NationStates Jolt Archive

For more than two years Abargrapt had basked in Republican glory. Since the Movement For Abargrapt seized power from the Eastgate-imposed Principality and established ABATOV (Abargraptine-Nation Movement Party) rule under Chancellor Earnest Swann, life had been rosy.

If you would not believe me, reader, there are a dozen plays and musicals running across the Abargraptine People’s Republic that should confirm what I am saying! Never has there been a better time for Abargraptine farmers to till their own fields and feed their own people, for huntsmen to chase bison without fear of Federal soldier nor savage warrior, or for men once unemployed to operate fantastical new machines! Yes, 85% of the electorate had chosen A) ABATOV! That was as opposed to the unwritten B) Broken legs and the eternal black-mark of a Federal sympathiser!

Still, something troubled those bureaucrats walking the innermost chambers of the Chancellery at Raven Square. Statistical Sections across the Republic were reporting increasingly unworkable balances of supply and demand in everything from wood pulp to perishable food wrapping papers and useful industrial by-products to army boot polish. Across the land as the highly successful war against the Federation began belatedly to be seen in economic reaction it was realised that a majority of factories and workshops were turning a loss. They had of course been kept in operation by the Control Offices that fed-off the Statisticians’ reporting, and rightly so! ABATOV didn’t lay-off Abargraptine workers, wasn’t bound by the petty concerns of bourgeois profiteering, wasn’t the damned Federal government!

No, someone else was to blame for this unexpected stumbling block put in the revolution’s path. Obviously it had to be someone on the inside, for who else could be corrupting the Statistical Sections’ planning figures after the pre-war price-freeze had been announced?

INSIDE THE CHANCELLERY, KINDSLEY, ABARGRAPT

“Perhaps it is remaining bourgeois businessmen at large in the economy that are partly to blame.” Ventured the elderly Samson DeVink, former Movement Chairman before the rise of young Mr.Swann.

“What say you, DeVink?” Said Swann, inviting the old fellow to elaborate and just managing to do so without succumbing to what would have been his third consumptive coughing attack of the morning.

“Well.” Said Samson, rumbling inaudibly for a moment before heaving himself up in his expensive leather chair and poking his finger at some files stacked on the table before him.

“Well, they could be interfering with government contracts... trying to make... soft people work below the value of their wage... they can fire their own... softies and we [the government] have to put them to work.”

“Capital taxes are too low!” Squeaked that horrid little creature Secretary Wesst, desperate to contribute and play at the useful big shot he wasn’t.

Swann crooked his neck and arched a jet-black eyebrow thick with gel.


THE CHANCELLERY STEPS, RAVEN SQUARE, KINDSLEY

“...and so, with the struggle against the Federation and its Crown nearing the final show-down that shall bring unparalleled glory to Abargrapt, I must fight the shame that they have taught me to feel when making decisions such as this one of Abargraptine national interest.”

“Oh! No!” “Shame? You, Mr. Chancellor?” “They’ve no right!” “You go ahead, Mr.Swann!” “Such a good boy, that young Master Swann! Fancy those devils making him feel like that!”

“...have created the Abatov Protective Guard’s task force for internal party affairs in security, loyalty, and propriety. I am filled with pride to submit my personal friend, Samson DeVink, back into the Republic’s service as marshal of this new initiative, which shall maintain the proper working of political life and economic stability when the counter-weight of Federal activity is removed. No longer will Federal ideals be allowed to disrupt the national wealth we have acquired over these last two years!”

This part of Swann’s speech seemed relatively minor to most attending the square, and the Chancellor did go on for as long as he could without publicly confirming the on going fact of his terrible health. Even these few moments’ address though were more than was afforded Secretary Wesst’s new charge. The People’s Purity Commission would lie just that one layer further from the surface while going about its work.

Before the day was out, DeVink’s APG men were reconciling the electoral register’s six hundred thousand spoiled ballots with more current addresses...

“...1,411 Class 1 family enterprises, 416 Class 2 local businesses, 207 Class 3 small businesses employing up to twenty persons, 40 further concerns including three of Class 5.”

“Splendid, Secretary DeVink! Splendid! The BSU thanks you.”

“BSU? Oh, no no, Captain Bemmal! The Bluesocks shan’t be required in this programme, the APG has been granted carte blanche to recruit and act as required to bring these deviant enterprises back into national control.”

Captain Bemmal, head of the Bluesocks Security Unit, could only flap his big jaw as DeVink handed him confirmation bearing Swann’s signature.

Reports of nationalisations soon begin to hit the press as APG squads kicked in doors across the Republic, bringing into direct government control 2,074 private enterprises previously belonged to the six hundred thousand citizens who spoiled their ballots rather than vote for ABATOV.

This would certainly give a relatively lucky feeling to those employers who would later be encouraged to join the labour front and to pay, hire, and charge exactly who and what the Chancellery required. “Whew, at least we weren’t nationalised!” They would say.

PORT GAVIN, GOSTON STATE, THE EASTGATER FEDERATION

This was as far west as The Continent would range. The Abargraptine Republican Army, along with elements of the Waylu Peripheral Militia, were in sight of the western Pacific and the Goston State Militia was in chaos as its men scrambled to board evacuation ships headed for Baston State and others simply dropped their arms and fled into the surrounding countryside.

Many of the latter would be picked-up by the Waylu, some units of which employed scouts from Polynesian clans such as the Mauatu. Abargraptine units that'd tried to do the same soon found their ignited nationalist fury impossible to reconcile with the savage natives' free spirited pursuit of the duties imposed upon them. Several scouts had been shot by their own employers, a trend that was increasingly inclined to alienate the Mauatu from the Waylu with whom they had a fairly long history.

"Waylu can't control the Republicans, so it is a simple matter of chosing our friends... and the Polywogs can't compete with the Abar, either." The worrds of one Waylu officer as illustrated the Peripheral State's general assessment of their position regarding the natives and the republicans.

Back in the town -which was traditionally the first port of call for foreign commercial and diplomatic missions to The Continent- hundreds of Federation troops charged aboard all the vessels that could be found as rifle and mechanical gunfire crackled through the cobbled streets to the north and east. Very little musketry answered this serenade on the Federation's behalf.

"Oh, God! It's a cruiser!"
"We're done for!"

Now Eastgaters were jumping from their ships of sail and steam almost as quickly as others pushed to get aboard. It was quite a surreal event as men in full sight of the same event -the approach of an Abargraptine Extraordinary Class cruiser, the AS Obstinate- fought with equal desperation to board ships of escape and to escape ships of doom. 8.1" Caligo Foundary guns soon added to the spectacle, whistling through the air and crashing into sea, shop fronts, crowds, paddle steamers, and wooden merchant cogs.

Resistance in Port Gavin continued to melt away through the morning, and by noon an APG commander travelling with Republican forces announced that assets belonged to the corrupt Federation's foreign backers were to be turned-over to the People's Republic. Signs reading "IanCorp" and "RM&M" crashed to the paving stones and were trampled under foot as soldiers moved on to nationalise the State's largest producer of, "Fixative Tonics".

While they were doing just that, a crash of thunder rose from the coast. Obstinate had struck a torpedo while moving to bar the only escape route from Port Gavin's harbour.

OOC: "Don’t the words, “Loyaltae ets mei ára” mean anything to you? "
No, they don't. What do they mean?

Lucky that you're not part of the intended audience, or you'd probably get nationalised. Loyaltae ets mei ára is the Abargraptine Republican motto, and translates as Loyalty is my honour. It is written in classical Abar, which is really quite a sham of a language created in the course of a generation or two by self-important society gentlemen with nothing better to do and no other ideas for social progress as Abargraptines living under the Eastgater Federation's domination. Its rules are cobbled together with little regard for logic and every consideration for the limited passions and enthusiasm of its creators, who just wanted something to compete with the Federation's favoured Latin. Come the Movement For Abargrapt and the birth of the Republic, classical Abar was seized-upon by the nationalists as a symbol of Abargraptine identity and as part of their superiority over the Eastgater and native populations.

Some information, because, "why not?":

The Continent is a huge island in the Pacific, lying just below the equator, roughly in line with Hawaii. It was first inhabited by Polynesian peoples, and later by European explorers, mostly from the British isles. These explorers became cut-off from the outside world, which assumed them lost, and they founded the Greater Federation of New Eastgate.

New Eastgate, AKA The Federation, comprised five states, three recognising a common king and two -the Peripheral States of Waylu and Great Hoode- being considered loose cannons, and rather uncivilised. They were by and large miners, woodsmen, prospectors- frontiersmen, and they sometimes employed natives in various capacities. The western states, Baston, Goston, and Gregoria, held several thousand natives as slaves, and treated the Peripheries little better. Eventually, the Peripheries -poor and outnumbered- clashed with the westerners, and -after a more than admirable showing- were defeated by superior numbers and technologies.

Kindsley was a senator for Great Hoode, and a state hero at the time of the civil war. He and a great number of his Perihperal comrades departed the Federation when defeat became a certainty, and travelled hundreds of miles across virgin country, encountering many natural hardships and native resistance. Eventually, they reached the far northeast, and founded an independent republic.

Abargrapt was born, but it was not long before ambitious, arrogant leaders thought to take the fight back to the Federation. Again they were defeated, and Abargrapt was forced to humiliating terms.

The Principality was created as the Eastgater king's idiot son was made head of government. Abargrapt toiled under restrictions to its military and through crippling tariffs.

The Movement for Abargrapt is generally considered to have been the brainchild of Ernest Swann, a wirey little man sick of poverty and fed on vitriol. It eventually became the Abargraptine Nation Movement Party- ABATOV, and arranged its own elections, in which no other parties ran, and which the Federal government did not recognise.

The Bluesocks, AKA the BSU. This organisation began as a vigilante group that caused trouble for the Principality's constabulary. It introduced Swann to new revolutionary ideas, and has since become an official part of the new People's Republic's security arrangement.

Most recently, the new People's Republic, born in a bloody revolt in favour of ABATOV (or at least of some vague notion of democracy and independence) and at the cost of the Prince's life, again went to war on the Federation, and, as it happened, the third time was the charm. The Peripheral States surprised the westerners by siding with Abargrapt, which had illegally re-built much of its military strength, and now Abargrapt stands as master of The Continent... although native tribes such as the Mauatu have not been consulted.

Key figures and institutions:
Government-
-Chancellor Ernest Swann
-Abatov Party Chairman Hercule Shoemake, ex-Bluesock Sgt.
-Secretary Ashur Wesst, long time movement member described hatefully as a snivelling little wretch and now in charge of the Abargraptine People’s Purity Commission. One may find irony in that Wesst’s given name is not only Hebrew but also that it means black.

Military-
-Minister of the Navy Rolland Agaboon
-Admiral Peter Tarnart, sails aboard AS Kindsley
-Captain Grace Griffiths, commander AS Kindsley and bitter detractor of Admiral Tarnart
-Minister of the Army Major Benton Rumm

BSU Blue-Socks Unit/Bluesocks Security Unit-
-Head of the BSU Captain Leon Bemmal

Abatov Protective Guard-
-Samson DeVink, one-time MFA Chairman replaced in his post by Ernest Swann and later given charge of now-Chancellor Swann’s task force for, “internal party affairs in security, loyalty, and propriety.”

(A bump for any parties interested in the progress of a late C19th/early C20th tech Republic in the middle of the Pacific.)