NationStates Jolt Archive

As pertains to events largely occuring in the second Korean war (http://www.nationstates.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=141532&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0).

The Central Directorature, DaKhiem, The Choson People’s Republic of Dra-pol

The office was a Spartan one, typical of Dra-pol in that respect, and of the Central Directorature in its grand dimensions. It was dark, again typically so, and almost absolutely silent save the occasional rustle of paper and the intermittently heavy breaths drawn by the once badly wounded occupant.

The scene was unchanged for more than two hours before faint footsteps from without culminated in a knock at the heavily reinforced door.

“Come.” Said the occupant after an almost instinctive glance to the silver letter-opener upon the desk at which he sat.

The door’s opening let in the patter of a hundred distant keyboards and, of much more relevance, Banat Secretary C-1-2 comrade Dokgo.

“Comrade Secretary.” He said, giving a smart salute before closing the door, which gave a satisfying click. “News from the Espionage Channel. The son may be returning.”

“Ahh!” Gasping, Hotan rose from his seat, a balled fist pressed to his ribs.

“Still alive, then?”

“Yes, comrade Secretary, sources in Quinntonia are almost sure of it. Suspect he may be sent to destabilise.”

“But he knows... he knows! We must contact him before he returns. The Suloists will protect him if he arrives. But... for now he remains in their control?”

“We believe so, comrade Secretary.”

The usually still, chilly air of the Central Directorature took on a definite bite, so tangibly so that Dokgo felt the place must be deeply connected to the Secretary’s evidently pained spirit, perhaps to his bullet-riddled body. Hotan started to speak again, after a profound silence.

“Then his release would be to their benefit somehow... to protect Hamhung? To end the war?”

“Direction, comrade Secretary?”

“Can not risk diplomacy. They may not fully understand the problem he presents to us. Approaching them over it would be unwise.”

“And, comrade Secretary, the boy? His supporters? Are they not now too dangerous?”

“I can not. Send him away, yes, the plan remains. His head dreams of Sulo, but his heart pumps Kuro blood. I can not.”

Hotan lowered himself gingerly back into his seat, sifting through papers all the while. He wrote for several minutes as Dokgo stood silently, eventually folding a single leaf of paper and extending it to the Banat agent.

“Take this to Sho Cheiy. Tell him, activate all agents at home, have officers assume command in all Assault Divisions. Dismissed.”

The two saluted one another before Dokgo exited, leaving the Communist Party Secretary to draft and dispatch an order for the withdrawal of a specific list of formations operating in the ROK. All were comprised of largely Red Bamboo units that backed Kurosian II’s short-lived Directorship.

At least we have the aviation fuel. Mused the over-worked ‘caretaker Director’, Hotan.

Pyongyang

“We...thank you...comrade...for your services...and friendship...hwyl fawr.”

The diplomat’s expression was one of some trepidation as he, under duress, chanced an attempt at the tongue DaKhiem believed prominent in Beth Gellert.

The Consul was saluted as crates were dragged up into the Marathon and a number of hooded figures -Drapoel, one might judge from their stature- were guided aboard. The transport should soon be airborne again and headed back to the Indian Ocean via China.

The Commonwealth Consul was a little put off by his opposite’s farewell, and glanced subtly to his comrades in the vague hopes that someone might know the Drapoel for goodbye. He had in the end to settle for an awkward salute and a, “Be seeing you!”

The big Marathon transport was soon away, and many hours later, after multiple stops in China (damn that blockade, most inconvenient, and quite expensive to negotiate!) and a cautious negotiation of Nicobarese airspace, it touched-down on New Tiamat.

Fuel reserves were almost totally depleted by the time the landing site, in the vast New Tiamatian badlands, was located, and despite the Marathon’s good reputation for operating off small, improvised airstrips, the landing was rough.

CC Montague Farmer exited and officially handed-over the cargo and passengers into care of comrade Colonel Charles Estevan’s waiting Sentinels. Thereafter the civilian authorities departed on the home leg of their journey, leaving GSIC to welcome the continent’s newest residents.

“Greetings, comrade!” Boomed Estevan as a tiny malnourished figure was helped from within its cage. His Drapoel was a little off, but it probably didn’t matter all that much. By day’s-end Koshiako and the handful of Sulo-loyalists delivered by DaKhiem to provide for his care (though as yet still masked and blind) would be introduced to the exceptionally isolated and virgin terrain that would become their domain. Here and there GSIC operatives surveyed or supervised electronic surveillance positions that would eventually skirt the new territory, hopefully without ever coming into direct contact with the residents in the jungle-covered basin below.

Tag, beacuse IC and OOC, Kilean doesn't know what the hell is going on.

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Sul-pol Basin, Central New Tiamat, the Indian Ocean

"I said, 'has he been held?'!" The angry-looking young man barked, quite nervous as he was. His eyes darted about as his escorts took him down the little trail. Would he be executed? Was Koshiako really to be his ward, or was the whip in the other hand? Apart from all that, how many traps must line this path? This was Red Bamboo country if ever it had been seen!

There could not be much greater poverty than existed in this new realm, and certainly never more paranoid a population had existed. But equally, few societies could ever have maintained such skill in the warrior tradition or such devotion to a spectacular cause, so thought the young man.

His trek came to an end a few miles into the tiny but fantastically difficult and isolated land, this most secret of all domains... this Suloist commune.

---

“Comrades! Rejoice, for we have direction in the finest tradition! He is here to guide us to Bai! Through Sulo to the worker’s paradise! This is year zero, and you are the founding comrades!”

The declaration went out and the work went on with a new fervour. How so few, barely thousands of fanatical Suloists, could achieve anything when thrust so surprisingly into a Stone Age environment could hardly be imagined. It was a solution that could only have come from a Drapoel brain, and it was exactly the sort of absurdity that’d convinced Hotan that he was able to evacuate Seoul at the barrel of a gun. Those impossible to assassinate, those truly dangerous to the Kurosite faith, and those genuinely dear to the Secretary’s little understood heart in spite of their opposition to him, they would people this enclave.

Which ever of these he may be, and however he might previously have been known, Seung Bai-Sul, Comrade Suloko Our Resurgent Brother, was now leader of the world’s last surviving Suloist movement.

2nd of August Ale House, Porthmadog, The People's Commonwealth of Beth Gellert, New Tiamat

"Tim an' that not back, yet?" Asked a rather surprised old gent on his return to the establishment after several weeks in the local hospital under-going major surgery that would likely not have been possible in most parts of the modern world.

"No, no. Still off galavanting, 's far as I know." Replied the barkeep.

"Oh, blimey! No news? I'd have thought they'd have given up if there was nowt, or been arrested and sent back b' now if there were... another double, here."

The 94 year old rested comfortably on his prosthetic limb and awaited the pouring of what turned out to be two pints of strong Beth Gellen ale, enough to kill a capitalist as the slogan went.

Central New Tiamat

Tim was hardly paying attention any longer to his own progress, wracked as he was by thoughts of the implication of his abandonment of another comrade. Yes, yes, he told him to go, it was proving impossible for Tim to drag a man ten kilos heavier than himself through jungle this thick at any real pace... but was that why I walked away after such little prompting? He couldn't help thinking that maybe he'd given-up on Morton as a way to distance himself from their earlier loss of Ella.

This would teach him to go running off against Commonwealth Professional Civil Service advice... apparently they did know best.

He heard a crack and flung himself backwards, terrified of being struck by the same sort of booby-trap that had impaled Morton. Peering up through his fingers and the thick undergrowth Tim could see no spines in his path, no ropes swung rocks above him, it didn't seem to be a trap at all. But there was movement... animal? It sounded deliberate and even, almost disciplined.

A fabric-bound foot slapped its sandal down beside Tim's still cowering person, and he turned his face suddenly to the sky, in time only to glimpse the red and blue yin/yang that glared as if a third eye above that dark face. A flash of steel obscured the vision before it too was eclipsed for the fool-hardy Beth Gellen adventurer by a much greater flash of pain.

Iskra! later reported the loss of three civilians who, against Portmeirion's advice, had violated the unique wildlife preserve several hundred miles into the New Tiamatian badlands. They may have starved, fallen, been killed by wild animals, or succumbed to tropical diseases, no one could know.

The ISD had a lot of assets in Beth Gellert, and right now it was paying attention to all sorts of odd goings-on, especially after the death of a certain journalist....

It wasn't clear what happened internally with Dra-Pol due to the war, but Kilean wants to know, and badly. It's clear that there have been some big changes.....just....what? and by who?

(Sorry, I think this got a bit lost for a time, in the forum change over)

Ke-To hinterland, Sul-pol basin

A familiar half-breed face, carried by a lurching wreck of a body, appeared on the porch of a modest bamboo dwelling draped in red flags bearing white snakes. The traditional banners of the Red Bamboo, the original pre-Banat Red Bamboo responsible for the annihilation of King Wiman's supporters between 1931 and 1938, were saturated by the uncomfortably humid atmosphere in the jungle basin in the middle of the Indian Ocean continent of New Tiamat.

Comrade Koshiako, Our Bai Brother, spoke to the couple of dozen figures gathered in the clearing, with the impressive waters of the rivers Det and I-Uek flowing along either flank and soldiers wearing those uniforms and clutching ancient Japanese sub-machineguns skirted the whole assembly.

"Comrades, the first Det footbridge is completed, and infrastructure across the land is developing. I now tell you of something great, greater even than the capture of the meddling outsiders." He said, speaking of the Beth Gellen adventurers butchered so brutally in days gone by.

"We are compelled to establish ten districts, allowing the proper administration of our Zero Year and what glories may follow."

(OOC: Okay, so I had more, but I'm distracted and it'll suffice to keep the thread alive.)

The population of the basin was not grand like that of the homeland, but Seung Bai-Sul, AKA Comrade Suloko, Our Resurgent Brother, AKA The Butcher of Hamhung, AKA one of history's most criminally insane figures, AKA ?, was utterly convinced that by returning to Year Sulo his people could re-enter Bai, that brilliant shining white glorious ether eminating from Paektusan from whence they came.

In the middle of a tropically-forested basin at the heart of the Indian Ocean's vast New Tiamatian continent, Our Resurgent Brother directed his thousands of evacuated comrades to the fields, such as the swampy mires were called, and to the quarries forming about the basin sides. The land had been peopled by former residents of the modern world for but a couple of years, and already it had burried thousands. Men and women continued to fall into the paddy fields and down the cliff faces without much notice from anyone wishing to avoid the blades and bullets of the original Red Bamboo. Seung Bai-Sul would have his Suloist utopia, and the Kurosites would pay for forcing him to make it in a place so remote from Paektusan and for ripping his little half-brother from his beloved mother at Paegam.

As he reclined to think on this obsession in his palace of bamboo, Suloko heard yet another shot ring out, and thought it well, for the system worked and another weak and impure frame had been removed from the Suloist quest.

Khiemko, Ke-to Province, The Democratic Suloist Community, Sul-pol Basin, New Tiamat

"...Pregan Province progresses at 102%, but Mouk falls back to 84%, Our Resurgent Brother."

Suloko's well practiced and apparently dismissive gesture was sufficient to inform his deputies that another round of reaffirmation was required in Mouk Province. Comrade Ly, Grave Detail Administrator Northern Provinces, hurried out of the bamboo hut.

"Next, the prosecution of the programme to eliminate the poison of religion, specifically the faith of the Crusaders that felled the Second Suloist Community in the motherland..."

a most tagging tag