Name of Nation: The Anvegad Empire [hider][img]http://flag-designer.appspot.com/gwtflags/SvgFileService?d=3&c1=3&c2=1&c3=3&o=6&c4=1&s=14&c5=3[/img][/hider] Government: Parliamentary Monarchy Species: Humans and assorted demihuman part-beast population (predominantly wolfkin and rabbitkin) Culture: [hider=My Hider] Anvegad is a very culturally diverse empire, owing to it's origins as a hundred minor city-states and kingdoms. While acceptance of the National Assembly and the King of Anvegad as overall ruler is absolute, individual territories are still permitted considerable autonomy and their own cultural traditions. As a whole, their society is slanted towards authoritarian principles and emphasis on the nation over the individual. General Anvegadians tend towards a very "work hard, play hard" attitude with high focus on labor and productivity, and proceeding to party in the beer halls afterwards. Certain quirks of it's origins and diverse population with a sizable demihuman minority include several female-dominated city-states and wildly differing attitudes towards marriage and family structure. This has resulted in more than a few kerfluffles in the post-Unification War consolidation of the Empire that still remain today and are visible in the all-female regiments originating from the more hardcore matriarchal states. By and large most citizens just put up with the antics of other city-states so long as nobody is in too much askance of their own, though it seems to be a baffling system at times to outsiders. Socially, demihumans are treated as second-class citizens across most of Anvegad territory. While no systematic persecution is in place, they are economically and politically disadvantaged and tend to be looked down upon. The primary exception is the meritocratic military, where anyone can rise in position so long as they have ability. Two of the Great Eight were demihumans. Religiously, the dominant faith in the Anvegad Empire is Yiggidism and the worship of the Valkyries that maintain the link between the mortal Midrealm and the higher Celestial Realm through the tree of Yiggdrasil. By this faith, all souls must earn their ascent to the Celestial Realms and to become one with the Valkyries and achieve true enlightenment, those unfit to ascend are returned to the mortal midrealm, while the worst deviants are rendered into the material of the world tree. While not a official state religion, the common faith was a key plank in the unification of the Anvegad territories and is widely respected. The core tenants of the faith are loyalty, duty, honor, valor, family, and justice, with a typical follower expected to display their faith through action rather than prayer. While the stereotype of a worshipper is a death-seeking berserker on the battlefield (not unjustified given habits of some more zealous units during the Hundred Kingdoms conflicts still clung to by some cavalry regiments), the modern faith instead espouses a need to fight on behalf of those who cannot. A soldier must fight and survive for the sake of saving the souls of the factory workers and farmers who are unfit to be frontline soldiers, while in turn the families and civilians must render total loyalty and support to those fighting for their souls. [/hider] History: [hider=History] The Empire of Anvegad was once simply the city-state of Anvegad, one of the Hundred Kingdoms of the Northwest subcontinent that were endlessly locked in a cycle of conflict and competition since the Silver Age of Feudalism. Alliances would shift and change with every war, no pact or agreement was upheld for long. Most foreign powers kept from intervening in the region for the simple reason it would be a nightmarish task trying to occupy the place. It would ultimately take eight heroes of Anvegad to begin the long process of uniting the city-states into a nation by the beginnings of the Age of Industry. Some by force with miraculous victories of encirclement and maneuver, or simply the implementation of heavy artillery and imported fortress-buster howitzers. Some via diplomacy with marriage pacts secured in love, or assassination of the worst warmongers of rival states. The Unification War would be a decades-long struggle of politics, war, and maneuver, but under the Great Eight it was a inevitability eventually accepted by all. Ultimately it would end not in martial victory, but mutual acceptance of While today there remains political and economic divisions between the varying cities and territories of Anvegad, the nation has rallied around the idea of being all one people in the face of a changing world and a desire to end the cycle of revenge for the sake of a Golden Age. But there are very few who believe it will last for long, even as the leaders of Anvegad proclaim wishes for peace and a desire to stay out of foreign wars. [/hider] Territory Claims: Economy: [hider=My Hider] Anvegad is a large nation with widespread resources, as well as a strong heavy industrial slant in their modernization efforts. Past leaders and policies slanted toward autarky (self-reliance) in the face of the collapse of the Anvegad navy and decision to stay out of colonial land-grabs have resulted in Anvegad being able to cover most of its core economic and resource needs on domestic assets alone, though it is still open to foreign trade of its strengths (manufactured goods, oil, high-grade anthracite coal, aircraft) to cover for relative shortfalls (rubber, aluminum, shipbuilding). With a lack of a navy and a merchant marine, Anvegad has had no choice but to rely upon private sector merchants for maritime trade, as well as embrace the probable reality that if war breaks out they will have no overseas trade. While this won't cripple Anvegad like it would more global powers, it does put a crimp in their ability to expand their economy and production power to remain competitive with the world. [/hider] Technology: [hider=My Hider] Technologically, Anvegad rates average by world standards across the board. While hardly a world-leader in technology, it has strived to keep apace with the world and implement the most critical developments as fast as possible while letting the private market assimilate the rest. This in part stems from the sheer size and population of Anvegad making it difficult to rapidly implement change even when the nation as a whole is behind it. In many ways this has actually been to their benefit in adopting the best practices of other powers while avoiding the potentially costly and disastrous expenses of developing experimental hardware completely on their own, but the list of Anvegad "firsts" is distressingly short. [/hider] Army: The Anvegad Army is divided into the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and logistics divisions. [hider=Anvegad Infantry] The Infantry corps is the backbone of the military and it's largest organization in terms of manpower. As a whole, the infantry corps is slanted towards slow-moving siege and assault warfare as a result of the final conflicts of the unification wars and lessons learned from the bitter city-fighting in the last holdouts, as well as a hard calculus in being unable to motorize more than a fraction of the legions of troops even with Anvegad's growing automobile industry. The majority of trucks they do have are devoted to logistical support rather than moving troops around, and renders the frontline infantry to be a mighty colossus with a lumbering gait. In total, the Anvegad Army maintains a standing army of 100,000 full-time professional regulars, approximately 400,000 reservists and regional defense troops at partial combat readiness that can be mobilized relatively quickly, and theoretically millions of troops in event of a maximum conscription mobilization. Actually mustering, training, and mobilizing all of the potential conscripts from hundreds of different territories and states is a daunting logistical challenge even for Anvegad however, and one it's military leaders are hesitant to draw upon due to the probable organizational hell a maximum mobilization would entail, ontop of the questionable combat effectiveness of the conscripts. But the will, patriotism, and plans to do so are in place if necessary. The standard firearm of the Anvegad Infantry is the Zeirchmeister mark-2 Armory Rifle, a heavy caliber bolt-action firearm built for high stopping power and reliable fire rates at expense to range and accuracy under the general pretense that the average soldier rarely uses their weapon at maximum range and putting more rounds downrange with only one shot out of five in a clip needed to kill matters more than precision. Inaccuracy can be compensated by multiple riflemen shooting at once. The Armory Rifle also benefits from a extremely sturdy closed-feed bolt design that gives it considerable reliability even in adverse conditions of dirt and mud, though this slightly complicates manufacture under existing machining techniques. It is also fitted with a bolt mount for dagger and sword type bayonets as needed while basic cleaning supplies are stored in the stock for regular maintenance. The Anvegad Army is also a keen adopter of machineguns, with the crew-served Hildir-06 serving as their core automatic weapon alongside licensed copies of foreign guns rechambered for Anvegad heavy rounds. Ongoing modernization efforts have put a recent emphasis on supplying them en-masse to infantry units since designs for semi-automatic rifles turned out to be busts, but presently only a handful of divisions have more than ten organized into five-gun support sections meant to function as strongpoints on a battlefield for infantry to rally and operate around. The primary flaw of the weapon is it's sheer weight even compared to other commonly used water-cooled HMG's of the time, requiring a six-person crew to effectively haul and operate, and several more to haul sufficient ammunition and replacement barrels for extended use. While studies are underway to develop a lighter version for squad-level use, they are largely paper-drawings and theories for now. On a more contentious note, several rabbitkin units from the eastern city-states also utilize shotguns for close-quarters skirmishing companies in lieu of armory rifles. While problematic to use both tactically in field combat and logistically for their specialty ammunition and the various rabbit units still being unable to standardize upon twin or quad-barrel break-action shotguns or newer pump-action tube-fed guns, the Rabbit "Blitzer" units swear by them for city-fighting and assaulting strongpoints. Use of the shotguns is almost considered a war-crime by other Anvegad units that were on the receiving ends during the Unification War, especially given the lethal "Ripper" shrapnel ammunition commonly used, but for now they are still in use for lack of a more civilized replacement that is just as portable, lethal, and useful in close-quarters situations. [/hider] [hider=Anvegad Cavalry Corps] The use of mounted infantry has a wildly disparate history among the former city-states. Some favored cavalry as mounted horse-archers in cycling shoot-n-scoot maneuvers, others as heavily armored spearheads to break through enemy formations. Even after unification, there has been little effort to standardize the cavalry and they retain most of their regional trappings and unit traditions from before Unification. Typically a cavalry trooper is equipped with some level of body armor (curass for light cavalry, partial plate for heavies), a melee weapon (sabers for skirmishers and light, halberds for heavies), and a rifle supplemented by multiple pistols for shooting and close-quarters gunslinging. The cavalry is in slight competition with the artillery corps owing to their refusal to turn over their integrated horse-artillery units over to centralized fire command, with almost all of the units believing that tactical attached artillery matters more than indirect fire. The age of cavalry is seemingly waning, unless they can find their chance to shine once again. [/hider] [hider=Anvegad Artillery Corps] The Anvegad Artillery Corps has a long and venerable history as a meritocratic and battle-proven pillar of Anvegad military success since it's initial inception as Prince Ozo's Royal Artillery, which would go on to lay down the basic tenants of artillery warfare against fortresses to be followed into the modern age. In recent times since the development of the hydropenumic reciprocator in artillery pieces, Anvegad has begun to lag behind other nations in the adoption and implementation of the latest fire control and direction systems. Rather than try to create inferior copies of their own and try to kitbash them into existing systems, Anvegad has instead focused on mass-producing the guns they have for saturation bombardments and laying down the logistical basis for longer and more extensive bombardments than ever before. By certain flukes of bureaucracy and hard-headed perfectionism by the current Supreme Gunmaster, logistical plans have been drawn up to the extent of weeks-long bombardments across miles of frontline with thousands of guns, a terrible nightmare scenario most gun-commanders are hesitant to consider even upon the worst enemies of Anvegad. But according to the logistical math, it is more than possible with the scope of modern industrial power so long as the right preparations are made [/hider] [hider=Logistics and Signals Corps] The ALSC is the second-largest division of the Anvegad military behind the infantry in terms of manpower and the artillery in material assigned to it, and for good reason. While stories are sung about the valor of the cavalry and the sacrifice of the nameless soldiers on the frontlines, few appreciate the titanic effort it takes just to get them there in the first place. Many disasters and miracles during the Unification Wars would cement the importance of solid logistics in the minds of Anvegad's generals, and it's importance has only increased as artillery and aircraft are seen as increasingly crucial in the great war to come. The ALSC is responsible for managing military railroads, supply routes, telephone and telegraph lines, and a number of labor battalions and field sapper units in support of frontline troops. Its responsibilities have only grown since the advent of industrial warfare and all the horrifying prospects it brings, and there is active talk of contingency plans for the ALSC to begin to branch into direct control civilian sectors as well to secure production and logistics in event of incompetence or sudden urgent demand for short periods. [/hider] [hider=Anvegad Navy] Despite it's large size, the Anvegad Empire was never a naval power by any measure. Bad coastlines, lack of long-term planning during the city-state period, and a focus on land warfare have left it's ports limited in size and shipyards only fit for civilian freighters at most. After a series of disastrous operations in it's past and a hurricane that drowned the last Active Fleet and crippled the Merchant Marine, Anvegad is ill-inclined to engage in another expensive military shipbuilding program and has turned the surviving naval elements into a Artillery external ordinance bureau manning coastal batteries and navy-schools to maintain some institutional experience in the hopes of one day restoring the merchant marine. But no Anvegad leader believes that day will come any time soon by Anvegad shipyards alone. For now Anvegad's coasts are defended by horrid terrain and strong internal lines to surround and crush attempts at naval invasion, while it's generals accept the reality of no naval power projection for the foreseeable future. [/hider] [hider=Anvegad Air Force] One of the few fields Anvegad has pioneered in the industrial age is flight, with the world's first biplane having taken off from the workshop of a Anvegad inventor and the design quickly being militarized during the final stages of the Unification War to improve recon and later for coordinating artillery strikes. While other powers have since surpassed Anvegad in pure technology of flight, the fledgling Anvegad air force has the organization and experience few can match in close air-artillery coordination and support for thousands of aircraft, with an estimated 1,500 planes in service of the Empire by 1910 (partly due to the collapse of the Navy forcing a replacement for coastal patrol craft). While Anvegad's planes are predomiantly for scouting and artillery spotting, to the point where there are dedicated squadrons for specific gun-regiments, few think the skies will remain peaceful for long, and plans are already being made for armed warplanes with bombs and machineguns, while airplane manufacturers are preparing for production above and beyond anything asked before. [/hider] Rolls: (Can be generated by using 'rp!roll' in the Discord server.) [hider] 19 - Territory - Your nation is magnificently sized, a premiere empire of the day. There is plenty of land to go around. 13 - Tech - Your nation is decently modern, with an effective grasp of technology. It is by no means a trend setter, but it stays up. 6+4 - Army Size - Your army is decently sized, and is maintained year-round. 16 - Economy - Your economy is slightly above-average, and the nation can usually fund what it needs. 14 - Production - Your nation is somewhat majority industrial, with decent resource exploitation. 1 - Navy Size - You have no navy. 19+1- Airforce Size- You have a massive air force made up of a huge amount of biplanes. 9 - Mobilization Ability - It takes two months to mobilize.[/hider] Other: