The first cities built, the first kilns heated: there roamed men-yet-not, who worked signs and deeds, both wonderful and cruel. ‘Gods’, they called themselves – forces of nature. They were inexorable, irresistible – and in exchange for their protection and for staying their wrath, they demanded all – grain, wine, authority – in short, naught but the most total submission from all mankind.

One night, a child was born. He grew into a fine lad, but strange – a distant fire seemed to burn in his eyes while he worked besides his father, beating iron into nails and blades for the local ‘gods’. The lad grew into a man, and took his father’s business. And from that point, history began.

None know if it was chance or fate, nor does it matter much. An oath, a blade drawn, and a ‘god’ lay dead upon the ground, his blood spurting out – red, red as any man’s. The lad fled into the forest, fearing the wrath of the ‘Gods’ – and there he found refuge. Spirits, they called themselves – born from the minds of men, and yet not men. No ‘Gods’ they worshiped, no rites they performed – speaking only a Greater Earth and Sea and Sky, beyond the bounds of the world, from which all – ‘Gods’, men, Spirits – came, and to which all would return and undergo a reckoning.

The years passed. His stature among the Spirits grew, while the wrath of the ‘Gods’ smoldered and waxed. When at last he reached the prime of his life, he asked the greatest and oldest among his hosts to give him leave to return and free his homeland – and they assented, sending their sons and daughters alongside, organized into a great host.

He met the local ‘gods’ upon a field not far from his home-town – and scattered them like soiled straw. His children carried on his work, and their children’s children as well, styling themselves Kings over the lands they guarded. The young blacksmith who had first freed his town became known as the Liberator – he who had first slain the Gods of Old Night, and who had shattered humanity’s shackles, once and for all.

It has been two-thousand, seven-hundred, seventy-five years the Liberator. His line has shattered, his house divides against itself – and in his homeland of Eleutheria, tensions brew between those who claim to carry on his work, and those who charge the Kings with being naught but the Old Gods in new form.

Two Nations, alike in dignity - the Kingdom of Blauveldt and the Realm of Ryszana. Independent, distinct, and separate - but bound inexorably into one Commonwealth by ties of history, affection, and shared struggle, ruled by one King and one House. Since the uprising of 2745 A.L and the resultant War of National Liberation, the Sister-Realms have governed themselves, and have grown in wealth and honor. But not all is well.

Though the Hankoite occupiers and red fascists were smashed for good after their ill-fated invasion of neighboring Pereaslavya, Götterland-Hæstia remains a constant threat. Never pleased with the loss of her slaves, she boasts and blathers to the North, but her words are backed by claws both conventional and nuclear. Meanwhile Christinasland, Blauveldt-Ryszana's erstwhile guarantor and ally, lies paralyzed by isolationist or anti-Federal sentiment at home - with a timely, organized response in the event of invasion being increasingly unlikely. And there are those within Blauveldt-Ryszana who would throw themselves upon one power or another; to discard her hard-own independence and the moderate course charted painstakingly by Reichswehr, Sejm, i Królu - to sign on to the Adraestian-led 'Elutheria a Nation' initiative, reducing the Commonwealth into a mere pawn and appendage of foreign nobles and ideologues once more.

Still; no matter how great the trials to come, today, Blauveldt and Ryszana are the masters of their fates and the captains of their souls. They are free, and their peoples will, despite the ravings of madmen and all the bombs and bullets in the world, continue to keep them free.

Götterland-Haestia is more than a Crown. She is more than a throne, she is more than the land, she is more than her vast fleets and hosts. She is more than her ever-loyal subjects, or her noble warrior-princes and shieldmaiden-princesses, both past and present.

She is a flame -- a flame first lit by the Liberator of Meria, and carried north by the first Jarls; a flame that has burned for two-thousand years. She was the little camp-fire, cheering those who wagered all for her sake in the first bitter years. She was the bright bonfires that leapt up at Springtide, or the crackling hearth, warming her folk as they settled into now-pacified forests and huddled through now-tamed winters.

Now she burns low -- choked, dim, dying -- but she burns still, tended to by her Lord and her people. Even now, she holds back the Old Night and Old Gods -- as she always has, and as she always will. And no matter how great a host the traitors styling themselves the 'Federal Union of Christinasland' marshal against her, or how many of her ungrateful former allies turn upon her, she will hold her bounds to the last.

The memory of the Liberator, and the fate of all Mankind, demands no less -- no matter the toll, in blood or black deeds.

“A rabid mass of misguided men, who without direction will fall into decay.” So claimed Götterland-Haestia, and all the Old World agreed. Even after the collapse of its colonial administration, even after the 'rabid mass' swept out all her magaistrates and viceroys and governors and generals like soiled straw, the Old World waited – surely within a year, the disparate, squabbling States and Marches and Free Cities would collapse like a heap of rotten wood, and would scramble back to their mother-countries.

A year became two, then three, rolling on and on, snowballing into one century, then another and another. The new Union took in the dregs, the orphans, the poor and harried of all the corners of the world. She made them her sons and daughters, set down iron rails from sea to sea, built factories, planted farms, forged vast fleets of steam and smoke and steel. She grew strong, though silently, and unnoticed by the potentates, the great and good of the Old World.

Then one day, she smashed one empire -- then another, and another. The Kings of the Old World trembled at the approach of her fleets, formed alliances, consulted in open and in secret -- all to no avail. Adraestia, Aragorn, Alenberg, Haestia, Hanko - all either fell in line, or saw their empires shattered, one way or another.

Now many of her people are content - ready to reap the fruits they have earned through decades of hard work, and to turn the swords once more to ploughshares. But others with more foresight beg to differ - and argue that the worst, in fact, is yet to come. They demand that she turns her attention to ending the last of the tyrants – the self-proclaimed Imperial Federation, still clinging to her blood-gold and moth-eaten finery, and shrieking her false gospel of Gods and Kings over serfs and slaves. And soon, perhaps, as the storm-clouds gather, she shall rise to do so - one last crusade, and one last great charge for the Freedom of all Man.

If the ghosts of her own past do not catch up to her first.

There was once a dream.

In 2654 A.L, the red banner was raised, toppling the old Grand Duchy of Hanko. The nobility was toppled, slain or sent fleeing to their paymasters abroad. In its place – her people raised a Republic. The People’s Republic.

From the start, the reactionaries attempted to undermine her. Each tyrant raised their clarion-call, each landed their fleets and men – and each failed. One by one, the parasites of the world realized that they had to accept the sister-republics. They opened their markets, sold Hanko the wheat with which she would strengthen herself, the shot and powder with which she would lay them to waste, the rope with which she would hang them. She grew larger, larger, playing the powers against each other as she did so – allying with Haestia against Götterland, Adraestia against Blauveldt-Ryszana, Christinasland against Elutheria's Kings. Each new decade saw factories built, armies raised, discoveries made – with her people striving in every field to prove that her system, their system was the future of man and spirit alike; the final culmination of the work started by the Liberator of Meria.

It was no surprise, then, that she looked to the night sky. The vast, uncountable stars – would not their settlement be her greatest achievement? Would it not secure man and spirit alike against war, plague, and asteroid? The cost was high; but for Hanko, her dreams were higher, and she wasted no time in setting her brightest minds to the task. A mere decade after the Elutherian War, she sent a monkey into orbit; within half of another, a man. But she was only getting started. Her plans grew wilder, and yet more within reach, turning ever-more into reality. Permanent stations around the Earth, then around the moon. Soon, her brightest minds said, one day, they would even place them on other planets - perhaps even around distant stars. Higher, higher, higher, her hopes soared.

It was not to be.

Her Sister-Republics broke faith, cried that their ‘older sister’ had treated them unjustly, that they had never wished to be under her wing - then broke off, one by one. She would not be kept down, at first. This was but a momentary pause in her great plans – root out the traitors, rebuke their foreign backers, then turn her eyes once more to the stars. But when the Red Army crossed their borders, her erstwhile Sister-Republics fought tooth and nail, while once again, tyrant and banker alike moved to profit. Christinasland sent men and gold and arms; Götterland her assassins and rabble-rousers and Hanko's old nobility, kept as tools for this very moment. Her armies collapsed, her government turned on itself – and, worst of all, her people starved. With little other choice, she came to the table.

Her efforts to reclaim some shred of her vision built the coffin. The failed intervention in Pereaslavya, and the subsequent Ujazdow Accords of 2773 A.L nailed it shut. The head that once lifted high and dreamt of the stars now looks to the earth – and sees nothing but detritus and dirt and all her hopes smashed into dust.

There once was a dream – and now, it lies dead.

Many years ago, there was a war. A war Yashima began; a war for empire, territory, living space, blood and soil and gold. A war that it lost.

Lady Ishikori and Lady Fushimi, foremost among the spirits, set Yashima's gaze outwards - towards a new Empire, one that would rival Haestia or the Hanse in size and scale. They set their hosts and ships against Jiuzhou, against Magelland, against Christinasland - and plunged their little island-nation into 11 years of war.

In three, Yashima gained all she wished - and in eight, she lost everything. The fighting was long and brutal - with Yashima spilling the lion's share of innocent blood.

When the dust settled, it ended with Christinaslander and Jiuzhoan boots on the Home Islands, with atomic fire upon Yashima's cities and mountains, with the deaths of millions of her people, and with her guiding lights, her invincible, divinely-appointed kami, dying in droves. And then, after, came the Occupation.

Jiuzhou recieved her pound of flesh. But most went to Christinasland - and Christinasland began to rebuild Yashima after it's own image. The Army was disbanded; the Navy and it's ship-spirits scuttled en-masse. Ishikori, the elder of Yashima's Twin Suns, second only to the Greater Sea and Sky itself, was placed on trial - her shaven head and gaunt face placed under a bright floodlight as judges from all over the world systemically examined all her acts for the past two-hundred years, and then pronounced her a criminal, a butcher, unfit to live. When they were done, they sent her to a little room, where a ship-spirit carved her head off, then held it aloft for all the world to see and know: sic semper tyrannis.

---

Seventy years is a long time to think and to build. Of those seventy years, the first thirty were with a heavy hand - Christinaslander troops upon the streets, the old flags banned, protests dispersed with truncheon and bullet. But they did permit the Yashimans to speak among themselves - to rethink their past, to chart a new course for the future. Then, after those thirty years, they began to let up. The military government gave way in some places, transitioned to a Civilian Occupation Authority, let Yashima have her own police again. Slowly, she recovered - no longer the carefully-cultivated garden of her pre-war self, but more akin to the first shoots of green after a wildfire. Her people began to speak of a New Yashima; one that could move forward from the war, one that could, perhaps, confront it's past.

Ten years ago, the Occupation, for the first time, began to speak of independence, with the Occupation Authority enumerating conditions for a New Yashima: new flags, new laws, new markets, new identities. Many supported the idea; many disagreed, and sought independence first. But the message was, nonetheless, loud and clear - Christinasland could live with an independent Yashima, could negotiate for one, increasingly saw it's independence as a matter of 'when', and not 'if' - and all of Yashima's sons and daughters took note.

Their New Day would dawn, soon. But for now, they work; they study; they build. And between it all, they wrestle with their past and the pasts of others - drawing lessons from both as they lay the foundation for their homeland rebuilt.