Color Coded For Your Convenience

So, for some reason I decided that writing about and personifying countries/empires was a good idea. I blame Serrie.

(Yes, this map is crappy and the product of 1 AM in photoshop plus too much research into territories, past empires, etc)

(Also, that blue-white country is Switzerland. I am holding up their neutrality mostly because it amuses me and also because I can imagine how annoyed Ephesia would be by having this tiny little country in the middle of their area going "No. Fuck you." Actually maybe that should be the color for nations allied to UT, yeah, I'm just gonna go with that. Also some of the grey ISN'T separate countries so much as uh.... desert that no one has claimed, I guess if you asked the people living there then they ARE countries but no one recognizes them much)

            Ephesia is like that pretty douchey guy that you think is girly and then you say something that pisses him off and suddenly oops there’s a knife in your chest and he’s grinning at you like it’s Christmas. Political discussions with Ephesia probably went something like “Oh. And I’m going to be invading you now. Terribly sorry about that” and then you hear a zipper noise and he’s bending you over the table and raping your country and culture. There’s also probably a lot of silent rage while he burns the heretics out of your country but then he promises everything will be lovely, don’t you worry. This has been attempted with several of the other countries I’ll mention to varying degrees of success.

            After years of being a colossal, ever-expanding empire, Ephesia has nowhere left to expand to. So now it’s falling into decadence and decline and starting civil wars and marshal law. Basically, it’s going a little batty around the edges. It’s also finding itself rather ill equipped to deal with a world that is placing increasing emphasis on technological prowess over sheer military might.

            One of the countries that is doing well is United Trading. Except it’s less of a country and more of loose confederation of sovereign states that have banded together for the common goal of making money and not being absorbed into an empire. This last point is important. You’ll get a lot of complaining from the member nations when it seems like the central leaders are trying to exert too much control over them. There’s always that one guy going “If I wanted to join a dictatorship, I’d put my lot in with the Ephesians” or something. It’s basically like you took the Dutch, Portuguese and Japanese and threw them into a blender with a few other nations for some added color. I don’t know where I was going with this one.

            If UT were a person it’d be a super bipolar nerdy guy that can never make up his mind and always has a phone to his ear. Oh. This is probably a good time to mention varying technological levels. UT is the only nation with a functional space program and currently has communication satellites in orbit. While the other nations (especially Ephesia) outmatch them in terms of military technology, UT is probably 20 years ahead of the other nations in terms of communication and computer technology. Ephesia’s computers are fairly basic (and pretty large and difficult to use) and run off closed networks (intranets). UT’s computers are advancing to the point of being user friendly and they’re starting to experiment with open network technology in the “what if we could connect all the computers together and share information” way. They’re already thinking about how to relay radio signals to get in contact with people as they travel (cough cell phones cough). So yeah. Nerds.

            Who else should I talk about hmm, right I guess China’s a good place to start. It’s still got dynastic rule at this point, despite the best efforts of Ephesia. About 300 years ago, they basically went “oh, that’s a rather attractive nation with good natural resources and a healthy culture, pardon me, we’ll just be invading you now” and they worked on that for a few years until the Chinese army kicked them out on their asses. And ever since then the two nations have more or less been at each other’s throats in the most polite, catty manner you can imagine. Their favorite tactic is to make allies with people that the other hates (Ephesia fails at this and tends to conquer rather than ally).

            Which leads me to Russia. Russia has a rather strong werewolf culture. They value wolves as warriors and “spirits of nature” and all that hippie bullshit. But no, srsly, most wolves serve in the Russian armies, making it an even worse idea to invade Russia. Quite obviously Ephesia HATES THEM WITH A BURNING PASSION because of this. So uh.... China has a treaty/alliance with Russia. And they are buds. It’s sort of like if your ex started dating the man across the street who you hate (for various racist reasons). The current Empress of China has actually been working on more peaceful relations with the Emperor of Ephesia but the Pope keeps fucking things up by actively insulting Chinese spiritual beliefs.

            Right uh.... I could probably write more but I think this is good enough for now, it has most of the plot important details in it, I guess. Except I should note that the Ottoman Empire has been sliding into decline for years and their territories have been chewed on by the other nations and by civil wars for independence. However, they are more technologically and artistically advanced than most of the other nations, bar those in the UT in terms of technology. Yeah that’s about as much as I’ll say for now.