The Bells Toll - A Rio Fallout AAR

[Teivel]

Hey team.

It's been a few years since I was last seen on these forums. A mixture of lost saves and broken image links after years working on my last project stopped me for a bit, but now I'm feeling like it may be worth getting started again, if there is interest.

For those that don't know me: I'm an old writer from the HOI2/DH days. I like to alternate between narrative and history book chapters so if you don't like one style, feel free to just follow the other.

For those that don't know the mod: this is the excellent Old World Blues mod which converts HOI4 to cover the fallout postwar universe. The most recent updated added Mexico, and so this story will focus on a minor but promising player in the mod, the Republic of the Rio Grande.

Comments welcome as I've always tried to take suggestions onboard.

Chapter 1: The Great War​

Piedras Negras: 23/10/2077 09:52 Eastern (08:52 local)

Klaxons continued to whir as Colonel Griffin strode across the concrete surface of the base, the stale air of the bunker replaced by the cool wash of early morning air. It didn't sting of fallout yet, but that was only a matter of time.

"How many confirmed impacts, and when?" he demanded of his staff as they kept up with a collection of clipboards and the occasional PiP Boy unit.

"Triple digits. IONDS picked up confirmed launches at 09:13 Eastern. Armageddon station relayed word of New York going dark ten minutes ago, Washington went dark at 09:47, so just over five minutes ago. I'm getting new confirmations every minute at this point."

"Full countervalue exchange..." The Colonel noted it as much to the air as to his subordinates.

"Yes sir, but CONUS targets only so far. We might be in the clear, Armageddon hasn't reported any birds in the air for us."

Colonel Griffin shook his head. The world was ending and the poor sods just didn't want to accept it.

"We always assumed that CONUS would take the brunt of the first wave. But there is no way the commies don't have air dropped or stand off munitions slated for us, whether Armageddon opens their silos or not. We have to assume, we're next."

The men around him were all visibly shaken as he said it, even through the drill and discipline. No one had expected this. Even at the wars worst, no one assumed the damn commies would be goddamn bloody minded as to launch a full nuclear assault.

Rio wasn't anchorage. Rio was meant to be safe. Hungry perhaps, and resource starved. But safe...

​

"Yes sir" one of his subordinates, Moreau, offered. "which means we have a narrow window to get our equipment transited from the above ground and patrol bases and stowed in the bunkers. I can't do that without authorisation to use force to clear the civilians who have started to blockade the gate."

Colonel Griffin stared at the gate a good fifty meters distant where a the throng of desperate humanity were shaking the concrete barricades or falling to their feet, begging the hulking sentry bots and line of armed guards to let them through. Some had sprinted here when the first warning sirens started to sound from the base housing. Citizens from the city itself followed soon after, and with the news now filtering out that this was no drill, cars and vans were pulling up by the minute.

They were a sorry looking lot. Some of them were the family of them men operating his cargo loaders or maintaining his comms systems.

"Not much of a blockade Captain."

"Sir I understand that, but our orders are clear. We are to preserve as many valuable US and RRG resources as possible and then secure until Armageddon signals an all clear. I can't do that if the local population are cutting of egress."

The Colonel wasn't really listening. He was running the numbers in his head. Rio was not a prestige posting, especially not Piedras Negras. It was essentially garrison duty, playing janitor for a bunch of bunkers and cop during the occasional riot that the local forces couldn't handle.

Armageddon Station was staffed with Generals, its role was strategic, the hub of US control in Mexico and South America. But Piedras Negras, the RRG, was a nothing job. How else would a Colonel end up with the command?

Luckily for the people of Rio, Griffin had been a damned good janitor. He flipped over a blank page on a clipboard and started scribbling.

"Sir?" queried Captain Moreau again.

Griffin ran his hand over the paper to make sure the carbon copies had completed, then tore one off. "Captain, get that scanned and uploaded into the net. I need that schedule and those instructions relayed to every one of our facilities now."

Moreau looked at the paper in confusion, but took off at a run regardless, back into the bowels of the base.

"Lieutenant Winters, get to the gate, I want the crowd inventoried and admitted until we hit our carry limit. If we dial the O2 and stretch the rations, what we have on hand should carry us through the immediate danger zone. Priority is on fit and healthy. Children are fine, lower caloric and space requirements, but the elderly are out."

Most of Griffin's officers were distinctly second line. The fit and talented got sent to China or up North. RRG was strictly wounded and third rate only. Winters was the former, an anchorage vet with more prosthetic than flesh down his right hand side. He got it, and made best speed for the gate.

Lieutenant Alvarez was the second type of RRG stationed officer, he looked at his commanding officer blankly. "Sir, what are we doing?"

Colonel Griffin was already jogging back into the maw of the bunker as he responded. "We're going to connect to Tlaloc and pull as much as we can off the net before it goes dark. Then we're going to ping Armageddon station every minute until they pick up a bird on its way towards us. When they do, we seal up and wait."

"But the people sir, if we let them in, where will we fit the stuff we're meant to fit?"

Alvarez was talking about the long ass list of US and RRG assets that they had maintained as part of their tasks as glorified quartermasters. Communications equipment, radar arrays, combat robots and, most demanding, space wise, several wings of mobile Transport-Erector-Launcher units for third wave counter-strikes against the commies.

The way command saw it, the RRG was always going to be a low priority target for commie nukes, so what better place to stash a bunch of oversized doomsday weapons that could roll out weeks or even months after the primary exchange and really put the boot in.

Somehow, with Washington gone and Armageddon seemingly paralysed with indecision, that seemed like an unlikely scenario.

"My orders are, in the event of a general nuclear exchange, to preserve as many valuable US and RRG resources as possible."

'Yes sir, which is why I mentioned the miss.."

Griffin through up a quick salute to a sentry who triggered a blast door and admitted him into the dull green of the bunker's comms-centre. He made his way towards the sealed office which contained the up-link terminals connecting Piedras Negras with Tlaloc and Armageddon station.

"As far as I'm concerned Lieutenant, the most valuable resources in the whole of the RRG are banging on our doors, and on the gates of every other bunker in this country at this very moment."

Hard hands danced across the terminal as the Colonel coaxed open a connection with chico net and Tlaloc.

"I have about forty minutes to save as many of them as I can, so help me, or get out of my way."

​

 

[Teivel]

Chapter 2: Origins (where I try and crunch 200 years of background into one chapter)

From: "The world since the great war"

Records of the great war are, spotty to say the least. Even for those of us who were there at the time, centuries of lost memories in the chaos of the immediate aftermath makes it hard to piece together everything that was. Even harder to see how it changed everything that came after.

But that doesn't mean it's not worth me trying.

The conventional wisdom is that the world that was ended in the morning of October 23rd. In the twilight hours of old civilisation, men and nations across the world seemed to prove that even as technology changes, man, and war, doesn't.

Almost every nation on the planet, those that were left anyway, seem to have given their dying minutes over to the task of getting as many missiles and bombers in the air as possible. The nations of the world committed to the task of mutual destruction with abandon, and in nuclear fire, those nations died.

In what had been Northern Mexico however, history found at least one exception to this deadly play.

The Republic of the Rio Grande was an artificial construct of occupation, or so the records left to us suggest. The United States occupied Mexico in 2051, more than two decades before the great war. The people of the area were, and still are, a proud sort however, and resistance to occupation was swift.

To help mitigate these issues, the US recognised the Republic of the Rio Grande as a nominally independent state, citing the capital in what we now call Gloria. They forged a political system and laid down extensive military infrastructure to support the large american forces policing Mexico's refinery cities to the South. Recognising the area as a mostly stable backwater, the US military piled the area high with reserve supplies and equipment, and chose it as the site for Armageddon station, the command and control hub for US forces in Northern Mexico.

​

When the TLALOC AI was stood up in the far south, the RRG was given some connection lines to Chico Net, but left outside the operating zone of the AI, further cementing the area's nominal independence.

By the brutal standards of the pre-war world, it could almost be called restrained treatment. A statement of trust in the (admittedly handpicked) administration.

Thankfully for the people of the RRG, that trust was not repayed when the great war came.

The warheads targeted towards the RRG were second wave weapons, the whole zone seemingly being considered a lower priority target than America itself. That gave the civilians and military forces of the RRG time that their comrades up North never got.

Armageddon station had orders to respond in this sort of scenario, the station was meant to open its attached silos and let its missile wings fly. It was then meant to bunker down, and prepare to carry on the war.

Instead, the command staff in Armageddon set the systems there to automatically send out updated missile warnings, left the station, sealed it, and fled to find their families while time was left to get them to safety.

Without direct orders from above, defacto command fell to the commanding officer in Gloria, Colonel Griffin. His standing orders called for him to cache as much hardware as he could, then bunker down in the many storage bunkers across the RRG so that he could later launch a third wave strike against Communist targets.

Instead, the Colonel broke ranks and ordered his men to marshal as much of the civilian population as possible into the bunkers, leaving most of his hardware in the open to endure the atomic rain in the open.

They weren't vaults, but the bunkers in Gloria were stocked with food and support supplies intended to support US occupation forces, and they could accommodate masses in a pinch. The great war certainty seemed to qualify as one.

Griffin's forces ranged out until the last possible moment. In one famous incident, they saved a group of deserting Mexican soldiers that had landed their transport in Gloria, seeking shelter. According to legend, it was this selfless act that helped overcome the latent animosity between the Mexican and RRG citizens and the US military in the cramped bunker conditions.

As the fireballs finally rose over the RRG, the bunkers sealed, and Colonel Griffin announced to the sheltering masses that, in the absence of any word from any civilian or military authority, he was declaring martial law until the safety of the survivors could be assured.

The immediate aftermath of the great war was harsh and punishing.

The RRG bunkers were stocked well, but they were cramped and made for hard living. Griffin cut rations and cut oxygen levels, meaning most of the survivors spent the first weeks after the blasts in a permanent state of exhaustion and fatigue. Only military personnel were issued full rations.

They had to be fit after all, they still had a mission.

Supplies in the bunkers were extensive, but not infinite. Scavenging was going to be vital if the various bunker complexes were to survive.

The first teams went up less than a week after the bombs fell. Short lived isotopes had mostly burned out at that point, so teams in protective gear and robots were sent out, dosed to the gills on Rad-X and Rad-Away. They did a brief inventory of the surrounding area, and brought back surviving critical equipment, in limited quantities at least.

Then the black rain started to fall.

​

The RRG took only relatively few nuclear hits. Most cities were hit at least once, but nothing like the absolute barrage of warheads that hit each of of America's great cities. Levels of atomic fallout were not particularly high, and most buildings were damaged, but relatively few were flattened entirely.

But the landscape was utterly hostile to human life. The titanic quantities of soot and ash blown into the atmosphere covered the sky, and when rain fell, it carried with it a crushingly toxic mix of radioactive substances and toxins. It was only now, a week after the great war, that Rio's land truly began to die. Animal and plant life died off en masse, with only the most fortunate or mutated of creatures enduring the toxic rain and world without sun. Most of the contaminants were tasteless, and, lacking geiger counters, fauna were not well suited to this new hellscape that man had created.

The black rain marked the beginning of some of the hardest years mankind has ever know.

The bunkers were not stocked for extended habitation. Months they could handle, years....not so much.

Tensions ran high as Colonel Griffin turned his command over to point security and scavenging operations, and civilians found themselves conscripted into support roles. In the early days of the the post-war RRG, if you wanted to eat, you worked.

And work meant pushing out into the ruins of old Rio, scavenging supplies, and fending off the first waves of mutated wildlife that had begun to emerge in the post war era. Long before the first control vaults in North America opened, the RRG citizenry were pushing out into the wasteland.

Casualties were inevitable, and attrition among the robotic units, inevitably deployed in the harshest, most dangerous situations, was immense. Sixteen hour shifts were a norm for the able bodied, and the sick were mostly expected to sleep through the day, sometimes sedated, to keep their caloric requirements down.

Some bunkers fell entirely, in others disgruntled civilians stole away in the middle of the night, taking with them what weapons and supplies they could carry, unwilling to labor under the Colonel's rule any longer. These deserters joined some of those that had somehow survived above ground, and bolstered the other great threat of the wasteland...the raiders. Living large on scavenged supplies and looted chem stocks, they would be the bane of rio for years to come.

The Colonel meanwhile, pushed on relentlessly with his efforts.

While dissent was crushed, the survivors cleared out the husks of their host cities, block by block. Behind the armed troops came the last few robots and impressed citizens, decontaminating areas where necessary. Local wildlife capable of ingesting post war plant life were identified, including the famous brahmin, and domestication and breeding followed as a matter of urgency. Pre war food stocks were augmented with meat from the paltry but growing animal husbandry effort.

​

And while the Rio and most other sitting water sources remained polluted to varying extents, the first clean rains and deep bore wells provided at least a basic water supply.

Said like this, it sounds like a simple thing. But the reality of it is that it took decades. Thirty years of grinding effort burned out many survivors, and childbirth rates needed frequent prompting to make up for the attrition.

In the end, the attrition even captured the man at the head of it all. Colonel Griffin himself.

Too many expeditions into high rad areas. Too many nights without rest. Too many years of the strain that comes from holding a failing candle in ones hand against the wind.

In the end, the Colonel's diagnosis left the RRG with a sense of dread. But even as cancer started to consume him, the Colonel embarked on one last effort.

Through years of effort, Gloria, and swathes of the central RRG had been reclaimed. Scavenging and brahmin raising was at least keeping the people from starving, and the raiders and fauna were now mostly being held at bay.

The population was still miniscule by pre-war standards, but large compared to most. Neighbors had been contacted and identified, ranging from the Texans tot he North East to Tlaloc's robot agents in the South.

Things were stable.

And so, with the stroke of a pen, more than three decades after he ordered the bunker doors closed, Colonel Griffin formally rescinded the state of emergency and martial law. Elections were formally called, and the RRG prepared for a new civilian cabinet.

Even now, almost a hundred years later, RRG citizens tend to take pride in the fact that theirs is essential still a pre-war state. A survivor of the great war.

Julietta Torres would go on to win that first presidential election, running on a platform of land reclamation and security, buying the RRG the space it needed to support a growing population.

Over the next few years, bands of militia and what was loosely called the RRG's army, pushed the nominal boundaries of the RRG out with a mixture of salvaged pre-war and scratch built armaments. With great effort, they secured Armageddon Station (though they could not enter the sealed facility) and pushed bandits out of the city of Monclava. Reaching the boundaries beyond which geography or resistance demanded caution, the RRG settled into its new borders, and began the painful process of establishing law, order, and some kind of civilisation.

Of course, there were false starts. The great winter of 2130 reset much of the progress the RRG had made. Larger than average raider incursions could be costly, and on more than one occasion accidental hostilities with the robotic guardians of the South lead to checks on the ambitions of the RRG government.

But progress was made again, and in Rio's steel heart, the metal foundry was restarted making the RRG one of the few places producing decent quantities of new steel in post war America. By 2200, the losses of the great winter had been more than made good, and scavenging and workshop work were enough to support robust population growth again.

For the most part, life in Rio was still extremely primitive. Technological know-how had largely been lost to the chaos and attrition of the great war era and the RRG was still finding its feet. Some knowledge existed in small pockets. Around the foundries and largest towns for example, but most of the population were still ranch hands, scrabble farmers, or scavengers, scattered across the Republic.

Diplomacy became the guarding force for the RRG. A cordial relationship with the Texan brotherhood of steel was carefully maintained, and the robot intelligence to the South, Tlaloc, did eventually morph into a benevolent neighbor, once it was given evidence enough to recognise that the RRG continued to exist as the continuation of a pre-war state.

Security lapsed somewhat as a priority. The old military tradition carefully held together by Colonel Griffin and the first presidents faded from disuse.

So it was that when the Legion came in 2063, there was little to stop them.

The Legion sent several thousand hardened troops under an ambitious legate, Paullus for what was expected to be a quick, clean campaign.

At first, that was exactly how the war played out. When the first Legionaries landed in the Republic, the RRG was completely ignorant to the invasion. By the time it was finally identified, the Republic's forces were still mostly stood down or horrendously out of position for the defence of Gloria.

But fortune plays its role in war, and the Legion had the misfortune to time its invasion during the first year of the presidency of Leonardo Mora. Mora was a military man through and throne, a direct descendant of one of the Mexican soldiers saved in the bunkers during the great war.

In response to the invasion, Mora moved like a tempest. He kicked down the doors of cartel bosses to demand their enforcers turn up for militia duty, called in favors from Brotherhood of steel, and even managed to enlist aid from one of the AI fragments dominating Southern Mexico, the strange being that thought itself the reincarnation of an old world Mexican General. With the simple argument that defeat meant execution or enslavement for all, Mora brought together a scratch coalition force and, in a daring night attack, shattered the legion and put its commander to flight.

It was a battle that defined the republic's fate, and resulting in the retreat of legion ambitions from the region. The fact that the Pecos and Baudilo managed to reassert full independence owes much to the stunning reverse of the legion at the hands of Rio's "Da Vinci of War."

Victory was not kind to Mora's political fate however. Flush with confidence, Mora began preaching about the need for Rio to be more than just Rio. He spoke of the need of a great war to recreate something few even really remembered, the idea of "Mexico." He stretched the budget purchasing arms from the Texan arms workshops of the TAA, and tired the populations with his suggestions of a draft and regular military service for all able bodied citizens.

When the time came for an election, Mora ran heavily on his victory over the legion. He came unstuck when faced with a new candidate however, Guerra. A man reputed to bleed red, white, and black, Guerra ran on a platform that called for Rio to come first, not Mexico. He tapped into the pride most RRG citizens felt in their country, and the lack of connection the old world states and promised jobs, development, and a strong stance against the legion....and no unnecessary wars.

Mora, the man who had saved Rio, was voted out of office, and was confined to a minority role in the Rio political scene.

By 2075, Dante Guerra was in his second term. He had succeeded in stabilising the RRG economy, and established the RRG as one of the most influential postwar states, certainly stronger than most of its neighbours and protected by a web of treaties.

Not all was well however. Guerra is deeply hindered politically by the growing influence of the Texas Arms Association, the group of Texan families across the river that control the vast majority of Rio's arms production, and who are increasingly deploying their great wealth to influence politics in the same way that the Brahmin Barons and Gun Runners did in the distant NCR.

His goal was to break their political power, but to do so, would require winning the support, both of Mora, who was still calling for expansionist wars, and a new political force calling for technological modernisation. It was an ambitious goal, and only time would show whether Guerra's political instincts would triumph once more.

​

 

[stnylan]

Some good backstory here

 

[Teivel]

Chapter 3: Agendas

Gloria: 02/01/2276
Mariano ran a hand along his sweat slicked brow before knocking firmly on the wood framed door before him. His fine fine synthetic pre-war suit had given him a sense of confidence and gravitas when he first donned it in the morning and perfectly suited to the mild February afternoons, but in this wing of the offices, the mercury ran higher and so did his stress levels.

"IDENTIFY YOURSELF"

The middle aged, balding man turned to see an olive clad protectron unit advancing on him from a charge pod recessed into an alcove in the old timber and brick wall. The thing had been completely silent until he knocked, now its head unit glowed red in query.

"Deputy Mariano Robles, Congreso de la República del Río Grande. I come on behalf of his excellency the president."

The machine's head unit killed the glow for a moment and then flashed brightly or a moment as an imaging unit captured his likeness.

Robles didn't like robots, and outside this wing of Congress, he barely saw any.

"PROCEED, DEPUTY ROSADO WILL SEE YOU"

A heavy metallic clack marked the concealed security lock and frame in the office retracting, and the wooden frame now swung slack on its hinges.

Still nervous, Mariano pointed at the door, questioningly, eyes locked on the protectron's fists. Did they have embedded lasers? How was he to know?

"He won't kill you Robles, come in." The voice was distant but recognisable and, temporarily assured his safety, he stepped into the room.

The heat hit him first, then the dull hum of a dozen terminals and cogitation stacks arrayed along the walls and both hard metal desks. The room seemed less like a congressional office and more like the cross between a computer lab and a workshop, with mechanical devices and carcasses of all kinds propped against walls or sat, ready for work. At the far end of the crowded, over-hot space, Mariano saw his objective.

"What does the President want Marino?"

Valentina Rosado did not look the part of a Rio Deputy. She had barely turned thirty when she swept onto the Rio political scene, a decade or two shy of almost every other senior representative. Her black hair ran below the shoulder and her harsh, angular eyebrows accentuated a piercing gaze. As Robles sweated, she breathed easily, coolant running through subtly laced lines embedded in what was closer to a brotherhood scribe uniform than a formal suit or any garb of office. Her gloved hands were buried in the inside the metal shell of an old eyebot, electronic detritus set down around her in orderly rows.

"The President wishes to bring a vote to the floor on his campaign donation reform. Given the importance, he wishes for La Iniciativa to cast their votes with his deputies, to show a uniform front to the TAA."

The Texans. It was always the Texans or the Legion with Guerra.

"Surely the President is aware that the Texans are as much a part of the Republic as any citizen of Gloria or Rancho Prospero?" Rosado offered, knowing it would prompt Robles to offer the rest of his hand.

"The Texas Arms Association commands the bulk of our military industry and has become an insufferable burden on democracy. Even the President is not sure how long he can hold his party together in the face of their bribes and corruption. A unified front now is the only option if we are to avoid falling into permanent malaise."

All that was true of course, but no reason to just hand over the prize for nothing.

"A unified front? Does that mean Mora is on side?"

Leonardo Mora, the Da Vinci of war some called him, after a fabled pre-war figure. He was a fine commander, an inspiring leader, and frightfully single minded.

"Mora has come to terms with the President and has agreed to vote accordingly."

"Then Guerra will support his war with the Northern Rabble then? Or has he fully bought into Leonardo's dream of restoring long vanquished pre-war states?"

Robles shuffled uncomfortably. For years, Guerra's Constitucionalistos hadn't needed cooperation from other deputies. But growing discontent and the influence of the moneyed Texans had changed things. The majority were still uncomfortable with the concessions they were now forced to give.

"President Guerra has always placed the security of the Republic above all..."

"So he has agreed to support Mora's war"

"He is..."

"Relax Mariano, that wasn't a question."

She let him float in the silence for a moment. "The President knows my priorities."

"The President is of the view that restoring the bureau could distract from meeting our immediate military needs."

Rosado closed the casing of the eye-bot and moved to a terminal, connected to the dead bot by a thick data linkage. "The fact the reclamation bureau has been defunct for the better part of three lifetimes is precisely the reason we're barely able to meet our needs. Two hundred years, and still we're surrounded by pre-war knowledge, that we've barely touched on. We camp in the huts and shacks, crafting rifles by hand while beneath us..."

She tapped a gloved finger on the keyboard, executing the sequence. With a hum, the spherical robot rose from the ground and begun scanning its surroundings.

"...while beneath and around us are records and artifacts of a society that remembered what progress was."

Content with the diagnostic results feeding to her monitor, Rosado at last turned to address her fellow deputy directly.

"The Bureau is non negotiable and if Guerra wasn't willing to wear it then he wouldn't have sent you here. Tell the President that he'll have the Initiatives votes for his reforms, but I lead the RRB, and I get a chance to get this country moving again."

From the Diary of Valentina Rosado
Guerra is a talented politician, Mora a talented general, but both strike me as frighteningly short sighted.

For Guerra, every problem that Rio faces can be reduced to one of two problems. The Legion, or the Texans, the latter mainly being an issue because they trade guns to the legion.

Make no mistake, I don't underestimate the legion's power, but you'll forgive me for feeling that a legion of idiots in football pads with machetes are not the most pressing problem we face.

For Mora though, war is always the answer, and he has found a way to turn Guerra's fear of the TAA and legion into a cause to take Rio into its first war in years.

In some ways, I understand the argument:

• Guerra wants the power of the TAA broken;
• The TAA holds power because they have the bulk of our arms and all of our robotic manufacturing capability; and
• if we had alternative arms suppliers, the TAA would be less influential.

And so Mora has convinced Guerra to mobilise the people and army for an expedition against the lawless lands of Las Granjas to our North.

Dissorganised though they are, the intelligence from our traders there is consistent, they have a significant number of local workshops and raw material extraction operations. Small things mostly, nothing like the steel heart mill or the robot salvage shops of Texas, but more than our emaciated arms industry could manage.

Mora is confident he can win, regardless of the defensive barrier the river creates.

He may well be right. And when the vote came to the floor, I was happy to have my deputies abstain on the motion.

Why not vote for? Because Guerra insists on carrying on his Vandetta against the TAA just as Mora prepares for war. Surely we must assume the Texans will understand that if we are going to be vulnerable, it will be during a war they must now know we will be entering. Why not wait to confront the TAA until after the war is done?

Because Guerra waits for nothing.

If the war is victorious, voting for it will accomplish nothing, it will be Mora's war, Mora's victory.

If the war leads us to ruin, then voting for it will allow Mora and Guerra to shift the blame. I want no part in that kind of exercise.

Instead, I now busy myself with important things.

Rebuilding Rio.

Two hundred years, and yet this whole nation is frightfully inert, with even basic knowledge being poorly understood or disseminated.

But with Guerra agreeing to re-establish the RRB and place it under my control, in exchange for support with his TAA Vendetta, I have begun changing that as rapidly as possible.

In the space of a few short months, we have undertaken programs to bring a wide variety of skills to every population centre in the RRG. Seed selection practices, long forgotten, are being reintroduced, construction techniques for primitive structures that provide alternatives where pre-war structures are unsafe, toolmaking techniques, work management systems...all of this and more. And I think we are already making a difference.

More practically, I've turned the RRB budget towards economic goals. Mora is determined to take workshops. I build them.

Guerra wants a rifle for every man, and I am on track to deliver. Gloria now produces thrice as many rifles as when I began, and i'm not finished yet.

If Guerra had been more patient, perhaps he would have realised that the power of the Texan money could have been beaten simply by the application of even more money, invested to create our own arms industry.

Instead, he's determined to do it his way, and I am unsure what the results will be. ​

 

[stnylan]

I do like the little sign of inflation with the pricing of the news

How much does the mod overhaul the Tech tree?

 

[Crimson Lionheart]

Will the Rio Grande experience some of the Old World Blues? Or can it bring some vital New World Hope to the region

Either way, subbed!