The Hohenzollern Chronicles 5: Reborn Phoenix - The Roman Story in New World Order

[zenphoenix]

One thing to fix:

and the Zhōngzǔ Emperor (Zaiji)

Since this is a posthumous name and not an era name, it would be “Emperor Zhongzu.”

 

[CaptainAlvious]

Miscellaneous Hearts of Iron 4 Mods

Red World​

In the aftermath of the Third Weltkrieg and the global Equalist victory, the UVR (United Volost Republics) emerged as the dominant power across Eurasia—but its reach has sown the seeds of fragmentation.

Following the Reich’s collapse, the UVR annexed many more Roman provinces outright, integrating them as a series of new constituent republics, carefully engineered to dilute any lingering Roman national identity. Known collectively in party parlance as the "New Western Territories", these regions were not unified into a single administrative unit. Instead, they were splintered into smaller, ethnolinguistically framed constituent volosts to prevent any single republic from rivaling Kyiv and the original volosts in power.

Many of the Roman military zones bordering the old Iron Curtain were reorganized as the війна́ краї́на (vijná krajína, or "Military Frontier")—a belt of heavily militarized, semi-autonomous volosts where dissent is met with immediate force. Locals, referred to colloquially as Ostleren, are viewed with a mixture of suspicion and paternalism by central planners: necessary laborers and soldiers, but inherently ideologically suspect. Deromanization campaigns have erased Latin and Romaike scripts, renamed cities, and dismantled imperial monuments, replacing them with Equalist iconography and "worker-hero" statues.

As the Eimerican and Southeast Asian Paulluist regimes felt the pressure of the specter of Equalism in their respective regions, their military operations in Western Europe managed to carve out new western European Paulluist republics from the corpse of the Reich. While Kyiv tolerated these Paulluist enclaves as a buffer against Roman loyalist remnants, Penglai-funded reactionaries, and the UPRH upstarts, relations between the blocs remained uneasy. The European Paulluist republics, though nominally aligned with the UVR in opposition to the Reich and Roman exiles, effectively followed their own path—emphasizing futurism, nationalism, and militant internationalism against the great powers, which ultimately became a general opposition to the UVR as the last great power.

In Africa, a number of smaller Equalist-aligned states emerged. Less tied to the ideological legacy of Eurasian Equalism, they maintain friendlier relations with the UVR for now. These states are more pragmatic, seeing in Equalism an opportunity for modernization and autonomy without fully buying in to the ideology, at least at first. To maintain control over the vast Indian subcontinent, the UVR dissolved India into smaller and ethno-linguistically aligned states. These republics are more manageable but constantly in flux, rife with nationalist tension and local insurgencies. Meanwhile, Central Asia and much of Persia has been fully annexed into the UVR as an internal republic, breeding deep resentment and fueling frequent revolts across the steppes, deserts, and mountains.

Further east, Siberia, Mongolia, Andong/Nurgan, the Tarim Basin, and Tibet have each been reconstituted as independent socialist states. Though ideologically aligned, they remain distant and fractious, their borders redrawn to theoretically reflect so-called liberated nations, but in practice, they remain strategic buffer states under UVR supervision. In Southeast Asia, borders have been changed away from colonial legacies, but the result still bears the scars of war and external intervention. The Confederation of Southeast Asia, based in the former regions of Lan Na, northern Siam, and Bamapran, has overwhelmed and brought all of the lands between Bengal, the Chinese border, and the Malay Peninsula under its control with help from the UVR and Indian Equalists. However, many member states like Vietnam, treated the harshest due to its former role as a colonial and imperial overlord, wait for the first chance to break free, while Paulluism remains entrenched in Qiandao and Nusantara.

Penglai—distant, coastal, and insulated by geography—avoided Equalist takeover during the conflict and took in many fleeing the fall of China. However, it emerges from the war politically fractured and strategically sidelined, its days of regional relevance seemingly behind it. The Romans, defeated and displaced, have retreated to the Pacific with remnants of their navy, establishing a government-in-exile across scattered island bases. Cut off and bitter, the two of them bide their time, waiting for the world to break. The two jointly fund anti-Equalist insurgencies in China, Vietnam, and beyond, drawing them into a temporary and uneasy cooperation with both the UPRH and the Paulluists, who view any weakening of the UVR as strategic gain—even if their partners were ideologically suspect.

In the Eimericas, the United People’s Republics of Hahnunah (UPRH) quickly consolidated its power, annexing Fusang and Kanata. This turned the UPRH into a truly post-national socialist superstate. Vast and ascendant, it no longer sees any reason to continue obeying the UVR. As the UPRH grew in strength and confidence, it began to drift ideologically and strategically from the UVR. Viewing the Eurasian superpower as outdated and decaying—particularly due to Valentin’s and Dmitry’s deteriorating leadership and the constant rebellions wracking Europe and Asia—the UPRH has formed its own doctrine and increasingly positions itself as the true vanguard of global socialism. Mexico, having stayed neutral during the conflict, remains intact—although it walks a narrow diplomatic tightrope between the UPRH behmonth to the north and its fellow southern Paulluists who feel betrayed by Mexico’s choice to stay out of the war.

The fragile global order reached a turning point in 2009 with the death of Valentin, triggering a vicious power struggle in the UVR. Dmitry, long viewed as a bloodthirsty hardliner, emerged victorious. Under his rule, repression deepened, and tensions surged across Eurasia. This instability gave new openings to both the UPRH and the Penglai-Roman alliance, who began exploiting Eurasia’s weaknesses to extend their own influence. The Cold Peace that followed the Third Weltkrieg now teeters on the edge—between global socialist unity and a new era of ideological, geopolitical, and perhaps nuclear conflict.

Red Flood​

In 1888, when the guns fell silent in the New World, the Meskwaki Empire won a pyrrhic victory over the Kingdom of Kanata and the Reich in the The Second Great Eimerican War. Stability still eluded the Meskwaki, however, as the 1890 assassination of Emperor Wisaka showed. The Imperial Clan Council took advantage of the weakened Opeatako-Osceola clan to advance an ambitious economic modernization program.

This humiliating defeat for the Reich, coupled with the outbreak of war between Lithuania, Nordenland, and Rusia, led to a coup by prominent military aristocrats that restored the former Erzkanzler Ludolf Basilo Sideros to power. Sideros immediately intervened in the war on the side of Lithuania and Nordenland while enacting a large-scale purge of his political enemies, particularly socialists and allies of the Patriarch of Rome. Feeling betrayed and eager for revenge against the Reich, Rusia joined forces with China. These two alliances and diplomatic entanglements soon clashed against each other when the Siam Incident erupted into all out war in 1895. Treaties and guarantees became obligations to be acted upon, and soon all of Eurasia and Africa were embroiled in the Great War. Years of industrial warfare unlike anything seen before changed the course of history forever, and by the end, very few states could count themselves as victors and not victims. By the end of decades of bloodshed, both the Reich and China collapsed to interval divisions, and the world was forever changed.

In 1919, one year after Rosalia Löwenstein raised the red flag over the rubble of Berlin after years of civil war—banishing the Maximist Kaiser Maximillian II to the western provinces and crowning Elisabeth Wilhelmina as the new Kaiserin—the Sons of Kaveh, a revolutionary Persian nationalist group, seized control of Merv, a city whose fate was still being decided in peace negotiations, putting the surviving old guard of Eurasia and Africa in conflict with the rising tides of Roman socialism and Merv's revolutionary nationalism, which came to be termed "accelerationism" due to its chaotic blend of political futurism, revolutionary nationalism, and other modernist movements. Two years later, China and Goryeo fell to accelerationism. Now, in 1936, it appears history once again approaches a turning point.

In the former Reich, a fragile peace between the conservative Maximists of Prince Maximillian II in Western Europe, Siegfredist socialists of Princess Elisabeth Wihelmina in the old industrial heartlands of Germania and Eastern Europe, and an accelerationist Reich in Constantinople is about to be upset. To the east, a wounded Rusia sits on a throne of bayonets, and breakaway states like the Republic of New England in Taurica and Anatolia prepare themselves for the storm ahead. In the Eimericas, continent-spanning giants face their darkest hour as instability finally comes to their shores, particularly the Meskwaki Empire which has to contend with separatists in the Bulbancha River Delta and the accelerationist Cemanahuac Alliance. An ocean away in Asia, the fall of empires and the weakness of yet more make everything possible once again. And in Africa, new, fragile hopes stagger forth to be born.

The New Order - The Last Days of Eurasia​

The year is 1962. World War II ended with the Angeloi Imperium Romanum and Greater Indian Raj dominating all of Eurasia. Rusia, Mali, and Nordenland are Angeloi puppet states. The UPRH has shattered into several dozen warring splinter states following a failed invasion of the Imperium's Atlantic provinces in the 1950s. China was humiliated under a combined assault from Rasa India and a nuclear-equipped Imperium. Such is their power that they've fully embraced the Doggerland, Atlantropa, and Lemeria plans and reshaped the Eurasian continent at their will. For all intents and purposes, the Berlin-Dharanagara Axis is at the top of the world. It ought to be invincible.

In reality, these are dire times for the Imperium Sine Fine and Eternal Raj. Just thirty years into a golden age that Angelos and Gupta promised would last a millennium, their two superpowers are teetering on the brink of collapse. In the Imperium, the Roman economy collapsed in the 1950s, triggering a global financial meltdown from which it has never recovered. The Imperium and Raj struggle to maintain order over their rebellious colonies. The internal politics of the Rasa Party have grown increasingly bitter and adversarial due to an elderly Gupta’s deteriorating health, with the intense factionalism reflecting the broader rifts in Indian society. Soon irreconcilable ideas began to coalesce around different wings of the party, from Rai Tiwana’s limited political and economic liberalization, Krisnarja Sheka’s entrenchment of the caste system and isolationism, Mayuravarma Bhatti and Tailapa Suryavansha’s prioritization of the military and renewed expansionism, Sardar Kunwar’s strengthening of the security apparatus and purging of undesirables, and former Rasa leader and co-founder Sarat Kumar Dutt’s secret plot to dismantle Gupta’s cult of personality and seize power for himself. The kindling is in place for a fire to burn down the whole Raj and perhaps the rest of the world along with it. In the ashes of Central Asia, general Hari Patel, commander of the Gurapu and Kunwar’s protege, has used the chaos of the Atlantic War to effectively go rogue. Declaring himself Devaraja from his fortress in the March of Transoxiana, he envisions a purer, more radical form of Akhandism, not just for the Indian Raj but for the world

In the world outside of India and the Imperium, the international scene is significantly worse off as a result of the fascist victory. The alliance between India, Persia, and the Imperium collapsed shortly after the war due to mounting tensions and conflicting interests. Persia, Abyssinia, and Tawantinsuyu, the former allies of the Imperium and India, formed the Triumvirate to counteract India and the Angeloi in response to their increasing hostility and the ecological catastrophes of Atlantropa, Doggerland, and Lemuria. The other superpowers—the Loyalists, now exiled to the exarchate of Bosporus Nova and Mittagsland, and their backers in Imperial China and Ryukyu—have developed their own nuclear weapons, creating a four-way Cold War between the Angeloi-led Irminsul League, the Loyalist-led National Liberation Coalition, India’s Meru Pact, and China’s Tianxia Alliance. The world now hangs on a thin wire that could snap at any moment, with the result being nuclear war and the destruction of human civilization. In this "New Order," a shroud of darkness hangs over the world that is as black and empty as an open grave. Has the light of hope been extinguished for good by the fascist victory?

The Fire Rises​

The year is 2020. The Reich is still facing the ramifications of the Sentinel scandal, while a mysterious novel virus has begun spreading uncontrollably through central China. Rusia, Persia, and other nations brace for the shockwaves of a volatile oil market, and the Cemanahuac Revolutions enter an uncertain phase.

In the Reich, tensions have reached a breaking point. The nation is one spark away from massive social unrest on the eve of a heavily contested examination between Osama ibn Lahad al-Baghdadi, Anya Murkowski, Dietmar Bloem, and Binyamin Glassberg. Disillusionment with the government grows as the Diet and the people drift further apart as it is seen more and more as an institution incapable of making meaningful change. Even the reign of the newly crowned Kaiser Wilhelm IV is questioned, with many supporting other claimants such as Prince Georg, Prince Horst, or Princess Wilhelmina or even the abolishment of the monarchy altogether. Across the country, communities prepare for the unknown. Guns are being openly displayed in numbers never seen before.

The worst is yet to come.

The fire rises, and the stage is set. The peace that has persisted across the globe for 30 years will falter, and war across all continents will bring about a New World, forged in the flames of war and christened with the blood of millions.

 

[zenphoenix]

Finally. After almost two months, I finished the main story of Higurashi and its anime. I’m quite impressed by the character writing, the themes, and how the mystery was set up and then revealed. I’m surprised there even was something I could apply to my writing, but it is a massive spoiler for the VN so I’ll say nothing. Not much else to say since all of my thoughts are also spoiler heavy.

As mentioned before, Clannad is next. For Higurashi spinoffs and Umineko, I’ll save that for another time because as much as I enjoyed this VN, two months of reading it burned me out, and I know Umineko will be just as long.