NationStates Jolt Archive

Paegam, Sodu-su District

Over ten thousand feet above sea level on the side of Mount Kuro the infantile face of his father’s secret infidelity regards the whole world. It must stretch for a hundred miles! The boy mused, continuing to gaze at length into the misty below, until his tiny, pale hand was clasped by its equally delicate but characteristically darker Drapoel minder.

The boy’s nurserymaid disturbed his idle contemplation with a request from his ailing mother.
“Come now little comrade, your mother asks to see you before sun-down. The spirits will be back in the morning.”

Sighing, the child waved goodnight to the silent ghosts below as the misty throng gradually began their evening ritual of dispersal. Still clasping the slender Drapoel hand he skipped his way back up the stone steps behind, and the two characters made their way into the exposed but ornately carved corridors of the ancient palace.

http://images.usatoday.com/travel/_photos/2002-10-18-angkor.jpg
King Kuro the Third- The Demon King to Dra-pol’s Mongol invaders- stares out from the forbidden city, for the past eight centuries as has Koshiako for eight years.

“What does mother want, comrade nana?”
“She wants the best for you, Koshiako, and I’m sure you shall have it.”
“Of course! Comrade mother is wise!” The boy smiled back before dashing ahead towards the interior, leaving his maid behind in the weatherworn and over-grown outer corridors with all of their cracked masonry and creeping vines.

As young Koshiako entered his mother’s chamber he was startled by a flight of ducks noisily making their way past the window, heading from mountainside to lake below.

From the large, elaborate bed a pale, elegant woman smiled at her son’s brief alarm.
“Koshiako! I have important news from our friend Hotan.”
“Comrade mother!” The boy exclaimed happily, regaining his almost regal composure and advancing to the bedside.
“Koshi, I told you not to call me that.”
“But you are my mother!” Came his indignant reply.
With a half smile and a slight shake of her head, the woman, evidently a westerner by birth, brushed meekly at her son’s jet-black hair.
“Our friend Hotan..” She continued “..he wants you to know that the time has come for you to serve the People’s Republic.”
“I am to be Director now?”
“Yes Koshiako, you are to become Director.”
“But I have not seen DaKhiem! I have strained my eyes from the top of the world, but the spirits bar the capital from my sight!”

For some minutes mother grappled with the beliefs of her son’s people as he questioned the wisdom in the timing of his appointment, and she repeated to herself that it was the only life available to him. She had been in Dra-pol long enough to absorb much, it seemed, as the boy lately nodded with acceptance of his newfound status.

(The observant reader may recall the late Director Kurosian’s disdain for his first born –the disgraced KII, and now..) ..The last Director’s bastard son, locked away with his European mother in the forbidden city of Paegam was revealed –at least to his immediate company- as Secretary Hotan’s shocking choice in the much delayed search for a fourth head of the Choson Peoples’ Republic.

Quite what the small, sheltered boy would know of the war and famine ravaging Dra-pol, let alone of how to stop it all, was not apparent. But then maybe Hotan was happy with it that way. It is best, perhaps, that the public, and indeed the outside world, never see the face of an effective Director, nor know his precise identity or whereabouts



(OOC: Frankly the original thread in which much of this appeared is a freaking mess, and will continue to be used as a dumping ground for assorted military developments and related news stories. This is more an effort to recover the character of the nation from the quagmire of war.)

DaKhiem, DaKhiem District, central Dra-pol

The little administrative capital of the Choson People's Republic was at its most hectic since several thousand Raysian troops were dropped in at the height of the on-going Crusader War, and swiftly consumed by Secretary Hotan's cunning trap. Everywhere small structures went up- offices for this agency and that, information points for one collective industry or another, Banat "spy shops" and military recruitment co-ordination centres- all erected by the enlisted labour of local collectives under official supervision. Many of the involved engineers were Quinntonian educated, though their engineering knowledge was employed less than their inherent Drapoel administrative wits.

In the background loomed the heavily scaffolded jet-black superstructure of the Central Directorature, half re-built after the destructive Crusader blitz of the high-walled city. From atop the central monolith of this great complex a number of little figures, visible there all morning, suddenly released from its moorings a large sheet, uncovering what at first appeared to be yet another party banner. On closer inspection, the expected sight of a party chief’s flattered visage or else depiction of a nameless comrade’s valiant charge against the Westgaard Line was nowhere to be found.

This was soon explained as the spluttering and squealing of the citywide tannoy called work to an unofficial halt that no one dared ignore.

”Comrades! Secretary Hotan speaks!” So said the whistling broadcast system. Drapoel gazes were directed towards the Central Directorature’s main building, where they fell upon the reportedly live image of comrade Secretary Hotan, glowing as it did across the surface of the giant video screen. DaKhiem was informed of the rising in the ancient forbidden city of a new Director Kurosian. A new Director who of course wanted to maintain the status quo, keeping Hotan on as Secretary of the republic, and finally vanquishing the foreign threat.

Dra-pol you see was invincible after all. Surely now that there was again a true Director things could begin to repair themselves. If we go hungry, said Hotan, it will be because of the foreign demons that haunt us still.

Meanwhile out in the rugged countryside millions of soldiers continued their marches back and forth across the republic, thousands engaged in searches for hostile insurgents, and unknown tens of thousands continued to sit in wait around Hamhung District. Kanggye prepared for new and more impressive parades, despite the fact that no Director was present to enjoy them, and hundreds of thousands went hungry as trails emptied of vital traffic in light of the latest imperialist posturing that many feared forewarned of another series of murderous bombing raids.

"..and though he had shown his faith and fairness in trusting them with his son, my brother, the imperialists still wanted to kill the greatest genius in history."

Koshiako concluded the second presentation before his tutors on republican history since the first Quinntonian landing. His tone and the glow of his young eyes finally began to tell of an understanding to the hatred he was instructed in for the last three of his nine years. The third head of the Kurosian dynasty moved another step closer to assuming effective as well as nominal Directorship of the Choson People's Republic of Dra-pol.

Meanwhile as the effective head of the nation, the communist party's Secretary Hotan had on his mind more than the possibility of Koshiako's rise. The Crusader-backed terrorists, once a minor irritant, had attacked a foreign civilian vessel at incomplete Kosong harbour, and a mysterious device had been recovered from their agents frighteningly close to Kanggye.

Those directly responsible for both incidents had been killed with the exception of a handful of captives. Which of these two kinds of unfortunate now appeared crucified on the hills around Hamhung, or Quinntonian Dra-pol as the enemy-occupied territory was called by many, could not be known to the residents of that half surrounded city.

Still, that the world still dared to attempt such attacks on the people's republic further incensed the paranoid Secretary. The man's long time friend and keeper, Director Kurosian I, had been killed by their terrorist running-dogs, and he himself had been hospitalised by them. The ancient capital in which he sat had been bombed, and the supposedly invincible Central Directorature gutted. Such hardships heaped on to an intelligent man indoctrinated from birth into the harsh and intollerant politics of his isolationist homeland clearly did not bode well for those with less power.