The Union of Orthodox Catholic Socialist Republics (UOCSR)

For 'verse proposals, random ideas, musings, and brainwaves.

Moderators: Invictus, speaker-to-trolls

Post Reply
User avatar
Fingolfin
Posts: 64
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:10 pm

The Union of Orthodox Catholic Socialist Republics (UOCSR)

Post by Fingolfin »

The Union of Orthodox Catholic Socialist Republics (UOCSR)

The UOCSR emerged after the interregnum following the Overthrow of the Daedalean Emperor. In 1970 after decades of economic decline, famine, corruption, poor urban conditions, foreign incursions and incompetent rule the populace rose up against the reign of the autocratic Daedalean Emperor Beriev IX Sogoi. The revolution was first a chaotic maelstrom of competing factions and ideologies, but ultimately several of them rallied around the charismatic bishop Theodore Petrov, who named his followers the ‘Orthodox Catholic Commune’. The Commune sought to return the Daedalean way of life to a more purer form, less decadent and corrupt and in close communion with God. “A Good Daedalean must be holy,” Petrov preached, “and be one with God. He should not accumulate wealth at the expense of society and his community. Christ tells us that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God. He says we should put our trust not in material possessions or falsehoods of the mind, but to have faith in Him alone. So this we shall do, and follow in His footsteps.”

His message struck a chord with a people long fed up by having to witness the rich Daedelean nobles wallow in wealth while they had to work long hours of back-breaking labour in unsafe factories, or scourge in sodden fields for a meager living. What’s more the Church’ own lower priests and even its middle ranks, long fed up with what it saw as the depraved immorality of a decadent ruling class, threw its lot in with the Commune. The upper ranks of the church had no way to influence this choice even if they wanted to, and in the end, the Church even went as far as melt a good chunk of their gold wear to supply the OCC with money to buy weapons.

=========

THE PETROV REVOLUTION

Two key characters emerged during the revolution. The first was Stana "Ferramenta" Oktyabrinaya, a young revolutionary whose feats of fanatical bravery inspired entire cadres of fighters. At the pivotal Battle of Orina she led the storming of the imperial fortress, walking miraculously through the hail of machine gun fire and coming out unscathed. It is said that she was momentarily inspired by God’s Grace, and with her faith as a shield and hammer broke the imperial ranks, slaying a score of soldiers with her cavalry sword. This is when she earned the sobriquet ‘ferramenta’ - ironmonger.

It was also during this battle that she first befriended the second key character: a young army chaplain called Frensis Vasin, who went among the soldiers, giving comfort to the wounded and dying. He was possessed of a special kind of charisma that brought tranquility to even those tormented by terrible wounds.


Oktyabrinaya’s fame, cunning and power grew as the conflict raged on, until she was eventually given command of the primary revolutionary front. She eventually rose up to the role of Marshal of the Army of the Cross. In battles from Raduga to Vladovakia, even to the edges of the Kagarian steppes her battle-hardened and faith-steeled revolutionaries cleared wave after wave of demoralized imperial troops and the militias, invading barbarians and rival insurgents alike. Some imperial troops simply surrendered and defected to her side when her armies approached them, thus swelling the ranks of her already huge army. Finally, after nearly a decade of fighting, her troops stormed the final imperial redoubt and a single bullet from Ferramenta’s gun ended the life of the Daedalean Emperor Beriev IX Sogoi, ended his line, and ended the empire itself.

Unfortunately for the Commune it was very adept at fighting, but proved less so at governing. Disagreements within its ranks soon emerged over how best to implement the ideals of the OCC. After years of incessant fighting, much of the country was a wreck, and its treasury empty. Moreover, the patriarchs of the Orthodox Church, powerful under the emperors, were unwilling to bow their heads to the new regime, feeling it should be they who ruled now. And finally the great mind behind the Commune, Theodore Petrov, was dying, the victim of a desperate gas attack made in the last days of the old empire.

With Petrov sidelined the Orthodox Church effectively ruled supreme over what was left of the old Daedelean Empire. Patriarch Tarkhanov was an old man who had been a personal friend of the emperor, and was well accustomed to the intricate webs of politics that had threaded the imperial court. He was a man of the nobility, like many of his fellow patriarchs and bishops and many of them saw the Church as an alternative means to accumulating wealth and power. Although he had wisely distanced himself from the throne when the revolution came, he had little love for the ideals of the OCC, and all the more of it for the gold and riches of the church, and the power of his position.

Patriarch Tarkhanov sidelined Petrov’s feuding Commune lieutenants, who had been seemingly paralyzed by the fate of their leader. Acting swiftly, the cunning patriarch realized that if he could find a popular but impressionable leader with an unpolished understanding of politics to anoint as chairman, then his hands would be free to rule from behind the throne. Tarkhanov decided that the Hero of Orina, this young and devout general who had killed an emperor and immediately afterward sought absolution from a priest, would make a perfect puppet for him to control.

He chose, it would turn out, poorly.

Because Oktyabrinaya proved impossible to control. She was not simply devout, she was fanatical. As Chairwoman of the OCC, she launched a purge of what remained of the old order, clamped down on the accumulation of wealth, and rigidly restructured the Commune to bring it in line with its professed ideals - consequently making it more and more difficult for the patriarch to buy or bribe his way through its ranks. And perhaps even worse than fanatical, she proved impossible to kill. As soon as he realized his mistake Tarkhanov tried to have Ferramenta killed, but his agents failed time and again to penetrate the defenses of the chairwoman, who employed a cadre of bodyguards as fanatical as herself. One by one Tarkhanov found his plans short-circuited, his accounts shut down, and his trusted agents isolated, arrested - or worse.

Finally during a meeting of the Eucumenical Council of the People's Deputies, Ferramenta produced a long list of “crimes against the people, and crimes against god” that Tarkhanov had committed. When the flustered patriarch boasted that no court in the nation would ever convict him, Stana Oktyabrinaya replied “God needs no court”, produced her sidearm and shot Tarkhanov through the head.

Thus the last vestiges of the old order came to an end. Ferramenta personally appointed Frensis Vasin the new patriarch, and by this point there was no-one in the church hierarchy dared openly complain about it.

=========

THE WAR OF BLOOD AND FAITH

Far to the northeast of the Daedelean heartland, beyond the mountains of the Sogoi Range, lie the Kagarian Steppes. This is a harsh and violent land. In ancient times its savage people used to raid the Daedelean cities for pillage and plunder. There would be lamentations of women, and emperors would be forced to eat their beards.

Eventually though the empire became strong and the horsemen were repulsed, even christianized. But they were never truly civilized, and they never quite accepted Daedelean rule. They were barbarians, and they stayed barbarians. This much became apparent when the empire began its long but steady decline in the second half of the 19th century: the Kagarians became unruly once again. In 1930 they assassinated the imperial governor, united their clans, and resumed raiding the frontiers of the empire, which by now was in terminal decline.

Then, in 1968, the revolution came. At first, the turmoil of the empire emboldened the Kagarian raiders, and they penetrated deeper into the dying state than they had in centuries. But soon they found themselves up against not unprepared border guards or demoralized imperial troops, but battle-hardened revolutionary brigades. The well-equipped armies of the Commune repulsed the lightly armed invaders and, in 1975, threw the last Kagarian bands back over the mountains. The Kagarians thought nothing of this setback. But Ferramenta did not forget.

By 1975 the civil war was over, and Tarkhanov was in charge of the Commune. And the armies, still full of revolutionary fervor, clamored for action and revenge against the scum in the north. So in ‘76 the newly christened UOCSR launched its first great military adventure, a massive punishment expedition - a crusade - against the Kagarian heretics.

The Commune expected a swift victory. Its expectations were wrong. The generals of the revolution were used to fighting in their own territory, where resupply was always only a short ways away, and it was possible to live off the land if need be. None of this was the case in Kagaria. The UOCSR logistics train was a clusterfuck, the Kagarians were masters of positional hit-and-fade tactics, and soon the campaign bogged down in the middle of the endless Kagarian steppes. The Kagarians had very little in the way of modern armor but their hordes easily matched even the most zealous of Commune troops in their blind fanatical devotion to god, and their willingness to lay down their lives turned battles over the cities the UOCSR had managed to reach into brutal grinds where tens of thousands of people died in trenches and machine gun fire. For five years UOCSR troops bled and died on Kagarian soil, five long years of atrocities and carnage, of supply trains ambushed and murdered to the last man, of Kagarian children running into minefields to clear them, of witnessing entire lines being obliterated by rocket artillery, only for them to be redrawn the next day in the exact same place.

Finally, at the end, the madness stopped. By this time Tarkhanov was dead, and Ferramenta recognized the folly of continuing the war. A cease-fire was signed, and UOCSR troops pulled back to the old borders behind the Sogoi Range.


=========

THE GOVERNMENT

Party Congress appoints the Politburo (standing administrative body of the communist party). Politburo conducts day-to-day affairs of the state, but its orders are subject to ratification by the Central Apparat. The Politburo appoints the Monitor of the Central Apparat.

Central Apparat (made up of representatives of:)
- All-Soviet
- Secretariat of State
- State Planning Committee
- Security Council of the UOCSR
- People's Commissariat (Marxist theoreticians)
- Patriarchal Synod (representative from the Patriarch)
- Congregations (church orders)
- Central Court of the UOCSR

Ferramenta is both General Secretary of the Politburo and Monitor of the Central Apparat.




Ferramenta pursued governance with as much zeal as she had the war against the Imperialists. She and Vasin appointed the various ministers and charged them with organizing the ministries. The important ministries are: Ministry of Church Affairs and Justice, which deals with affairs of the Church and ensuring compliance with Canon Laws; Ministry of Industry, whose role is to rejuvenate and rebuild the industry of the UOCSR; Ministry of Trade, which regulates the trade of goods inside and outside of the UOCSR; Ministry of Science, which is charged with lifting up the technology and science level of the UOCSR; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which of course deals with foreign affairs; Ministry of Welfare, which runs the hospitals and manages the affairs of the people; Ministry of War, which administers the armies, navies and air forces; and Ministry of Interior Security, which controls police and border forces.

Under the Ministry of Church Affairs and the Church, the Organization for Doctrinal Compliance was formed with the expressed wish and desire to ensure compliance to Church Doctrine. Officers of the Organization for Doctrinal Compliance are clergymen with the power to ensure the that citizens complied with Church Doctrine and were given powers to judge and administer the necessary punishments to those who failed to comply with Doctrine. Many were sentenced to hard labour in the penal colonies to serve out their penance.

After the civil war and the war in Kagaria the economy and industry of the UOCSR were in tatters. Harsh measures were taken to put the country on the road back to prosperity. Ferramenta collectivized factories and agriculture, arguing that in New Orthodox Catholicism, sharing between the community was vital and thus beneficial if all were to collectively combine their resources.

At the same time, ‘special economic zones’ were designated where capitalist companies could set up companies and employ cheap labour. Creating limited operating room for these companies, distasteful though the government and church might think they were, ensured that the country could reap the benefits of their presence, whilst limiting the poisonous creep of capitalist dogma.

The UOCSR economy was now centrally run with its resources devoted towards the better of its people and the state. As a result of the emphasis on Christian communal living, luxury goods are generally frowned upon. Companies are state-run, and expected to serve the general good of humankind as well as to make donations to the Church. Industrial administrators believed to engage in misguided practices (such as wanton pollution, or greed), they are certain to find themselves in a penal colony.

==============================

TODAY

The UOCSR is now a nation of 200 million spread over 2 million square kilometers. Its economy has recovered somewhat from the ravages of war, although even a brief look at any of its great cities will still reveal plenty bombed-out buildings or walls with machine gun holes in them. The standard of living is increasing however, as its people work hard to put the horrors of the past behind them.

Today, nuclear power plants dot the landscape, and great engineering projects - dams, rail lines, bridges, churches - are undertaken. After all: to improve oneself is to improve the nation; to improve the nation is to improve the land; to improve the land, is to please God. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the revolution, a new basilica was built: the Theós Apeiri̱ Sofía, the Church of God’s Infinite Wisdom. Believed to be the single greatest monument to the glory of God in the world, its mere sight makes pilgrims from all over the UOCSR weep tears of joy. Other churches - lesser, but still great - dominate the skylines of the Commune’s cities, flying the gold cross on a red field flag of the UOCSR from their belfrys.





Cities of the UOCSR

Ferramentagrad
Formerly the capital of the Daedalean Empire, it was once known as Daedalopolis. Now it has been renamed to Ferramentagrad, after the honorific of Stana "Ferramenta" Oktyabrinaya. It was subjected to much punishment during the civil war, when battles between royalists and the Army of the Cross resulted in much destruction, and swathes of the Imperial Palace was demolished. After the civil war, rebuilding the capital became an immediate priority. Today, much of the capital has been rebuilt and some 20 million people now reside with the capital and the suburbs. Many industries dominate the city, producing just about anything from high quality steel, aluminium to rocket engines to high tech components such as computer processors and nanotechnology.

The city is also the site of many world-renown universities, such as the Technical University of Ferramentagrad and University of Ferramenta. The Academy of Sciences is also based in the city as well. The UOCSR is somewhat tolerant of most research, although much debate takes place over certain aspects of Science and how it reflects the teachings of Christ. However, because of the need to match the scientific achievements of the capitalist nations, some leeway was granted.

The city can be quite architecturally unappealing. Houses tend to be prefabricated apartments and thus looks very functional and blocky in appearance. Much of this is a result of the need to rehouse the homeless population after the civil war ended. Thus, for the sake of efficiency, prefabricated housing was produced en-masse to rehouse the population. On the other hand, grand monuments to the Petrov Revolution were constructed, and the Communion is an immerse cathedral-like structure where the elected representatives of the various parts of the UOCSR meet to deliberate on UOCSR policy. The Theós Apeiri̱ Sofía, or the Church of God’s Infinite Wisdom, is the largest Basilica in Ferramentagrad, and it was constructed over a period of 5 years before the 20th anniversary of the Petrov Revolution. A large statue of Theodore Petrov was placed in front of the Theos Apeiri Sofia as a memorial to the Bishop who had sparked the revolution that gave birth to the UOCSR.

St. Pawelgrad
The religious heart of the Daedalean Empire and remains as such in the UOCSR. It is the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and thus is regarded as the Holy City. Filled with the splendor of many art museums, huge cathedrals and the site of the Hagia Sophia. The Holy City was untouched during the war, and rightly so. No faction dared to attack the Holy City, and when the Orthodox Patriarchate threw its lot with the Orthodox Catholic Commune, the City became one of the main marshalling points for the Army of the Cross during the Civil War.

Antiokhiya
An old port city that has since grown into one of the three major port cities. Together with Saloniki
housing
Vostochnyygorod
Called the “Eastern City”, it is

Saloniki

St. Merigrad
The City of Mary

Krasnopartizansk Named after communist partisans who did something heroic

Yezhovo-Cherkessk Big ol’ monastery, major church stronghold.

Smyert Tatarsky City near border, site of historic bloody Kagarian defeat

Chelyabinsk-65 ‘Numbered’ research city in the interior, military administration

Tronzburg Border city with Rheinland

Zelenogradsk Military city close to Kagarian border

Trotsk Trotski wrote shit here.

Petrokrepost Port Port city on southern shore

Chernenko Zavod Biggest industrial city aside from the capital. Huge factories.
There is only war.
User avatar
Fingolfin
Posts: 64
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:10 pm

Re: The Union of Orthodox Catholic Socialist Republics (UOCSR)

Post by Fingolfin »

This entity was written up for the recent SDNW5 game. It's a bit raw on the formatting and I will polish it up with time.

Basically this was to be a USSR but one that never went the atheist route but instead reformed itself to be more outward looking and less revolutionary in a way. It was meant to espouse a way of living rather than just "kill all the aristocrats". The entity actually made some strategic alliances with more corporatist entities because even a Communist entity needed a source of funds to tap on.
There is only war.
Post Reply