Name:The Free Territories
Summary of Nation:The Free Territories are an anarchist confederation. There is no central authority overseeing everything. Instead, individuals are free to organise as they please, and are responsible for their own organisation and production. Some settlements are organised on broadly capitalist grounds, with residents owning their own private land to work on, while other settlements are more communal, with land held in common. Each settlement is responsible for its own defence, and for attracting caravans and settlers of their own accord.
History:Pre-War:
1929, and the Jianguo Kingdom is in crisis. For the past decade, the Kingdom has been fighting a low-intensity guerilla war against a group of liberal revolutionaries known as the Freedom Front. Though the Front lacked the power to take on the Royal Army head-on, they were causing enough of a nuisance to require a constant military presence in the areas they operated, and repressing them was getting expensive. Hoping to starve the Front of support, the King, Gongfei II, had passed a series of increasingly authoritarian laws aimed at stemming the growth of liberalism in the Kingdom, including strong restrictions of the freedom of speech, a mandatory curfew and the establishment of secret courts to try "enemies of the state", a category that was vaguely defined and completely arbitrary. These laws were supposed to prevent the Front from growing in popularity, but all the King managed to achieve was to turn the people against him.
Tensions came to a boil with the Kidnapping of Ina Mai. Ina was a schoolgirl who was arrested by the Jianguo, purportedly for spreading propaganda against the regime, and was tried in secret and found guilty. Freedom Front rebels ambushed the convoy that had been taking her to prison, and she was rescued unharmed. When the story reached the general population, it proved two things: one, that the government was tyrannical enough to punish children, and two, the government was too weak to enforce its own laws.
Protests swept the Kingdom as people took to the streets to decry the government's action. Protests quickly turned into riots, and then to revolution.
The Royal Guard couldn't suppress the revolutionaries in time, and many of Jianguo's largest cities fell to the revolutionaries, most notably the capital city of Washi, which forced Gongfei II to flee abroad. This gave the Freedom Front the opening it needed, and they escalated the conflict from a small-scale guerilla war to a full scale civil war. The Freedom Front would ultimately be the kingmakers of the Revolution, as not only had they been fighting the government for the longest, but their participation in the rescue of Ina Mai had given them a great deal of respect in the eyes of the public. However, the Front was far from the only movement active in the revolution, and many of the Revolutionaries were locally organised and entirely independent.
Forces loyal to Gonfei II quickly lost control of the major territories, and as the army's communication and supply lines were cut off, the generals were forced to make their own military policies without adhering to the chain of command. The Jianguo's soldiers were, unsurprisingly, not happy about having to fight their own countrymen in the name of a King who was too cowardly to stay in the country, and the Royalist side was devastated by mass defections. Those that stayed were typically more loyal to their general or to their steady wages than they were to the king, and by 1931, the Royalist side had all but ceased to exist. In their place were warlords, and these were far more amenable to the revolutionaries if it meant they could hold on to some vestige of power. Even these disappeared by 1932. Some were absorbed into the wider revolutionary movement, some surrendered, and others still were defeated and captured.
With the Jianguo defeated, there was some negotiation about what system should replace the old system. At first, the Revolutionaries had proposed the creation of a new democratic state. However, this was troubled by debate over exactly how the state would be run and what the rules on suffrage would be, and was opposed by the Freedom Front, who argued such a system could lead to a dictatorship by majority.
In the end, no-one could agree on the creation of a larger state, so it was decided that each settlement would instead manage and organise itself, with the consent of the people who lived in those settlements. This confederation of self-managing states would be protected by the Freedom Front, who would remain on a voluntary basis.
Outbreak of War:
The Territories had been expecting someone to claim their land as their own and invade for some time now. They just expected the danger to be more domestic. In a strange way, the rise of the Reiyk has bought the Territories some much-needed breathing room, since all their expected foes will now be turning against the new threat. But just because the threat isn't the one they thought it would be doesn't mean they are any less prepared.
Recent History:
The Freedom Front has returned to defend the Territories from invasion. Their primary effort has been to protect the homeland by distributing weapons, offering training and approaching other nations for heavy weapons. The Front hasn't just been passive, however, and has sent cells into Reiyk territory to disrupt supply lines.
Pressing Issues:The Free Territories is not a traditional nation, and does not have all the amenities of a traditional nation. Most notably, there is no standing army. Defensive warfare is the responsibility of every individual, who must supply and maintain their own weapons and develop their own strategies for how to protect their homeland. Quality varies wildly from settlement to settlement, and the lack of an overall command structure makes co-ordinating a defence very difficult.
Economic growth is also rather stunted. Settlements are self-sufficient for the most part, but lack much in the way of heavy industry, leaving the people with little in terms of firepower such as artillery and tanks. Obtaining such equipment is very dependent on how much their neighbours are willing to trust them, and when one neighbours self-professed anarchists, trust is something in very short supply.
Notable Strengths:In defensive terms, the Free Territories are especially troublesome to capture and hold. Every individual owns a weapon of some sort, and is familiar with the terrain in and around their homeland. With the fear of invasion being an ever present threat, most of the major communities have also taken it upon themselves to develop defensive plans and even build protective structures, and arms development and procurement has developed significantly from personal defensive weapons to true military gear.
On the offence, Free Territory partisans excel at terror warfare. Their preferred method of fighting is to send cells of partisans into enemy civilian territory to spread propaganda, assassinate officials and to blow up war material. These cells will also get in contact with traditional criminal enterprises to supply them with the means to more effectively harass the police and gendarmerie.
National Priorities:The Free Territories believes itself the only truly free region on the planet. Here, everyone is free to rise and fall based on their own merits, and to be truly successful, one only needs to put the effort in to achieve it. No one has higher status than anyone else: there are no rulers, no petty kings or corrupt politicians deciding what a stranger can or cannot do.
The Common People
Espionage and Intelligence
The Army
Agriculture
Resource Extraction
The Economy: Internal Trade
Technology
Cultural Issues
Industrial Output
Diplomacy
The Economy: External Trade
The Navy
Religion
The Upper Classes
Member
