'Evening, gents. I've got a couple questions about how to join this thing.

1. I understand that I have to prove my worth up in what used to be Russia before I can join properly. Is there some sort of world history primer out there that I can read before I start on an application for my post-Russian group, or is there little enough established canon for that region that, provided I don't mess with the summary of how Russia fell apart that's been detailed in the OP, I should be fine?
2. Is the map of the world in the OP still accurate, at least as far as what countries/regions are still available?

My plan, as of right now, is to play as a platoon of former Russian Army men that's taken over a village in Kazakhstan. Depending on how relevant a group of only around 50 men can be to the RP at large, I could upgrade it to an entire rifle company, but either way I'd only be messing with small handful of named characters.

If that sounds too mundane/easy to write for your standards, I've also got some weirder ones. The first is an idea for a sect of apocalyptic death cult-ish, loosely-Orthodox monks based out of an ancient monastery in the ungoverned area on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. Again, not many named characters, but harder to pull off convincingly, and in an area abandoned by the major powers, they could get some serious traction in the hearts of those who still live there.

A third idea is for a dadaist art collective that moonlights as a terrorist organization, operating out Moscow (or one of the other surviving ex-Russian cities; location isn't important so long as it's somewhat urban). This... may be a little too far out there, though.

Your thoughts?

@Jestocost

I will have to summon the slav-team to commentate, since I don't know how much they have planned going ahead. Otherwise, Russian history besides what's in the OP would be in the Russia sheets: Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Ukraine, Archangle (since I can't remember the Russian name, get the English name), Chechnya. As far as it boils down:

Since the death of the czar, Russia has broken down politically of course. The current-most head of the Romanov dynasty is sitting in Saint Petersburg, where-as a pretender exists in Moscow and the two are competing with one another. Ukraine also took the time to break away, and is lead by a female Hetman commanding a Cossack nation of sorts. Likewise, a Socialist Republic exists in the far-north. In the intervening years the Chinese took advantage of Russia's non-existence to scoop up and annex Mongolia and Japan invaded and took Primorsky Krai and some of the surrounding areas. In the most latest history, China is in the process of invading Russia but is only in the most earliest steps and not registering on anyone's radar; only the Japanese so far have the vaguest notion something is happening.

Otherwise I got a couple kids doing a road trip through Kazakhstan on a motor bike on their way to Ethiopia of all places and that's all of Chinese things there.

And the map is abhorrently out of date because I'm a cunt and mostly rely on Feo/Moscow Player.

Now I'm sure someone will probably come in and correct me or add onto this.

Most of the canon for Russia is, sadly, not IC.

This is the gist of it, though:

During the final years of WWI, the Russian Empire withdrew its forces and squashed the communist rebellion at home. This means that Nicholas II was never overthrown, and the civil war was prevented/delayed. Nicholas II would go to rule over Russia for decades, adopting a deeply anti-communist stance that resulted in the suppression of any kind of workers movement, or threat to the Tsarist regime. He rolled back some of the limitations that had been placed on his power in the early 1900s and Russia became a full-on autocracy again. His son followed his footsteps, but was not as strong of a leader, which allowed for communists to slowly resurface again and chip away at his power, culminating with his assassination a few years before the RP start date.

The assassination of the Tsar threw Russia into civil war and split it up into a multitude or warring states. The Imperial government withdrew to Petrograd/St.Petersburg and the surviving heir was brought forward to become the new Tsar. Since then, Imperial Russia has more or less been in a standoff against other Russian states, mainly Moscow. In Moscow, the children of an old Imperial general came to power and turned it into another Tsardom, but those are not legitimate heirs because they aren't related to the Romanovs. Ukraine became independent after the death of the Tsar and became a Hetmanate. In Akangelsk there are some socialists in power. Nothing else on that side of the Urals is controlled by a player, but basically imagine it as a big mess of competing states of varying ideologies, in constant war. In between all that there are warlords and criminals doing stuff.

Japan has a foothold on the east side of the Urals, and China has been snooping around getting ready to invade Siberia. Beyond that, there isn't much else to say.

As for your idea... You're free to do whatever you want, so you can play as a small group if that's what you're interested in, but if you can you should probably do something a little bigger than that. In my experience, limiting yourself will result in you running into a lot of dead-ends with what you can realistically do on a scale that small. Don't be afraid to snatch one of the Russian states. You can change the borders a bit if you want, as long as it's within reason.

If you want to ask specifics about Russia, you can PM me if you want.

Damn, that was quick. Thank you both for the info.

@Pepperm1nts

I'd thought of snapping up one of the remaining Russian states, but my main concern is that I know, well, next to nothing about Eastern European culture pre-Cold War, so I'm not sure I could play the political leadership of a formerly-Russian state very convincingly.

Who should I be asking about the established governments of the unclaimed Russian states, if there even are any?

I'm thinking that if nothing is firmly established, I might be able to scale up one of the concepts mentioned earlier to the point where they'd actually matter on the global stage. Maybe a regiment of the old Imperial Army set up a militaristic dictatorship, or the doomsday monks succeeded in establishing a small theocracy and are gearing up to spread the good news of the impending apocalypse by the sword. Or maybe a transnational art-terrorist collective that operates in cells has spread from their European origins into Russia, capitalizing on the weapons-grade disaffection of the locals to quickly recruit and grow to the size where they can no longer be ignored. The first one is 'safer', in that I'm pretty confident in my ability to write military. The latter two I'm more interested in writing, but I'm worried they might not fit the established tone of the RP very well.

If this is specific enough that it should be taken to PMs, let me know. I'm not super familiar with this site's forum etiquette yet.

None of the unclaimed states have anything set in stone for them, so you're mostly free to make up whatever you want for them. You can also alter the borders however you want as long as it makes sense. There is no one in particular that you need to talk to about any of the Russian states, but there are some players in Russia, like myself, that you can ask specifics to since we're the most in tune with what's going on in that part of the map. And nah, you don't have to PM anyone. I meant that if you wanted to ask specifics, you could PM me, but you don't have to.

Gotcha. I'll get to work on an app for something in the morning, then. Last question before I hit the rack: is the list of claimed nations in the OP also out of date? And if so, what Russian states actually are still available?

@Pepperm1nts@Jestocost

I think if you two go anywhere keep a mind to get Pig, Shyri/Feo, and at least Mihndar on it too. They might have input.

But if I can say anything on my impressions of Russia culture: in some ways it's been described to me as antithetical to western culture. Where there's an emphasis on rationalism in the West there's a de-emphasis on and sneering at Enlightenment or Rationalist beliefs. Or even in that sense democracy. Though the later could be explained with my rather juvenile understanding of writers like Hannah Arendt's study of politics, thought I still need to read it I've heard the thesis of her book On Revolution boils down to "have autocratic leadership before revolution? Get a new one after." Tankies will try to correct me on it but the nature of the Soviet Union wasn't entirely different from the Tzarist model.

But politically too, while Moscow or the Imperial cities are the seat of power, they've been in less ways the same the further out you went from Moscow. Metropolitan, European Russia might be more strictly in orbit around Moscow or Saint Petersburg and its customs and nuances but the more you go out the more autonomous you may get. A particularly extreme or autonomous government may be at the fringes in Russia; ex the Siberian Cossack union East of the Urals I'm using as my Russian antagonist. So in the ungoverned territories there'd be a lot of room for wild, unpredictable, or unforeseen activities; not just because it's distant, but because it also contained a lot of overlapping military and ethnic groups in one small area.

Southern Russia is known to be a major place RL for Cossack activity. The cossacks being formerly an independent half-slavic people, originally they could be described anarchistically in that their organization was as highly democratized and they often flaunted imperial whims to the north and the west, but as time went on they were brought under control. By the time of the RP they'd have evolved into a strictly military identity with a emphasis and identity in the structure of the army. Now-a-days IRL they're infamous as being the government's paramilitary goons of Putin and are literally patrolling the world cup with whips looking for the gay. They occupy a large part of the Russian identity.

A Russian friend also says of Southern Russia as being a lot of white trash cosplaying as Cossacks. So we shouldn't skimp on the a e s t h e t i c.

Cossack choir
A swordfight with a cossack in a 1974 movie
The hilarious response of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire

And well, back to the pain-in-the-neck irrationality of the Russians as mentioned, I've heard it as being explained well enough in this Dostoyevsky from Notes of the Underground:

"I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well--let it get worse!"

And it's not far off. Russia has a hella wild history of esoteric and wild religious cult if you want to do the doomsday thing. They've cut their balls and tits off for God before.

The list isn't up-to-date, but most of Russia is available. The only claimed areas are:

Russian Empire/St. Petersburg
Moscow
Akhangelsk
Ukraine

Everything else is up for grabs.

EDIT: We have too many cossacks pls no more

Aside from my references of pirates in Sochi and bandits in the Dagestan/Chechnya-ish area, not much of the North Caucasus has been touched aside from the guy who plays a Chechen Khanate.

Alright, so here's the broad-strokes version of what I've come up with for the 'weird monks' idea. I've dropped the doomsday stuff in favor of a more hopeful outlook, but I'll come up with some suitably bizarre and painful rituals for them to do:

Eastern Siberia is a shitty place to be now that the empire's gone. It was never great to begin with, granted, but times are especially tough now. When the empire still stood, many brave workers from western Russia came to seek their fortunes in the oil fields, mines and logging camps of the region. The export of the region's abundant natural resources funded the food imports needed to sustain this working population and the mining/logging towns that supported it. But, alas, most of the demand for Siberian resources vanished along with the empire, and famine soon followed.

Amidst the starvation, cossack raids and general hopelessness arose a new sect of Orthodox Christianity, promising that through the ministry of the church and the power of Christ, someday, the winters would be shortened, the sun would shine eternally on them, and they would never go hungry again. This group came to be known as Порядок рассвета, the Order of the Breaking Dawn, and came to dominate much of the spiritual life of the region. More practically, as they grew in influence, they more or less took on the role of a provisional government, distributing food where possible and trying to keep the peace between villages. This has mostly been successful, even in the face of the rising body count of the ongoing famine and the rumors of Asian incursions into formerly Russian territories to the south. Now, their main practical goals are to solidify their hold on the region and reignite foreign interest in Siberian natural resources, so they can start getting food for everyone again. Spiritually, they're trying to convert the few remaining holdouts in the area and start spreading to Buryatia, Novosibirsk and other, warmer regions.

Anybody got any suggestions for how this can be improved, or gripes with my read on local history?

Russia is in such a chaotic and lawless state that, really, anything goes. There's no major problem with that idea, and if that's what you want you're free to write an app/sheet. I don't know to what extent a group like that would have control of Siberia, though. In all likelihood, their territory would not make up all or most of Siberia because Siberia is a big place that is not easy to control and administer. There are also likely other groups in the area that would exert their own influence and control so they'd have to deal with that as well. Beyond that, the only concern I feel is worth pointing out is that China will invade in force at some point. If you want to deal with that, then you're free to stay in Siberia. But fair warning that, when that happens, things will be very difficult for a group such as yours. People on the west side of the Urals are protected by the mountain range, so they aren't as vulnerable to it, but in Siberia you're pretty much right in the way of the eventual Chinese invasion. Again, if you're okay with being an underdog, then there's no problem.

My two cents, but Aaron should also have a say here because Siberia is his side of Russia.

Aw, hell, I just read the last few pages and realized that Aaron already claimed pretty much the entire region. I was thinking his cossacks were more in the western part of Siberia, closer to the Urals, leaving the eastern half mostly free for my weird monks, but I guess that's not the case.

If he's alright with me operating in the region, though, I'm fine with having to deal with China invading. I think some really interesting shit could be written about the conflict between the borderline-theocratic group I'm working on and the (I assume) godless communists coming from the south. Worst comes to worst, I will never get bored of writing them becoming Orthodox Russian Al-Qaeda and forcing the Chinese to fight a counter-insurgency for a decade or so, a la the War on Terror (maybe this is where the doomsday cult stuff comes in?).

@Jestocost

I'd be generally supportive of it, but I'm not too fond of the provisional government thing for the east. I've written about the area in a briefing post here, I think.

But the general gist is that the Amur Host, headed by Hetman Yuri Mykhalov formed a confederacy among the other Cossack units of the Russian far-east after being thrown out of Primorsky Krai by the Japanese. He and the rest of the Cossack units have been terrorizing the area to keep its security and order, ostensibly in the name of the Czar. They are the order and military force of the region.

I'd be willing to take in the Monastic Order idea under the assumption that it's something that exists "underneath" the Cossacks so to speak. A loose political affiliation of Russian far-eastern monks who are trying to simply organize the efforts of the communities in the far-east, albeit I don't think the situation would be famine-tier, just heavily economically depressed. Unless you're situated in the far north there should be enough agricultural potential to at least keep self sustaining communities.

I don't know if there's any active monastic orders in the Russian East though, but it's difficult to confirm anything with Russia and Siberia.

@Dinh AaronMk

Perfect. I think I misspoke by saying it was anything approaching a proper government; I was more thinking along the lines of a semi-political alliance of monastic groups trying to keep the peace, share resources and stop everything from going further to hell than it already has. Now, they probably want to become a real government, but they're not even close to that stage yet. With your blessing, I'm aiming to put them roughly on the land near the Kuril-Aleut oil fields (think Kamchatka and the land to the north and west of it), pretty far north and even farther from the political and economic heart of Russia, where the agricultural situation really would be as bad as described.

My idea is that a lot of their adherents aren't Siberian natives -- they're oilmen, loggers and mining specialists from the west who got stuck there when everything fell apart. So, they have a decent population of people who do have useful industrial skills, but don't know the land very well and might not be very familiar with cold-weather agricultural techniques, trying to share the limited yearly farm output with the locals.

If that's too contrived, it can be altered, but as currently written the famine is important to the group's mythology so I'd like to keep it.

@Jestocost

I don't know about any oil fields out there or any significant economic activity that would strand a bunch of westerners otherwise unaffiliated with the Russian government and probably with passports to other countries. Unless Byrds says otherwise, sounds like something where these people could just appeal to Japanese assistance to withdraw them and get them out.

But the thing too to keep in mind about the area around or near Kamchatka is that part of Russia is basically considerably under populated. Even today the population density on average in the area is less than three people per square mile. There's a few communities there but I don't know if they'd actually be large enough to make a sort of cohesive political organization.



Like when you talk about Siberian monasteries I was expecting something like Omsk. Once you get that far east and that close to the Arctic things become less Russian and more Caribou herders and people related to the Alaskan Inuit, or basically the same people.

@Dinh AaronMk

My apologies, that's workers from western Russia, not "the West". And there's an oil field of some several billion barrels off the coast of Kamchatka that I was thinking they'd be based around. But if that'd still be untouched in the Precipiceverse, then a backup would be to shift them west into what's now the Sakha Republic.

That work for you?

@Jestocost

If you want some inspiration to try and figure the monastery idea out, I did some quick Google searching...

Google Maps, Znamensky Monastery
Siberian Baroque, might give more leads

@Dinh AaronMkis Volgograd/Stalingrad/Tsaritsyn taken?

The only places taken in Russia are St.Petersburg and the surrounding area (known as the Russian Empire), Moscow and some of the surrounding area, and Ukraine (and some of the surrounding area). The Russia map on the front-page is mostly up-to-date I think.

@Pepperm1ntsIn that case I'll probably claim Rostov and Tsaritsyn if that's cool with y'all.

Probably going to be a sort of fortress state, not claiming to be the rightful Russian government but not necessarily choosing a side yet. I'm thinking the cities are under the command of the nobility and military.

I'm not looking to be super influential, but nor do I mean to be uninvolved. Might be interesting to have a player that can be convinced to take a side in your succession struggle.