[center][h3]The Grand Commonwealth and Third Empire of Moravia[/h3][/center]
[center][b]Capua, the Moravian Capital[/b][/center]
[center]Caesar Thaurissan's Second Inauguration Speech
January 15, 1940[/center]

In the capital there was a crisp, comfortable air, with every small eddy of wind whispering of the sweet smell of flowers. Gardens and fountains were everywhere to be seen, as were the ancient and monolithic buildings of marble that still stood as a testament to the renowned masons of the Old Moravian Empire. It was easy to see why the Qualians had moved their capital to these lands; it honored their heritage and legitimized their claims as the successors of the great empires before. Such a beautiful and regal land was fitting as the face of a nation and a seat of philosophy, art, and government.

As Stefan Thaurissan stepped out from the entryway of the palatial capitol building, moving between half a dozen colossal arches and columns, he finally found himself upon the raised tier at the building's foot. The capitol was on a small hill of its own; numerous stairs were cut into the side of this hill, leading down to tier after tier of plazas and squares below. All were utterly crowded with people, and Thaurissan stood above them all in plain sight. It was humbling, but in a way empowering as well. For every thousand people that came to see his inauguration in person, there would be another million reading about it on newspapers or listening to it on radios. Granted, there would be no surprise: everyone had known that Thaurissan would win his second election as easily as he had the first.

At this moment, however, the attention was not upon Thaurissan. Countless other important figures were present, convened in groups on the highest plaza or in other prominent locations: there were the nine High Justiciars in their black robes with bearing the aloof and stoic faces of the law, dozens of High Magistrates and lesser legislators, and a fair few Imperators and military officers. Needless to say, the area was filled with countless soldiers as well to maintain security.

Right now the attention was on none of these people, though: instead it was the Divine Prefect of Qualia that the people fixated on as he gave a long-winded speech. Normally this speech would be given by the one of the Caesar's closest friends and highest officials, but Imperator Geddon was still preoccupied with his tour of all the nation's military installations. So while the Divine Prefect had no true power and seemed a strange choice as speaker, as the de jure religious leader of the country his name was respected and he made a suitable substitute.

In the way of most clergymen, the Divine Prefect spurned prose in favor of flowery and inspirational, albeit empty language. The elderly man's soft voice expounded on microphone, "...along every hill and vale, across these wooded heaths and golden plains, between the highest clouded crags the deepest jungles, this land is blessed! Peace, prosperity, and good rulership have left us with much to be thankful for, and I bid that all of you praise our noble Caesar in your prayers tonight..."

Certainly, this man was smart. He could appeal to the crowds and put on the facade of being a wise and respectable father-figure, but in reality he was still a mere puppet. Granted, he at least made a better puppet than his quarrelsome predecessor. The man had openly spoke against the government and longed for a restoration of church rule, so it was fortunate that this one was more passive and agreeable. Thaurissan would not have wanted to see to the assassination of a second Divine Prefect...

As the Prefect's speech continued on, the Caesar stood silently in background atop the steps of the grand capitol building, lost in thought. For the time being, the horde of onlookers and throngs of journalists sprawled out before him were all invisible. Thaurissan's eyes looked only at the larger-than-life statues that loomed over the plaza below. Once there had stood marble statues of pagan gods and later Qualian kings; now, there were only statues in the likeness of the Commonwealth's two gods: the Heavenly Creator and the Caesar.

A small smile came across Stefan's cold face as the statues brought back a memory of his youth. "Father, why do all the streets have statues of you?" he had once asked as a small boy.

His father had answered, "I'm personally against seeing my picture and face everywhere. But it is what the people want."

[i]Indeed,[/i] Stefan now mused to himself. That was what the people wanted: a great and strong man as their leader, his presence and likeness larger than life and everywhere to be seen, immortalized in stone and nearly worshiped like some sort of pagan idol.

By now, the Divine Prefect's speech was drawing to a close. "...and lastly, my fellow countrymen, I would remind you that it is fortunate indeed that you were born into this glorious Commonwealth. By merit of that alone, we are greater in the Creator's eyes the heathenish fiends that we call Zenovii and Kataylans. I would remind you, too, that only upon the anvil of honor and piety is greatness forged, both in this life and in the next. I bid you love your fellows, love this great nation, and love the almighty Creator!"

What had merely been the occasional polite applause erupted into wild cheering at that last part, while the Divine Prefect made a show of bowing and slowly walking away to his seat. Now it was the Caesar's turn to speak. As Stefan stepped forth, the people quieted down. After a pregnant pause, he at last began.

"Esteemed countrymen all, it is with sincerity that I thank our Divine Prefect for his kind and inspiring words; I shall always strive to live up to the praise that he has bestowed upon me, and follow in his example of temperance and wisdom."

There was much applause and cheering, but also an air of anticipation as he moved past trifling formality and onto the true body of the speech.

"It is with honor and integrity that I accept this mantle of responsibility once again, and will continue to serve as Caesar and High Imperator. 

But above all else, it is with pride that I look out and see what Moravia has become, and what lies in our golden future. Economic growth continues exponentially; our manufacturing capacity is already surpassed by none, and the gap between Moravia and her competitors only grows. Our intelligence agencies and strategic analysts report that national security is the best that it has ever been. Never again will our people suffer as they did in the Great War, for our valiant army stands strong. Only in on the open seas does our influence wane and our adversaries claim dominance, but I assure you that steps are being taken to eradicate this weak point and all others."

The vast hordes of people were beginning to go wild, with even the dignified and upright government officials standing to applaud and cheer. His subtle references to the situation with Kataylabinsk did not go unnoticed. It was enough to create pride and a sense of security in the people, but not enough to be construed as a threat or tell foreign intelligence agencies anything that wasn't already blatantly clear.

"A new golden age dawns upon the entire world, and Moravia will be at its heart, driving forward! Each year our inventors and scientists make countless new discoveries that usher us into the new era. Izuno and Verendes have already joined us in this partnership, and many others will follow. Petty and ancient conflicts will end by the turn of the century: the age of freedom, science, and progress draws near! The rest of the world will abandon their backwards, barbaric, and erroneous ways and join us in the future, or be crushed beneath the wheels of change!"

This drew applause and cheering of such fervor that it was thunderous. The sound roared out from the sea of people below, recoiled upon the capitol hill, and echoed back over the surrounding city for all the world to hear.

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[center][b]Staban, a City in the Qualia Province[/b][/center]

Within the labyrinth of monolithic concrete buildings there were two cities. Soaring above all else and ruling from a world of their own that brushed the clouds, there were the rich who lived in great apartment complexes. Their skyscrapers were a comfortable distance away from inner city. In this world, a man's status only depended upon his money. As one metaphorically rose up through the ranks of his peers and accumulated wealth, he too rose in a literal sense. The richer a man was, the higher his abode in those towering skyscrapers, so as to distance himself even further from the slums below and spit upon the poor from all the higher.

Beneath the shadow of the smokestacks and factories that dominated the sky of the inner city were old, crumbling tenements. Here was the second world to be seen: the city of the downtrodden. The air on this particular day was stiflingly hot and choking, even in this time of year. The equatorial sun and the haze of soot that filled the sky made for a foul air.

The horrendous hours, meager pay, poor housing, and poorer still outlook made for a foul life. Though many of the pomp and high officials called this the Age of Industry, the Age of Prosperity, or the Age of Commerce, it had another side and another name: the Age of Oppression. There was only so much that a man could take.

What had started as drunken banter in a bar between one nameless worker and his fellows quickly turned into complaints of work, but then took a turn towards speech that was treasonous. With courage fueled in part by their desperation and in part by alcohol, they went to their fellow coworkers that very night, all that would listen, and created a petition. Their words fell on deaf ears. Next they held a strike at work, but alas, it was to no avail; all those that attended (a fair many less than expected) were fired on the spot. That initial spark had lead to a flame, and that flame had just been fanned to the point that it became a raging inferno. A riot broke out, lead by that one faceless worker that refused to be silenced.

With hammers they smashed the factory equipment, the mob overpowering the surprised security with sheer numbers alone. One of the security guards struck a man upside the head wit his baton, and from there all hell broke loose. That guard was beaten to death with the hammers. The homeless, the desperate, and the wretched exploited the chaos and robbed from any storefront in sight. The chaos spread to other factories and soon there were hundreds out in the street. Their conscience lost in the bestial cloud, floating away to muddle with the soot in the sky, several workers murdered their former overseers and employees, while the first factory and half the block were set aflame in the riot.

It all came to a sudden end when the distant wailing of sirens became audible. Instantly the bloodlust transformed into terror, and the mob began to surge down the streets. Some of the more clever ones managed to escape into narrow alleyways, but for those trapped in the middle of the panicking mob there was nowhere to run. The sirens soon became heard from all directions as the police encircled the block, cutting off all avenues of escape. When the trucks and cars finally drew into sight, hundreds of armed soldiers and police officers stormed out, all wearing masks. The reason for that became quickly apparent, as tear gas was unleashed into to indiscriminately subdue the crowd. Some wildly surged forward, attempting to break through the line of police officers. Their futile attempts ended at best with being beaten onto the ground, and then beaten into the ground by the stock of heavy rifles. In the case of a few, they were simply gunned down.

Over the next several hours, every last member of the crowd was rounded up, arrested, and packed into trucks to be taken to detainment facilities. All save three or four, that nameless, faceless man included. After asking who had started this rampage, who were the leaders of this riot, who were the terrorists, communists, and anarchists responsible, they had been given the same few names over and over. The leaders were betrayed and pointed out by their own friends, and then they too were arrested and found themselves brought to a separate place.

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"...but never take for granted our happiness and prosperity, for it was blood and sweat that built all three of the Great Moravian Empires," Thaurrisan continued, "and we must continue to shed blood and sweat to preserve this most sacred of things that we have built. It is through the honest, willing work of every Moravian that this nation has achieved such heights and will continue to rise further! Remember, our Creator's grace goes to the industrious and noble, the pious and brave, never to slothful and heathenish. That is why our State stands high, above all others..."

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[center][b]Grim Doral, Dwarven Outpost[/b][/center]
[center][b]Munitions Factory[/b][/center]
[center]One of many camps where enemies of the state serve out sentences of forced labor.[/center]

Prisoner 743130 had once been a man, but already those days seemed like distant dreams and the precious memories that he clung to were slipping away. He had slipped let slip his radical ideology to one set of ears too many, and the tyrannical fascists had arrested him. His trial in the People's Court had been a joke; when all of his neighbors were asked if they knew of any antisocial, unpatriotic, or otherwise troubling behavior of his, most had feigned ignorance. One of his neighbors, though, told them of every last statement he had heard that could possibly be construed as against the government or the status quo, and then made some absurd claim that his family had been threatened and he was too scared to inform the police until now. Naturally, the word of that man had been enough. The sentence was indefinite forced labor, to "suitably purge his mind of such evil beliefs" and "earn him a place back in the society that he had sought to betray", and thus one citizen had died and Prisoner 743130 had been born.

Prisoner 743130 had been assigned one job, one singular purpose in life. Day after day, he stood between a great heap of slag and half a dozen chutes, each one leading down to a great crucible below. It was his job to keep all of the furnaces filled with the right amount of slag to process, and so he and the other prisoners shoveled and operated the machinery for upwards of fourteen hours each day in a desperate bid to keep up with the near impossible task of maintaining so many furnaces.

The stony, half-depleted ore was smelted into a glassy, impure metal that was worthless for creating anything of value. So instead, it was shattered into small pieces by heavy machinery, and then other prisoners further down the assembly line packed it into grenades or shotgun shells as shrapnel. Their tired hands worked endlessly to power the very war machine that had enslaved them, and if they ever faltered, the cruel overseers had all manner of ways to 'motivate' them.

Day by day, shovel by shovel, he worked in a desperate attempt to buy back his freedom. This hell went on for six months, though it felt like a decade and took a great toll on his body. He tried once to make a hasty escape in the dead of night, but his pitiful attempt only resulted in a horrific beating, his next day's rations taken away, and his hours somehow stretched even further. So then he decided to bide his time. He planned his escape for weeks, and when the time came it was a success. He ran and ran once he was out, but he was weak. So much weaker than he had thought... It all ended with him hearing the baying of bloodhounds, and then he was arrested once again. But as he was told by the guard that caught him, there's only one place that fugitive prisoners can go. 

His back against the wall, he looked to his side. He saw just another man, though this one seemed like his life had been better off. He looked to have been just another faceless, nameless worker. Perhaps the man had resorted to thievery to get what his wage couldn't, or made the mistake of rebelling against the oppressors. Prisoner 743130 squirmed, pressing further into the cold wall at his face. He looked up at the smoke-filled skies. He looked anywhere but forwards. The next moment, the firing squad took aim and carried out the mass execution. The repeating clicking and thunderous bangs of semi-automatic rifles firing filled the air while bullets tore through Prisoner 743130, the leaders of the recent riots in Staban, and the other two dozen criminals lined up against the wall.

[center]~==--==--==~[/center]

"...while the Divine Prefect's wise words on the blessing of peace rang true through all our hearts, remember that peace and liberty, precious as they are, must be defended with blood and steel. To the man that says, 'Let there be peace in my day!' I proclaim that no true Moravian should suffer such cowardice in his heart! If we shy away from defending our great nation and the tenets that it was founded upon, in the name of having peace in our day, then we will be condemning our children to live with the cowardice of our generation and fight the battles that should have been ours. That, my countrymen, is why we must not grow too fond of peace! Never shall we look for needless war, but we must always stand strong and ready to fight, less the barbaric States that have long been our anathema reduce us to ashes that they might be kings of a ruined world.

That having been said, we must not resort to barbarism. While the Kataylans use the substance known as fyrurok to incinerate and suffocate the brave men that their own soldiers are too cowardly to face in a battle of men, and the insipid Fusonese send [i]women[/i] onto the battlefields as soldiers, we must always stand with honor and dignity. To do anything less would make us stoop to their level, and bring shame upon our great legacy."

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[center][b]Outside the Town of Lusitania, in the Westernmost Region of the Modern Commonwealth[/b][/center]
[center]~20 years ago, during the Conquest of the Moravian Gulf[/center]

"General, they have entrenched themselves one mile away. We await the order to charge their lines!" the courageous Forward Commander said.

"No," General Geddon answered gruffly. "Why bother throwing away our lives fighting the likes of them? Artillery Commander, advance the gun batteries. Bombard them with [i]everything[/i] that we have. Blast them into oblivion."

"Of course. Insects deserve to be crushed," another officer laughed. "Why afford them the dignity of a real fight?" 

The command was quickly relayed. An hour later, the Moravian batteries were in position and they began to open fire. Valiantly, the enemy suffered and died in those trenches for nearly half an hour, their resolve showing no signs of breaking. At last, the Moravians grew tired of wasting ammunition.

The command was relayed for the guns to switch from explosive to chemical rounds. First, they unleashed volley after volley of shells containing white phosphorus. The chemical burned and produced a haze of white smoke so thick that one could hardly see his own hands. The stuff burned the flesh and eyes of the defenders, and left them helpless to even spot, much less stop the Moravian tanks that began to advance their way. But that wasn't all. Among the hail of shells that had unleashed phosphorus had been a few filled with a far more potent toxin: phosgene. Helpless t communicate or even run in the fog created by the phosphorus, the extremely toxic phosgene condemned at least half of the entrenched men to a tortuous death of suffocation before the phosphorus even rolled away. 

What ragged, broken remnants of a fighting force remained began to retreat from their trenches. They were annihilated by the Moravian tanks that took up pursuit. Those that were taken prisoner were loaded onto trains and sent into the heartlands of Moravia, to be exploited as forced labor. On that day, not even a dozen Moravian soldiers were killed, but the combined deaths of the enemy from that battle and the subsequent occupation of Lusitania numbered in the hundreds if not thousands.

General Geddon would go on to become one of the highest ranking Imperators, and one of the foremost faces of the Commonwealth.

[center]~==--==--==~[/center]

"...and to those who question why we would speak of peace, yet support Izuno and fight a battle that is not ours, I would answer: because that battle [i]is[/i] ours, and in a way, we [i]are[/i] Izuno! Like the Kataylans (who betrayed our ancient empire and act as its legitimate successors when they are more akin to its deformed, bastard offspring), the Shogunate of Izuno fights an ancient war against the Fusonese traitors that tore their once-great empire in twain in a petty attempt to merely seize power. Izuno stands in a similar position to us. Their government and people are agreeable and brave, and their land has much resources that they have offered to us, as I am sure you all know. 

So ask not why stand with our ally Izuno, and ask instead why we do not do more to aid them! In light of their recent defeat against the Fusonese Fleet, I hereby make a commitment on behalf of the Commonwealth to double the quantity of all military supplies and armaments being shipped annually to the Izuno Shogunate. May they find victory, and the solace in the peace that will follow!"

What had started as confusion with no small amount of grumbling transformed into cheers from the crowd as Thaurissan continued. The Caesar imagined that this would end the fierce debates regarding the Commonwealth's continued support of Izuno, at least until the next major battle brought that nation into the news and people began to care about it for a week or two before forgetting about it all again. That was the way that the cycle worked.

"But as trying days come, we must keep an open mind and look to other countries that might not resemble us so much. We stand strong with Izuno and Verendes, but we must too look for friends in other places to find a place of maximum security and influence over the world's doings. To that ends, I will take the unprecedented step of attempting to establish closer relations with the Heavenly Empire of Yllendthyr. Long have the Moravians and elves kept to their own, but no longer; in my visions of the glorious future, I can see what greatness would come about for both parties were we to pursue closer delegations. That is why I would like to publicly extend to the Prime Minister of Yllendthyr an offer to visit our Grand Commonwealth and speak with me, on behalf of his emperor and his country. Already, our embassy is proposing the details."

Thaurissan's speech continued, the Caesar brushing on all topics from increasing employment rates to modernizing the rural, outermost reaches of the nation. It was not until many hours later that he retired, only after he felt utterly exhausted and the crowds' throats were hoarse from cheering. For all the facades of friendliness and being a peoples' man that he put on, Thaurissan hated addressing the public; he would look forward to a restful next few weeks before he anticipated needing to give another speech.