This was meant to be very brief. I failed. It isn't that much though.
The origins section deals mostly with a nation I created for a mapgame, this mapgame was not my own creation and lots of different people contributed; I only made Dar-e Mehr, the High Kingdom of Joseon (and Vassals) and of course the Sakhalin Provisional Authority Region. I only added the last one to the map, the rest I did write ups. I took some ideas from this setting and directly lifted the SPAR from it, so I'm acknowledging the base idea (thermonuclear war in an alternate cold war around the 60s in a world divering before 1900) and the name 'the Cremation' to describe the event, plus the map itself if I find it and include it, are not at all mine. Only the SPAR is, and the other nations mentioned. In the actual origins, it is all original (if a bit cliche'd).
I haven't had a chance to proofread it yet, so uhh be gentle :p.Name: William Bluff
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Species: Human
World of Origin: Earth, same as our timeline up to some point before the Franco-Prussian War; the Germans push for more and do better, only slightly in both respects, but it butterflies from there. By 1912, the German position is significantly stronger than in our world, at the expense of the French. The leftist ideologies have performed better in the industrialised world, subsequently the Russian anarchists, bolsheviks, etc are closer to the level of support (and how well they've infiltrated the government and army, how much protesting and bombing they do, how well organised etc) they had on the eve of the revolution in this 1912 than in our world. The far-right backlash in France, Russia and Germany is strong (Orthodox-Nationalists and Pan-Slavic Fascists in Russia, 'Ascendance of the Germanics'-Fascists in Germany and hardcore imperialist-Fascists in France, with extreme nationalists in all three), but far right and far left destablisation doesn't cancel out; they fight each other bitterly but there's still twice the collateral damage. Because of this, all three (but Russia in particular) are less stable. In America and the United Kingdom, popular support for leftist ideologies has a better outlet than in Russia, namely voting. Syndicalists parties and generally groups classed as 'Marxist-Debsist' (Eugene Debs' has been luckier and more successful, and won't end up arrested) are rapidly growing in size and popularity, though the backlash is there. This is also serving to increase the isolationism of these nations.
The war known as the Mitteleuropan War is easily compared to our WW1, being in a similar time, of a similar catastrophic scale, featuring Germany and Austria Hungary VS Russia and France, but has key differences. It was not a world war; the Balkan nations, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Germany, France and Russia all played a part, but the other great powers sat it out (aside from Japan joining on the Entente side to nab German colonial holdings, kinda meh). Without the assistance of Britain and America, and with a weak starting position and a strong Germany, France and Russia were not in a good position. The German border, on the eve of the war, was close enough to Paris that the heavy fortifications along the way did not deter the Germans from planning a major push that direction. The advance along this axis would define the war- German industry, manpower and resources far exceeded that of the French, and while they had to deal with Russia in the east (made harder when the rapidly destabilising Austria-Hungary had to drop out of the war in 1914) they would have the strategic initiative from the start to the end of the war. Grinding through these fortifications (central front) tied up large amounts of French manpower and a larger amount of German, but percentage wise it was a beneficial trade off, allowing a firm numerical advantage in the northern and southern fronts. French offensives were minor and rare, while German offensives tended to be followed by a period of mobile warfare with fliud, rapid advances before settling back down into trenches. When Russia mostly collapsed in 1915, the surge of new troops from that front allowed the launching of a final offensive, pushing hard northwest and southwest from the southern and northern fronts respectively. Pushing into Centre from both Bourgogne and Haute-Normandie regions, the Ile-de-France region, Paris and the remaining fortifications ahead of it were increasing cut-off strategically. The situation collapsed after one final bloody offensive, in the spring of 1916. With Paris captured and the army falling back on all fronts, the French were forced to surrender. At this point, a very critical event in history would occur; an extreme-nationalist Junker led coup in the German capital. Seeing the (to them) less than harsh peace terms (both sides were exhausted, and the peace would establish Germany as the power of continental Europe, neuter France and Russia and leave them as a serious rival to the US, these guys wanted more), they executed their plan, and got lucky- they succeeded. With control established, they pushed for a honestly insane goal; total annexation of France, and of European Russia, re-igniting the stalled wars with both. The forces opposing them were thoroughly beaten, but knowing now they would be fully destroyed in defeat, resistance was redoubled. With this goal known, internal resistance strengthened, necessitating more resources to crush it, and the international reaction swung drastically against Germany, which found itself blockaded in the Baltic and the Atlantic (via conquered bits of France and the low countries). This meant this last stage of the war, running from the coup through to the final defeat of regular (but not irrgular, partisans etc) forces of the Russian and French armies, would run until 1919 despite the huge on-paper advantage the Germans had.
The conclusion of the war was not good. In the final weeks, the leadership's hold on power began to fray more and more, as the affects of the blockade and the immense strain on industry, occupation duties strethching from Normandy to St Petersburg and simple continuous grinding warfare all added up. Food shortages, manpower shortages, lack of strategic resources (Russian resources would be useful, but frequently can't be accessed because the chaos and fighting destroyed the infrastructure and efforts to fix it are hampered by partisans) and domestic unrest hurt Germany proper as well. As the situation began to deteriorate, in and outside of the occupied territories, the small coup leadership became more hardline, seeing that they had achieved their domination of continental europe. They prolonged the collapse with brutality and force, but in the end this made it far worse than if they had not. Food shortages became famine, unrest became rioting and defection and mutiny, resource shortages became industrial collapse... They dragged everything between the atlantic and the urals down with them, 3 months after reaching their peace in the Mitteleuropan War.
The period between 1919 and 1929 saw syndicalist parties take power with popular support in the US, Canada and in the UK, while the various civil wars of the 'European Warlords Decade' caused horrific destruction. While the syndicalists, the communists, the marxists and other leftists florished in the anglosphere, the bloody fighting in continental europe ended with the destruction of those groups (not that they didn't take a lot of fascists with them). Multiple small and large states appeared and disappeared during this time, locked in a struggle for control again. Having suffered less manpower losses during the war and much less destruction, when some semblance of unity returned, Germany was dominant. They had achieved what they could have had before the coup, except with an addition of more than a decade of bloodshed. In addition, the ruling powers of Europe were now much more brutal entities, hardcore fascists formed in the crucible of civil warfare- the Slavic Union, aka the Russian Empire (minus everything west of Kyiv), the Third French Empire (mainland France, missing large border regions near Germany, no colonies left, taken by the anglo-backed leftist Free French or simply freed) and the Wolfram Pact (Germany, Austria-Hungary, with satellite states in the low countries, western Ukraine, Poland, Belorussia, Northern Italy, and Scandinavia).
In 1929, the anglosphere and their leftist allies (forming a power bloc, the Internationale) were roaring ahead, while the fascist european powers were just barely getting on there feet. By 1942, enough re-construction and re-industrialisation had occured in the european powers (now firmly allied as the Mitteleuropan League in opposition to the Internationale) that they were starting to be seen as a threat, and by 1946 a legitimate cold war was under way. The Mitteleuropan League found allies in Greater Transvaal, in the Northern (Japanese puppeted) China (warring states era occured later, still was interrupted by the Japanese, isolationist America and UK and the destruction of the continental European imperialists meant they could conquer any non-British colonies without serious opposition, exhausting statemate occured in China amidst increasing Internationale assistance to the People Republic of Southern China (capital in Maoming), leading to a split China situation), Japan itself and their empire, Brazil and an assortment of other nations, while the International was joined by most of the rest of Latin America, large swathes of newly independent ex-French and ex-British colonial territories, southern China, and the former dominions (aside from the former South Africa, now Greater Transvaal). The most significant independent countries are Mexico, India, the Persian Empire and Turkey.
By 1956, both sides were armed with hydrogen bombs and ICBMs, though compared to our world, medicine, electronics and biology is behind, while aerospace, physical chemistry, materials and high-energy physics is ahead.
In 1961, a Brazilian Republic satellite launch was misread by a radar installation in the Unified Chilean Communes, and triggered the interconnected Internationale strategic defense system. They moved up a level of preparedness, expecting an indication of further launches to start coming in in the next 30 seconds. Seeing a sudden surge in radio chatter, the Internationale bomber and interceptor fleets taking to the skies and the mobilisation of conventional forces, the Mitteleuropan League and allies stepped up to the same preparedness. Those launches did not come, but the escalation had occured. Border conflicts and skirmishes, rapidly escalating, broke out at all the flashpoints, especially in the mountain borders between Brazil and Chile, and the borders between Brazil and Argentina. Moreso than anywhere else, things spiralled out of control there, with full conventional warfare being waged- and then limited nuclear strikes being ordered. The conflict here dragged the world forward, making any attempts to de-escalate futile. Rio, Buenos Aires, Santiago, went up in mushroom clouds. Soon, London, Moscow, New York, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, would follow. Then everywhere else that mattered, general thermonuclear war, and in the aftermath, nuclear winter.
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Around the time the bombs fell, Sakhalin got lucky in a few ways. The day the Cremation War began and ended happened to be the day that their biggest food shipment arrived, enough to last them a few weeks. As well as that, a big oil and mineral mining deal had recently been secured, so there was a lot of expertise, manpower and equipment floating around setting up new mines and refineries. Finally, any ICBM has a chance to be intercepted or to fail, and places without multiple missiles assigned aren't guaranteed to be hit. This luck spared their naval base, giving them a big security advantage in the chaos of collapsing governments, refugee columns and raiding free-for-alls that would follow.
An alliance of the mining groups, the naval and marine authorities and the local government took charge of Sakhalin, and began to marshal their resources to survive the coming chaos and coldness. The pattern would be managing refugees, fighting warlords and barbarians, while trying to keep the mines, that supply the coal, that heats homes and powers industry supplied and safe, keeping the flow of oil needed to patrol sealanes and power the fishing fleets that the population depended on, provide the iron ore and the lumber and every other resource needed for industry, etc. Generally a battle to use their industrial resources to stay fed and warm and to keep those industries running.
They took in and used what refugees they could, in the early days they established processing camps for refugees on some islands they controlled near Sakhalin, effectively labour camps as a way to contain the dangerous and desparate refugees, taking the skilled individuals while extracting labour form the rest. They found creative useage for this effectively unskilled manpower, i.e. rushed training then grab one military boat and 3-4 civilian ones, half a dozen sailors or marines, a few dozen young men and scavenged military weapons, hunting rifles etc and then send them on risky, high-losses raids to steal food, supplies, machinery, etc from settlements to the south in Japan, Korea, China, and Russia. Lots of struggles against generals-turned-warlords, fighting to supply and protect the isolated mining stations, to retake fallen installations from bandits or barbarians, to keep the flow of oil and coal and iron needed to keep Sakhalin alive and warm and churning away, etc.
By 1967, Sakhalin's head is firmly above the water, and the Sakhalin Provisional Authority Region is in control of a range of territories (here
http://i.imgur.com/wEBwPw7.png) primarily focused on resettling useful land, claiming regions with critical resources, and taking areas with strategic worth relative to their neighbours. This map is absolutely not mine, and is cropped from a larger one that is even more absolutely not mine, only the cyan/blue bits are done by me, the rest was added by others. The majority of the SPAR's population is, as expected, comprised of people from north east asia and the Russian far east, with proximity to Sakhalin and ease of getting there in the collapse having significant impact. About 25% of the population is Chinese (evenly between North and South, the north was closer to Sakhalin but fared far worse than the PRSC in the Cremation), ~25% for Russians, 15% each Japanese and Koreans, with the remaining ~20% being a mixture of all nationalities; the descendents of international workers in Sakhalin at the start, of refugee populations and naval groups that joined up from as far away as Australia or California, and other miscellaneous groups.
Are you a member of TRIDENT? Nay
Are you one of those seemingly normal people? NAY
Appearance: Dressed for cold to extreme cold. Colours are either unimportant so drab and grey/browns (dye and fabric generally is expensive) or camoflauge, so white snow gear or mottled tundra-grey colouring. Life jackets are in vogue. Normally a simple tough jacket, two shirts, jeans with some protective thermal layer underneath, hiking/work boots, circular wire-frame glasses, arctic goggles (comes complete with his corrective lenses inbuilt), thick coat, working gloves, scarf. Shirts and trousers tend to have been patched up somewhere, important stuff like the coat or gloves are more thoroughly made and newer, made from things like deer or cow leather, or even better a genuine article, scavanged or brought by a refugee. Has more heavy duty things if he's going anywhere vaguely north. Medium, wiry build, curly ginger hair, slightly gaunt face, high cheekbones, blue eyes, goggle-tan on his face from where snowglare could get through.
Abilities and skills: Can fly light aircraft (no jets, no helicopters, no gyrocopters etc) and glide (like with a hang glider, not with his arms). Experienced with wilderness survival in arid/arctic mountains, tundra, polar conditions, ruined and slightly irradiated cities, and surviving extremely inclement weather. Good at tracking and navigation, has basic first aid skills, some ability to repair vehicles (no experience repairing any electronics more advanced than vacuum tubes, transistors are like magic, so are fuel cells, but suspension or a combustion engine or a gun and he can be useful). Can captain small ships, can ride horses and motorbikes. Excellent rifleman, above average knife/blunt object/bayonet-on-rifle brawler, joined the fencing society at university. Knows how to make, rig to detonate and effectively use mines, grenades, bombs etc explosives. Has a significant amount of general engineering knowledge, equivalent to someone interrupted in the second year of a general engineering course, who then picked up about a year later in a very adhoc environment with more narrow goals. He has more indepth knowledge of geological and industrial engineering, learnt more recently, up to and including the skill set to lead teams in prospecting for vital minerals and resources. This would involve identifying promising land, for certain resources, determining how viable resource deposits are, drilling for or excavating samples and performing analysis, all in the field.
Strengths: Clever, confident, good at thinking on his feet/improvising, decent in an impromptue melee fight, good in a ranged fight, skilled in setting ambushed and can make very good use of prep-time to build, set traps, place mines, position etc. Has proficiency in a wide variety of useful skills (mechanic work, bombmaker/user, first aid, wilderness survival), as well as much greater ability in others, some that are likely to be useful (i.e. piloting aircraft, marksmanship, cross-country hiking) and some that are probably far too niche (prospecting, maths, etc).
Weaknesses: On a scale of combat ability ranging from elite soldier to knife-wielding thug, he's somewhere around that of a single regular soldier. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, point is without fore-warning, prepared traps and explosives and an ambush ready, he would never be able to fight off a SWAT raid. Soldiers patrolling in APCs? Dead or running. He's best as part of a team of about two dozen fighters, attacking with surprise and stealth and nothing heavier than a mortar, against similarly or worse armed and trained enemies with greater or near-equal numbers to his group. Very little experience with urban combat, not trained for conventional warfare, much more used to irregular combat with low firepower on all sides. Would be at a huge disadvantage against a squad of modern soldiers with their optics and communication equipment regardless of other support on their side. Above average in melee combat but for example a good rugby player would beat him to death if he couldn't find a knife, run or improvise a weapon, so his 'good at melee combat' isn't gonna let him win a cage fight. With his general skills, he has 'weaknesses' that I don't want to list as weaknesses because they are more limitations; his first aid knowledge is only basic, his ability to repair vehicles and weapons is limited to basic universal things- can't do much at all to a helicopter, etc. Has the normal human weaknesses, of course. Then there's stuff like unfamiliarity with modern technology, 50s tech is the most he is familiar with, and that was about 7 years ago for him (50s in things like electronics and biology, his world was more like 70s in aeronautics, materials, radiation treatmant and rocketry, in there 1960s).
Equipment Requests: his rifle with a basic telescopic sight, atleast two dozen rounds of ammunition, his general survival/combat knife, his glasses and goggles (separate), a backpack with rations, a stove, some gas, a flaregun, a compass, a map of the area around Sakhalin (as far south as Shikoku, as far north as Kamchatka), a map of the Russian Far East (so of a smaller place) with ruins, known warlord territory, S.P.A.R. railway lines, resource outposts, and harbour outposts marked, a geiger counter, 3 emergency anti-radiation pills, a first aid kit, an opiate-based euthanasia kit, some rope, a folding shovel, a mineral sampling and sample-storage kit, the activation keys and manual to a portable prospecting drill rig, bottled water, telescope.
History: Born in 1942 in the London Commune, William grew up in the peaceful decades between two massive events of his world; the Mitteleuropan War (1912-1919) and the Cremation War (1961, 03/05 to 04/05). He remembered little of the post-war depression, and grew up in the boom-time of the 40s and early 50s, demonstrating all the enthusiastic optimism that was characteristic of his generation. He made friends, took tests, had relationships, went on holidays and generally did not do anything exceptionally bizarre. Starting at the age of 18, he attended the People's University of the Commune of Bristol, and began to recieve an excellent education in general engineering. As this was going on, the world was changing for the worse, re-polarising around the fascist bloc arising from the wreckage of continental europe. The Mitteleuropan War had, after immense bloodshed on both sides, ended with collapse for the Russians and French, over-zealous annexation by the Germans after a end-of-the-war coup by extreme nationalist Junkers, and subsequently another collapse, this time for the over-extended Germans. The ensuing power struggles and civil wars, with further loss of life for all involved, concluded with the destruction of the powerbase of the continental syndicalists, the Marxist-Debsists, the Anarchists and the rest of the wide range of socialist/left ideologies. Their enemies, dominated by the extreme-nationalist, white supremacists groups, were left (or rather, right), and went on to form a new order in Europe, rapidly rebuilding, rearming and generally being completely horrible. Understandably, this created an amazingly tense environment, as the arms race extended further and further between the fascist Wolfram Pact dominating Europe (and their allies in South Africa, Nationalist China (Northern China and Manchuria) and various other places) and the Syndicalist Internationale consisting of the United Communes of North America, the Federation of British Commune-Syndicates, the Free-French Workers League in the former French colonial holdings (France itself long a member of the Wolfram Pact), the People's Republic of China (Southern China, Taiwan, other bits) and various other nations. Many nations attempted to avoid joining either bloc, gravitating around the Brazilian Republic and the Republic of India in the non-aligned movement, however the majority of the world's firepower and wealth and population was on one side or another of the developing cold war. And most importantly, the Internationale and the Wolfram Pact had both made some judgement on what side of the line the powerful neutral nations would fall if push came to pushing the red button. Accordingly, they had included them in the ICBM programming; all major nations were under threat. This had quite the effect on Will and indeed most people, in that it was terrifying.
Still, most people continued on with their lives, as the assumption that the easily-avoidable apocalypse would not happen and so they should keep pursuing their goals, was a pretty good one. Will took a year-long internship as part of his course, in a geological engineering/petrochemical engineering company, and went along with them to Sakhalin where they were setting up new mines and refineries. It is here he found himself when the Cremation began and ended. In the chaotic years where the SPAR was on the brink of starvation and collapse, Will was assigned as an engineer at various resource extraction and processing compounds. Starting in 1964 he was added to an exploration group, group of 20-30 men and women sent out to update maps, establish contact, prospect for resources (Will's job) and generally explore, without dying in a snowstorm or bandit attack. He finds himself in the middle of one of these missions, somewhere deep to the west of the Lena River, when the Rift opens.
Personality: Optimistic, very goal-fixated and driven. Stubborn and talkative, sometimes fails to keep quiet when it is wise to. Sometimes as in significantly more than most people do. He is impatient with people being indirect, and struggles to admit failures, especially to people that haven't seen and acknowledged him suceeding. Speaks his mind unless he feels he can't get away with it. Hates being kept out of the loop, misinformed etc. Flattery will get you somewhere, Will loves the feeling of being clever and useful, so long as he trusts and respects the person saying all this. Probably hints at insecurities and a desire to force people to say 'you have value, congratulations, you have worth, you are superior, we prostrate ourselves before you and bring offerings' etc etc. To people he likes and respects, he is loyal and protective, and feels some pride that he acts this way, but is overly callous to people that don't fall into that category. His most immediately obvious and most dominant traits are loyalty, his immense (and beyond reasonable) self-confidence, and his desire to suceed and be known to have suceeded.
