April 14th, 2595, with minimal fanfare, Imam Salih renounced the title of King of Socal and the position of the Governatus. He was allowed to retain his life and some of his lands, most notably Los Angeles and its immediate environs. The state of affairs that had existed for five centuries had ended with a whimper.

Once the news reached Sacramento, Chad acted with alacrity, executing three of his four brothers on the grounds that they had plotted with Salih to have him killed. Galahad had managed to narrowly escape the city and fled to Jefferson, where, according to legend, he became an unaccredited Teacher and lived a life of piety, austerity, and good deeds. He would become a popular symbol of Cetic devotion and of Jefferson as a whole.

The war in Socal was nothing compared to the war over the spoils of Socal, however, and Galahad’s fate would be different from that of many. Steely and Carmine did indeed clash over control of Socal and the imperial court, to bloody, prolonged, and inconclusive result, but more important was the behavior of one of the larger mercenary armies that La Paz had purchased, which, under the leadership of Esteban del Caballero, invaded Baja before La Paz could organize any kind of resistance, accomplishing in one blood and despair-filled year what took Presley twenty. del Caballero then organized a state visit to Sacramento, where he effectively forced the Emperor to recognize him as King of Baja and his former mercenary lieutenants as Prefects and Subprefects. This war effectively, if nothing else could be said to, marked the end of the First Empire and the beginning of the Fractured Empire period. If the rules had broken down to such an extent that a hitherto-unknown mercenary captain could seize, without justification, excuse, or payment to the Emperor, the territory of a (theoretically) loyal vassal, get away with it without reprisal, and indeed force the Emperor to honor the arrangement and treat him like an honored guest, then there really were no rules beyond a vague recognition that the office of the Emperor had to persist.

The bureaucracy was irrelevant and mostly destroyed in any case after the fall of the Imamate, and the will of the Emperor barely extended outside the walls of his palace (though this, given Chad’s personality, may be said to be a good thing) as feudal lords came not to seek permission but to receive retroactive justification for warfare against their neighbors and confirmation of their high status. Trade had not recovered from the Big One and homesteaders were poorer than they had been at any point over the last three centuries as wandering gangs of bandits and soldiers burned and looted their way through the countryside. It was a time of perceived near-apocalyptic decline. And the Imperial Palace was more lavishly-appointed than ever.

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No disappointments to speak of here

I do have to feel sorry for Hetch here -- a man of high ambitions foiled at every turn by both a lack of resources and (it must be admitted) his own naivety rather than any great flaw in his character, though one could certainly argue that impatience played a part as well. In any case, I'd certainly count his end as a tragic one, essentially locked away and powerless to stop an empire that is being ruled in his name from disintegrating into a patchwork of feuding warlords.

Yes, he had potential in an alternate timeline, and came extremely close to succeeding in this one. I would probably categorize naivete and impatience at Hetch's scale as character flaws in their own right, but he certainly didn't deserve what he got.

The reinstating of feudalism was, I admit, not something I saw coming. Dark days on the west coast (Altho cascadia looks quite groovy still)

They have certainly gotten dark, and will remain so for a while to come. Cascadia is quite groovy and will pretty much stay groovy until I chip away at it in a few centuries basically because I can. One theme that I'm trying to get at periodically in this AAR (and arguably mostly failing) is that California is no more a "good empire" than any other and that their success means death and destruction for quite a lot of other people who did nothing to deserve it (though arguably their failures seem to cause even more).

Fingers crossed!

Usually, the best way to start would be to figure out what directory the game is saving to, then slip the old save file in there -- mods and alternate install locations can sometimes make this tricky, so I can provide more detailed instructions via PM if you need them.

Good to know. I'll take another stab at it in a few days and if I can't get it to work, I'll PM you. Thanks so much!

 

[GangsterSynod]

Suggested listening
In order to consider Elton IV’s reign appropriately, we must first direct focus away from from his life, important as it was, and focus on another factor: the stoppage of the Coffee Current trade and on Brazil’s affairs. Brazil was the most powerful, developed polity in the New World during the 2000s, acting as the hegemon of South and Central America. It boasted bountiful natural resources and had preserved much Old World technology, historically giving them a leg up in conquering their neighbors. In addition to military and cultural domination of the Southern Hemisphere, its trade power stretched up the West Coast through roughly Vancouver and from the East Coast to roughly South Carolina, trading luxury clothing, wine, rum, tropical wood, dried fruit, beef, sugar, spices, and, most prominently, coffee. This tremendously lucrative trade, however, was at once a vital tool of Brazilian foreign policy and a cornerstone of the Empire of Brazil and was accordingly highly centrally controlled. The ways in which trade flowed were subject to the whims of the Emperor and the priorities of the government as independent traders who wished to retain the protection of the Empire and the right to purchase Brazilian goods were ordered to avoid or to travel to an ever-changing list of ports every year and trade was accordingly highly dynamic. Snubs were common for one reason or another, mostly involving retaining leverage against and soft political influence inside their trading partners. Brazilian economic policy also prioritized, unsurprisingly, reliability and predictability among their trading partners as much as they themselves acted unpredictably in retaining leverage (for more on this, see Goldbloom’s seminal Rationality in Postdiluvian Brazilian Trade Policy: A Study). During the years of the breakdown of the First Californian Empire, Brazil had alternately embargoed California entirely, focusing more trade toward the East Coast and Centroamerica, and made deals with Socal to keep the trade moving. In the wake of the Big One and Socal’s destruction as a political force, however, Emperor Pedro de Bragança had grown skeptical of Californians’ ability to pay for Brazilian goods and the stability of the political situation in California. Brazil, facing as it was significant provincial unrest, had no wish to involve itself in the constant wars of California, and its choice of approved mercantile ports for its goods would have been seen as choosing sides among the feuding lords. Despite the successful talks in terms of reopening trade through Baja made with the Two Williams in 2595, therefore, the Brazilian Emperor’s mind was effectively made up and West Coast maritime trade beyond Centroamerica was completely halted in 2628 after ten years of deliberate decline.

The collapse of the flow of Brazilian goods to California had further impoverished the country as a whole, but nowhere were finances more proportionately affected than the Californian Emperor’s personal treasury, which made the vast majority of its income from just two sources: tariffs on Brazilian imports and the eastward and northward-flowing wine export monopoly (one of the rare commodities that California and Brazil both exported; Californian wine mainly was sold overland to the east while Brazilian wine mainly traveled north over water, though there were exceptions to the rule). As legitimate wine export revenues fell due to war in the Winelands and illegal cultivation--sanctioned and encouraged by Prefects, Subprefects and Kings alike wherever it was feasible--increased, it became clear during the early reign of Elton IV that the Imperial purse was in serious danger of running completely dry.

Historians have attempted to pinpoint the moment in which the fortunes of the Yudkow Emperors turned for centuries, and perhaps few would point to precisely this moment, but it must be said that a significant factor in the Empire’s survival in fact as well as in name was the fact that in 2623, Elton IV ordered the construction of the Imperial Farm. Situated a mile and a half outside of the city of Sacramento proper, the Farm was designed to have two purposes: to grow staple foods (corn, potatoes, wheat, barley) for the City of Sacramento’s consumption and to grow exotic fruit and vegetables that could be preserved well at a guaranteed high quality and for the export market (olives, dates, grapes, cucumbers, chilies, plums) at a vast scale, with fewer opportunities for the profits to be siphoned off by unscrupulous bureaucrats. This last objective was more readily accomplished given the fact that Elton, using the justification that the Farm was a new program, successfully instituted a new organizational hierarchy for the operation of the Farm, superseding the old ranks and processes of the half-dead, completely disloyal Imperial bureaucracy which existed elsewhere and which still ran most of the affairs of the Imperial court and household. Traditionally, Elton IV is thought of as less of an emperor interested in or even able to wield practical power, as a great scholar and theologian trapped inside a position of power that he wanted very little part of, but the existence of and importance of the Farm to him (Farm-related costs made up an average of 64% of the Imperial Budget from 2623-2633) suggests a different picture, that of a reasonably canny political operator working with very little, aware of the limitations of his position, and thinking for the long term. Once the Farm began to produce produce in quantity, the relatively low prices and consistent quality of his export products made their way to the markets of Salt Lake and Boulder and from there as far as Saint Louis, boosting both the reputation of Californian exports and the finances of the state. It was the staple foods the Farm grew that were more important in the long run, however, and which more aptly demonstrate Elton’s political savvy and the role he played in the Empire’s second rise.

As the state crumbled, so too had the welfare reforms originally put in place by Reuben. By the time of Elton’s reign, they had passed out of living memory. Elton instituted a new one: the Grain Ration. Every month, silos in the Imperial Quarter were opened up, with the contents--drawn from the Farm--distributed to the poor of the city. This was perhaps the canniest move of all that Elton made. While previous Emperors had aroused varying degrees of sympathy from the peasantry, no Emperor had had a true, coherent, consistent political power base that they could draw on other than their personal militaries or a mob that could be stoked in times of extreme crisis. With the Grain Ration, Elton aimed to make Sacramento truly his--and his descendants’—city. In order to build his Farm and remake Sacramento however, Elton significantly and inadvertently weakened his position in the short term. Elton was raised to be a theologian and figurehead of the Cetic faith, his writings on faith were the first since Elton the Lawgiver’s to be widely distributed and acclaimed, and it is likely because of this that all else save his late-in-life insanity is generally ignored. This is a misguided assumption to make. In his way, he was as intelligent, forward-thinking, explicitly political, and self-interested as the Lawgiver or Elton II. He was, however, not quite as subtle as either. The Two Williams had clashed over the power and spoils of the Imperial system in Chad's day, with Steely's side eventually emerging victorious. Steely forced Chad to recognize him as both Governatus and King of the Valley, effectively controlling the land around the Sacramento region as well as some of the richest farmland of the Empire. Steely's grandson Pollock inherited both titles after the death of his mother and, being in a position to effectively command the entire bureaucracy and wishing to see the status quo continue, attempted to thwart Elton's plans through both legitimate (having his proxies in the bureaucracy raise objections to the plans and officially advising against it in his capacity as the Governatus, an action that carried much weight among the bureaucracy) and illegitimate means (sabotaging the construction of the Farm and attempting to assassinate the planners Elton had hired to design it). Elton could have attempted to ignore him and push it through nonetheless or to recruit other Prefects or Kings interested in seeing Pollock fall and engaging them to distract Pollock with war, but instead he simply hired assassins. The assassins, posing as highwaymen, ambushed his wagon train as it passed through Riverside and succeeded in killing him, but were captured in the process and revealed the identity of their patron. While this ensured the construction of the Farm, it turned the Steelys and Armours (Pollock was an Armour by birth and a Steely by descent) into fervent and implacable enemies of the Yudkows and made those few Californian lords who had been willing to consider even a weak Emperor a useful ally to distance themselves. Elton seemed to have realized the extent of his overreach, never again engaging in high politics beyond trying to rebuild his relationships with his nominal vassals and prevent factions rising against him. If he had other plans for his reign or the future of the Yudkow Emperors, they were permanently quashed by a horrific operation of some kind performed by his chief physician which left him afraid to leave his bedchamber or to conduct any kind of official business afterwards. Elton died at the age of 73, leaving his son and successor Reuben a city and a farm with which to rebuild a destroyed empire. In the end, it proved to be a surprisingly good start.

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Sorry for the huge delay yet again! After figuring out what was wrong with the save, I ended up having an extreme case of writer's block. I know I've said this before, but I'm not super happy with this update. Hopefully that's just a one-time thing; Elton IV was one of the more boring emperors I played.

Dark Winter has Engulfed California!

And spring is still fairly far away, though the worst of it is over.

California has truly entered its nadir. Its present state, riven by warlords feuding over the few scraps left from a collapsing empire with an impotent figurehead who barely controls what goes on within his own walls "presiding" over it all, must come off as a mockery of everything Elton the Lawgiver hoped to build.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Happy 1st BirthDay on the 16th!

I was so very naively optimistic in July 2020 that I'd get to gameplay in August. I was right, to be fair, just 12 months off.

Seeing "Helier Skelter" as the recommended listening is always going to elicit fairly 'out there' suggestions as to what is about to go down. And from the looks of things, things have been very out there indeed… The extent to which the state apparatus has withered away is extraordinary. A quick consultation with the fist page reminds me that our next emperor is nicknamed 'the Bewitched' (unless that timeline is out of date – I can't remember…). That doesn't inspire much confidence about things changing any time soon…

Well, he wasn't bewitched for very long--only about a year and a half before his death. He picked up some very bad cancer treatment that inverted most of his traits and gave him a shiny new nickname. But it's a significant drop for an Emperor to be waging a years-long political battle over a(n admittedly very large) farm when two centuries ago his ancestors were ordering huge building projects by the dozen and leading massive field armies, to be sure.

>TFW the save lives on

Thank you for the high praise. I'm not entirely sure this AAR deserves the full busting-out of the Handel, but it's much appreciated.