Vilageidiotx

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Dinh AaronMk said
Well, I guess that was the post.

Ouch =p

Precipice of War - Oh Woe the West

writing manual bb (or qq) code reminds me of the good old days. vury nostalgia.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

ETHIOPIA INFORMATION SHEET 3.0


LINKS
MCF Infosheet
Sporum Infosheet
Detailed Map

CHARACTERS

Royal Family: House of Solomon (Solomonic Dynasty)
-(Emperor Yohannes V). Deceased. Born June 2nd, 1915. Assassinated in 1974.)
-Empress Dowager Elani. nee. "Elani Aman". Born January 11th, 1922. Description/Introduction

-Emperor Yaqob II. Born January 7th, 1953. Description/Introduction
--Title: His Imperial Highness: Emperor (Negus Negast) of Ethiopia and Unified Africa
-Empress Azima. nee. "Azima bint Hassan al-Soomaaliyeed" Born September 30th, 1955. Description/Introduction
-Sahle. Currently goes by the alias "Samel" Deposed former Emperor and older brother of Yaqob. Born December 18th, 1946. Description/Introduction
-Princess Taytu. Born April 20th 1951. Serves as Foreign Affairs Advisor on the Imperial Advisory Board and is the older sister of Yaqob Description/Introduction

-Prince (Lij) Tewodros. Born July 21st, 1978. Son of Yaqob and Azima. Description/Introduction
-Olivier Gezi. Orphaned during the Katanga Rebellion and maimed by Ras Hassan. Born February 23rd, 1977. Adopted son of Taytu. Description/Introduction

Royal Retainers
-Mvuli Tansi. Captain of the Imperial Guard. Hero of the Katanga Rebellion, where he lead the Lost Battalion through enemy territory. Lost his eye to Caleb Banks, a rogue Mormon Missionary. Lost his leg to a Gorilla. Description/Introduction
-Dr. Malcom Orji. Elani's Dementia Doctor. Student of Doctor Babukar Sisi. Description/Introduction

Diplomats and Foreign Relations Personal.
-Ita Thabiti. Assistant Adviser for Foreign Affairs. Close friend and right hand of Princess Taytu. Description/Introduction

Ethiopian Military
- Ras Hassan Yusuf al-Soomaaliyeed. Commander of the Pan-African Armed Forces. Father of the Empress and grandfather of Lij Tewodros. Description/Introduction
- Ras Rais. Commander of the Pan-African Army. Description/Introduction

--The Army is Divided into "Sefari".
---1st Sefari. Stationed in Gondar. Commanded by General Ojore Sentwala.
---2nd Sefari. Stationed in Chad. Commanded by Ras Zayed.
---3rd Sefari. Stationed in Katanga. Commanded by General Biniam.
---4th Sefari. Stationed in Swahililand. Commanded by General Idrissa, the hero of Ta'if.
---5th Sefari. Stationed in Chari near the border with Spain. Commanded by General Motogusinile
---6th Sefari. Stationed in Sudan near the border with Egypt. Commanded by General Fergessa.
---7th Sefari. Stationed in Hejaz in order to keep the peace. Commanded by General Peyisai.
---8th Sefari. Stationed at the mouth of the Congo. Commanded by General Chisulo Iskinder.

-Walinzi: The Intelligence, Special Forces, and Investigative office of the Pan-African nation. Commanded by Hakim Mossadeq.
--Commander Mossadeq: Description/Introduction
--Agents
---Leyla Masri. Assassinated the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire by changing his heart medication and seducing him.Description/Introduction
---Elias Zelalem/u]. Leyla's Walinzi partner. Description/Introduction

Sahle's Entourage
-[u]Aailyah. Sahle's Girlfriend. Maimed in Cairo by Stanley Barnham. Description/Introduction
-Yared. Krar Player, plays in band with Sahle. Description/Introduction
-Marc. Cornet, Trumpet, and Saxophone player. Known for ability to procure narcotics. Description/Introduction

Sahle's Aquaintances as Samel.
-Stanley Barnham. Known as the "Sheikh of Cairo." Oil-rich man who overseas the nightlife in Egypt. Stabbed Aaliyah in eye after disagreement, shot by the witless entertainer Bozo. Survival assumed.
-Vasily. From Russia. Bouncer at the "Dead Man's Den." in Sevan, Armenia. Description/Introduction
-Sanos Horasian. Often called simply "The Old Man." Operates the bar called "The Dead Man's Den." Description/Introduction
-Oziryan. Armenian Crime Boss in Sevan. Description/Introduction
-Vladmira. Russo-Finnish woman with a flirty disposition and nice tits. Description/Introduction
-Darcho/. Shitty Comedian. Description/Introduction

People of Africa
-Dr. Babukar Sisi. Psychologist. Neurosurgeon. Smuggler. Drug Kingpin. Advisor to the Walinzi and Ras Hassan. Secretly a Mad Scientist. Description/Introduction

POSTS
1:RP Introduction. Sahle dreams and arrives in Armenia.
2:Imperial Women explore Addis Ababa, Parade celebrating defeat of Ottomans.
3:Sahle arrives in Sevan, is hired at the Dead Man's Drink.
4:Party at Imperial Residence. Taytu mingles.
5:Sahle does LSD before a show. There is an attempted shooting.
6:Sisi reflects on Malta, Addis Ababa, and crazy brain stuff.
7:Elani is senile. That sucks.
8:Taytu gets drunk and talks about Egypt and threat of war with Spain
9:Sahle reunited with Aaliyah after shooting.
10:Hassan daydreams, watches gasmask fashion show, talks to Yaqob about tactics and movies.
11:Sisi visits Hejaz, watches a very complicated headache. Walinzi afraid Spain will learn of it.
12:Leyla and Elias ride the ENS Aksum to Port Fuad. Details of the Sultan's death.
13:Leyla and Elias do some actions in Port Said/Fuad.
14:Sahle is introduced to Oziryan, gets some primo shit.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

May 1st, 1980: Sevan, Armenia

The sun set over an old, blocky cobblestone cottage to the west. Red sunlight burned through its empty windows like fire, and when it disappeared over the horizon it felt like a chill had taken the air. For the four musicians, it was time to rest.

Yared drove their new ride off of the road. They had found it abandoned on the border of Syria and Armenia, lacking only gas and a driver. It was some military vehicle, thick and olive drab with a solid armored body and the smell of rust about it. It drove rough and sounded rougher, sputtering and choking like something near death, but they kept her moving all the same. There was only a front seat, as long as a sofa but made like a steel bench. In the back, there was nothing but empty space and a cold metal floor, and the red-stained weld marks that bubbled along the wall. They had covered it in blankets to warm it, but a ruffled sheet or a folded edge sometimes exposed the skin to the chilly steel below.

Yared bounced in his seat as they drove over folds in the landscape. His baggy clothes flopped on every bump. He did not look like someone who should be driving this rig. His bushy beard and the small-framed pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses posed playfully on his nose was a far cry from whatever soldier or rebel had sat on this seat before him. His freckled black skin was certainly different then the Turks who had owned this thing before, and even here he wore a contented smile as he drove.

They found a place on the other side of a bald hill and stopped. All the hills were bald here - trees were as rare as people in the Armenian countryside. Instead, a rolling grass plain surrounded them, green except for where it was brown, which was often enough that either color described half of it. In front of them, a long lake stretched on endlessly on either side, but they could see the shore distantly in front of them. Turquoise waters caught the wind and marched across the jeweled surface in gentle lines.

"This should be it, friends." Yared said. "We can sleep here for tonight."

"How far are we from Sevan, brother?" Marc asked. His voice was hoarse from smoking for the entirety of the last hour. The younger man, he wore baggy clothes in the same way as Yared and had the same dark African skin, but he was clean shaven and had the look of someone who was about to fall asleep.

"It's right over there, brother." he pointed. A vague orange glow stained the northern sky, hugging the hills next to the lake.

They had heard it from Armenians and Syrians, Palestinians and Greeks. As the Ottoman Empire fell into pieces, Armenia had turned into a sort of temporary leader. There were still grudges and differences that made the relations between individual people run chilly, but the threat of their shared Turkic foe brought them together all the same. Armenia was a place to find weapons and training. Armenia was a place to meet with foreign ambassadors and discuss shared tactics. And in Armenia, Sevan was a place to get drunk and find a whore. The small resort town brought foreign agents and ambassadors just as quick as it did middle eastern rebels, and soon enough expatriates brought exotic foods and exotic ways to accommodate them. There had been a war on the front, but there was party behind it all in Sevan.

And they were a band. They had been fleeing since Cairo, where Barnham had taken Aaliyah's eye. He would have taken more if they hadn't run, and they were still running. The thought of settling down seemed like a dream coming to life, and they were nearly there.

"Samel, brother, are you going to want some of the shit?" Marc grinned.

Samel. That was still his name here. He had been born Sahle, first son of Emperor Yohannes of Ethiopia. He had been that, and more. When his father died, he had been Emperor for a time, but his brother had overthrown him and assassins had driven him out of his mansion-prison. Now he was Samel, a traveling musician of no accord. He had grown a beard to hide his face, and grown his hair out long for good measure, but somewhere inside he was still Sahle, and nobody could ever know.

Not even her. Aaliyah. He had fallen in love with her in Cairo, and she had lost an eye for it. His dark haired Bedouin beauty. She was hardly five foot tall, but she was thick in the chest and her remaining eyes was as green as its twin had been before Barnham. Even the place she had been wounded was covered with not but a delicate silk bandage. He has caused that maiming, he always felt. He had caused it by suggesting they skim money off the top. But she still loved him, and he only wished that she could know who he was.

"Yeh." he nodded, ready to hide from his feelings. "I'm ready for some shit."

They crawled in the back, all except Yared who seemed to be enjoying the view of the lake. They had mescaline and mushrooms and acid and cannabis. Sometimes Sahle wondered how Marc managed to maintain his stash - he was stoned more than he was sober, yet he still had the wits to find all the drugs he needed to replenish his supply. Sahle never questioned him. He seemed to know what mixed with what, and and he always delivered the feelings Sahle wanted.

Yared turned on the radio. Armenian folksongs. Yared looked at the static-babbling machine as if it had just farted. "I hope this is not what they expect us to play, friends." he giggled.

"It sounds like somebody dropped all their grandpas instruments down the stairs." Marc choked.

"And listen now." Yared said, "He is getting yelled at for it."

Smoke filled the truck, and soon its rusty smell joined with richer scents. Aaliyah had curled into a blanket, and Sahle wrapped himself around her. The world seemed to throb in his vision, and it gave him a headache. He closed his eyes.

The music came to an end, and the strong monotone voice of an old man began to drone in its place.

"This is the news, from the Armenian people and to the Armenian people. The time is twenty two hundred hours."

Sahle began to drift into sleep, and the newsman's voice accompanied him. At first it played in the back of his mind, like a soundtrack for the night.

"The Turkish Government have claimed that the Greek incursions on their lands on the Aegean coast of Anatolia is an illegal breech of their sovereignty. Meanwhile, the Turks have yet to reclaim the capital city of Istanbul, which remains in the hands of the civilian coup which took control of the city after the death of Suleiman the third was first reported."

And then the voice started to fade. Sentences fell apart, and a dream took over.

"At twelve hundred hours today, Turkish officials confirmed..."

He dreamt of an ancient city crumbling into ruin. In front of him, an towering domed church painted in rusty pinks cast a shadow and bells rang. A man in flowing white robes and a great red turban stood in front of it, jewels flowing from his wrists and neck and a twice-pronged cross on his brow. Blood and semen gushed from an invisible wound in his chest, and it was all gone.

"the third is dead. It is official as of ten hours ago..."

And then the voice ceased, and all that was there was the dream, and it kept going.

A man with sharp features and hair as black as coal sat atop a throne of disembodied hands black with rot. His suit and face alike were covered in a thing layer of white dust, and he laughed hysterically until one of the putrid hands grabbed his ankle and caused him to scream. Into smoke, he and his grisly chair were gone.

In their place, one thousand banners danced against each other to a visceral drumbeat, catching fire from an invisible torch and burning up like matchsticks until there was only one, and its pole was tipped with a spearhead. In a moment, it was gone as well.

An elderly Asian man sat in a simple canvas chair, his palm pressed against his forehead. He was surrounded by younger men of his race, and they bickered amongst themselves while he remained quiet. When everything around them caught fire, his comrades did not seem to notice, but he did, and he looked defeated. The smoke swallowed them and they disappeared.

A faceless army marched across fields and left mud behind them. In front of them, a bearded eagle proudly carried a land deed and shoved it in the face of a rabid bear. The bear roared and they vanished in a puff.

Fainter dreams followed. It felt as if he were looking at something he was not supposed to see. An alligator was smothered by a red flag, and the sea drowned a young wasp nearby, washing it all away. In its place, he saw a jungle that stretched from coast to coast. It began to wither and die until there was only a patch left on the eastern shore, and then it was gone. A man in chains offered his hand to a king, but the king spurned him and shook hands with the mans master instead.

When he awoke, the radio had turned back to folk music. Yared had fallen asleep in the front, and his head was draped uncomfortably over the top. In the corner, Marc was hugging a long pipe, and its thin glow was the only light in the compartment. Night had brought the cold, and tousled blankets had left patches of the cold steel floor exposed to his skin. He shivered and sat up, then realized Aaliyah was not there.

Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he opened the back hatch. The unoiled hinges cried and scraped as the hatch swung open, and Sahle leapt to the ground. His bare feet felt the cool ground and scratchy half-green grass between his toes. There was a strong breeze, and it carried the wet sounds of the lake with it. By now, the moon had taken the sky, and the blackness was filled with infinite stars.

He saw her at the crest of the hill, staring out across the water. The wind caught her hair, and the fringes of the white dress she had wore ever since Bethlehem. He walked up to her and pressed himself against her shoulders.

"We should be sleeping." he said.

She was silent for a moment, leaning into him but saying nothing. He could feel her warmth, and it was his favorite thing in the moment.

"It is over there." she said, pointing out across the lake. "What we have been wanting."

The orange glow seemed close, only kept from them by the rising Armenian hills. They had nearly went there that night, but Yared had talked them out of it. "Do you want to go to a crime town in the dark, brother? Lets get there when there is some light so we can see before we get stabbed." His reason had won them over.

"I wonder what they have." she said softly.

He kissed her neck. "A job and a room." he said, "We can live together this time. In the same place, in the same bed..."

"It will be different this time?" she asked hopefully.

He smiled. "It will be different this time."

Precipice of War - Oh Woe the West

Pepperm1nts said
Of course, in the OP.If there is a summary in particular you are interested in, I can PM it to you. Or all of them if you really want to see them. Most of them are pretty short though. I don't know when the OP will be up though, since Vilage is going to be busy tonight and I haven't heard anything from Aaron.

It'll probably work like this:

I'll float around until 10 pm my time. I'll help with what I need to help with, all the fun stuff. I will probably be back around 3 or 4 AM. If the IC isn't up by then, i'll whip it up before I go to bed and we'll start us the "Vilageidiotx" era of Precipice.

Thataway, its done before i'm legit busy and everything can be ready when most people have time.

Precipice of War - Oh Woe the West

Pepperm1nts said
You can sneak a crippled child, a halfwit and a savage through the gaps they leave in their summaries. But even Tormund would have trouble climbing your wall.

But yes, I am very happy that the Persia summary is finished. May your days be blessed with hot women and your nights blessed with hotter women.

Precipice of War - Oh Woe the West

I would say during.

Precipice of War - Oh Woe the West

Ethiopia/Pan-African involvement was pretty sparse, so South African mostly took care of itself. I believe that, though there are still British Settlers and Boers, there was no Apartheid because of the way independence came about.

Precipice of War - Oh Woe the West

Now we got Spain, Finland, and a handful in the Middle East?

Precipice of War - Oh Woe the West

Gawdammit, lets get this shit moving already.

Germany:

The Great War took its toll. Early victories in 1914 and 1915 gave the young Empire hope, and its people drank in the pride they had felt when their brave young men took the field at Sedan in 1870. But this was not the same. Even though the Russians blundered across the Eastern Front from one slaughter to another, Germany faced the combined forces of France, Britain, and the dozens of colonies both had spent the last two centuries building. New weapons of war, built in the factories of the industrial revolution and the laboratories of modern secular science, changed the shape of the battlefield forever. Machine guns ended the cavalry charge that had been a staple of warfare from Gaugamela to Waterloo. Flying machines built from canvas and beam and wire, an invention scarcely past a decade old, dropped bombs and burst reconnaissance balloons. And then each other. Pilots shot at each other with pistols, and then with machine guns timed with their propellers. Massive steel vehicles driven by diesel motors pushed through lines of men, and could not be stopped by rifle shot alone. To advance was death. To appear was death. Everybody hid in trenches.

Russia left the war earlier, frightened by a Bolshevik revolution at home. Though the revolution was brought to a close, the battered Empire stayed out of the war. German u-boats sunk any ship that threatened to supply their foes. This raised the ire of the supposedly neutral, but few did anything about it. As much as the Allies wanted them to join the fight, the United States kept silent. Even as their plans failed on the western front, Germany had a stroke of luck when Abyssinia, the small African kingdom that had broken Italy a generation earlier, joined its side and brought down Allied colonies abroad. No matter what happened, neither side gained enough of an advantage to end the war.

By 1919, Germany was prepared to crack. The British headed blockade in the North Sea was choking their lands dry, and prices sky-rocketed. The people blamed their generals, and they blamed the war, and they blamed their Kaiser. New troops that should have been heading to the front stayed in Germany and put down plots and the traitors who plotted them.

As the bloody decade came to a close and the twenties dawned, the war turned into a pointless stalemate. Neither side budged, but neither side could afford to advance. Calls for peace came and went, but both sides were convinces that the other would capitulate if they just waited a month longer. A month always turned into months, however, and months into years. It wouldn't be until 1925 when they would see their peace, and by then too much damage had been done. The Habsburg monarchy disintegrated, leaving the Austria-Hungarian Empire a smattering of new independent states. Britain retreated from the world, and even from her Empire, and France fared as badly.

For Germany, those who had hoped the end of the war would bring them normality had their hopes dashed. War debts loomed, an army full of disillusioned men came home with nightmares, and bread remained expensive. For many Germans, it was the Kaiser's fault.

Republicanism swept across the country, headed off only in the North where the military might of old Prussia still held sway. The Kaiser resigned, afraid that the bloody terrors of the French Revolution one hundred years before had finally arrived in his country. Legendary General Paul von Hindenburg was elected Chancellor, but this was not enough.

Unable to bring the south to heal, he allowed the new Bavarian-led republic its independence. It was a time to rebuild, not to fight a civil war, and so rebuild they did. For the next fifty years, the divided land of Germany licked its wounds and waited for a new generation of youth to guide them.

The death of Hindenburg in 1939, and his successor in the next decade, brought the republican spirit back to the country. Wishing for unity, they two nations folded back into a single republic. It would stay this way until 1976.

The 1970's were a decade that changed the world. Communism was rising in the east, Spain filled the boots of the old European powers and set about rebuilding its old Empire. The Ottoman Empire was showing signs of crumbling, and Africa was beginning to congeal into a force of its own. In Germany, the stressed republic was beginning to loose favor. Spanish hegemony in Europe was seen as an insult to German pride that the ineffectual government was doing nothing about. A string of depressions and recessions made people uncertain of their jobs or futures, and it seemed like there was a new scandal in Munich every week. When the Minister of the Treasury was caught embezzling funds into foreign banks for the personal use of him and his friends, the people grew angry, and when it was revealed that the same Minister was married into a prominent Jewish family, that made it somehow worse.

Protests turned into riots when green guards mishandled them. An underground pro-monarchy movement added fuel to the fire when they dug up an unknown construction worker named Frederick who happened to be second in line for the place of Hohenzollern family head. The first in line, a sonless old rich pile of dust living in an old castle that nobody thought twice about, was easily passed over. Frederick was tall, loud, and sported a forked blonde beard that looked good under a pickelhaube. With his face in their minds, the riots turned into a revolution. The Munich government surrendered, and Frederick was put in its place. He moved the capital to Berlin and took the title "King of Prussia".

A swift occupation of the broke nation of Austria brought it into this Greater German polity, and nationalism swelled in the streets. German military might was increased. For the Germans, Frederick had brought the nation back to where it was before the damnable war. As the seventies came to an end, it looks as if even borders will not contain their swelling pride.

((43 minutes. See, this is easy as hell to do yo. You can change whatever you need to change, but at least you got a goddamned base.))