NationStates Jolt Archive

This is a history of Upper Xen. Note that it will involve plenty of Half-Life references, but it is Upper Xen after all.

Nihilanth's Speech is courtesy of the good folks at Point of View, a Half-Life mod that can be found here: http://halflife.multiplayer.it/pov/about.htm


-----EARLY HISTORY-----

The land of Upper Xen was once two distinct lands: China, and Japan. From 8000 BC to 1250 AD, China developed in the same way as it did in real life, and so did Japan.

Then, came the Meddlesome Ones, as Xenizen chronicles dub them. They were apparently rail thin, with large black eyes, and huge heads-leading some to suspect that they were Grey aliens. These historians, for the sake of brevity, will not be mentioned here, but the facts were were that the Meddlesome Ones, as they were called by later Chinese historians, came sometime in 1250 AD.

What happened next is recorded in the Chronicle of Nhilanth: these Meddlesome Ones, for some reason unknown to humankind, gave the Great Kublai Khan a mysterious crystal. When he and his court alchemists attempted to experiment with it, they opened a portal to a mysterious land. One Mongol trooper later sent to investigate this land recorded being able to:

".....with my own strength, jump over long, long distances not possible in our land. This was necessary, as this land was a mix of floating islands. It is as if each Island is a fish, suspended in the water......"

The Mongols soon came face to face with the leader of this land, Nihilanth. He saw the Khan's expeditions as an invasion, and met every one of them with the utmost force. Then, as it is recorded in the Chronicle of Nihilanth:

"The Great Nihilanth issued a proclamation to his followers. He had grown tired of the human incursions, and spoke to his followers:

'My children, my citizens, my followers, hear me. The time has come: the threshold has been crossed. Our home is befouled, our realm tainted, our sanctuary desecrated. A borderworld has come to demolish, destroy, and devour us all. The prophecies have come true; the Great Invasion is upon us.

Hear me and learn, my faithful. The denizens of this borderworld call themselves 'Humans.' They are murderous, genocidal, devilish creatures. They are unnatural: they have broken the natural order.
They change the world instead of changing themselves. They call this 'Technology,' and they wield it to terrible effect.

The prophecies told us this day would come. Their words were true, and so we must trust in their guidance: 'The secret of their success will be the instrument of their downfall.' I am gifting a legion of you with my power, enhancing your minds to research this 'Technology' and develop our own form to use against them.

Go forth, kinred of Nihilanth, residents of Xen, worshipers of my greatness, and unleash your wrath upon these foul creatures. Together, we shall turn their strength against them and push them back into their world. Then, the fate they reserved for us shall become their own. Hear me, and obey.'

The finest Alien Grunts (the closest we can interpret this Xenizen word), and Vortigaunts Nihilanth could summon then went through the portal, eager to fulfill their mission and their Leader's will."

Nihilanth's Expedition soon came back with tales of a rich, though high-gravity land that was fertile, and quite hospitable. In response, Nihilanth sent a conquering army to China. Despite their best efforts, the Great Khan's traditional horse tactics were powerless against the horrifying alien beings, and their fantastic powers of self-healing, superstrength, teleportation, and as one Chinese Peasant saw, "a terrifying growth, resembling an insect hive, that is used to inflict pain on all who oppose them." The Khan was forced to surrender his realm to the aliens in a matter of five months.

The Daimyos of Japan initially were not affected by the plight of China. They were too busy fighting each other for total control of Japan. However, when Nihilanth sent his army to the Land of the Rising Sun, the Samurai had to fight back. But in the end, they too were crushed by these fantastic creatures (only it took 5 and a half instead of 5 months), and Kamakura was ransacked by the hordes of Alien Grunts and Vortigaunts, just as Xanadu was.

Nihilanth soon looked for a palace that was suitable for his grand stature, now befitting his new role as a Grand Emperor of Xen. He found the Forbidden City in China, and the Kamakura Palace in Japan not to his liking. So, after much searching, he found a small island at the mouth of the Pearl River. The locals called it the "Fragrant Harbor," but he didn't care about that part. He decided to build his new capital here, and called it Nihilanth'eh (Fortress of Nihilanth). The city would later be taken over by General Xonxt, and renamed Xonxtopolis in his honor.

He then decided, as these new borderworld conquests would be integrated into his All-Consuming Realm, he decided by personal edict to rename the land "Upper Xen." It was naturally, on some upper or otherwise distanced position from Xen, so he felt it was only logical.

In the meantime, Nihilanth began doing what many strongmen do when they take control. He placed trusted collaborators, Xenizen and Human, into positions of governorship and high office. He created new laws desgined to benefit the new Xenizen communities springing up in these lands. He enslaved the locals, and forced them to build his capital, mine for resources, and build monuments in his honor. Reading and writing, along with traditional Chinese and Japanese culture, and Buddhism was outlawed. He imposed heavy taxes on the people, and abolished private property. He used force to put down revolts, sack monasteries, and to get people to obey. These and other terror tactics soon forced the people into a state of repression and fear. Life became cheap, and soon, a state of affairs similar to 18th Century France Developed, with Xenizen lords and Human collaborators enjoying the good life, whilst the people lived in incredible misery, unimaginable to us today. The situation for the peasants, which was never good before Nihilanth, was now downright terrifiying.

For the next 300 years, the people would be continuously subjigated under Nihilanth's rule. And for a while it seemed that the overwhelming numbers of enforcers, plus the general sense of hopelessness that had developed, would ensure no one could stand up for themselves.......

OOC: Oh...no...
...It's happened...
Lol, w00t you finally got around to posting. Interesting...
~_~

-----THE WAR OF RESTORATION, pt. 1-----

Initially, those who resisted were feeble bands of bandits, or monks who still practiced the ancient martial ways, like kung fu. They were small, and feeble against the litany of abuses caused by Nihilanth's excesses, and his endless army of grotesque enforcers, brought in by a series of warp gates that ensured a constant flow of infantry and Xenizen settlers.

Then, came the first signs of hope. In 1405, a small band of these monks from the secret Shaolin temple, realizing that they alone could not overthrow Nihilanth, violated the Journeying Law and met with some Japanese Zen monks in a secret meeting whose location is lost to history. What we do know is that they founded the Brotherhood, a secret society dedicated to killing Nihilanth and freeing the people from his terror. Its organizational structure, as befitting a resistance movement, was small, and divided into cells. Initially comprised of monks trained in various schools of martial arts and sword arts from both Japan and China, they soon attracted all who hated Nihilanth.

They soon found a powerful ally. Zheng He, the Admiral who in our universe led his great treasure ships to Africa, was here also an Admiral, in this case, one who surveyed lands for Nihilanth to conquer. However, his personal faith grew to conflict with his masters wishes, as Zheng He was a Moslem who had to practice his faith in secret to avoid being killed by Nihilanth. Combined with an assassination attempt on his life (Nihilanth feared he was growing too popular), these factors turned him against his former master. He took his navy, and entrusted it to the Brotherhood in the Great Mutiny of 1409. On the Brotherhood's instructions, he then raided Nihilanthite forts on the coast, and siezed control of Fujian Province in a daring 6-month struggle. His crowning acheivement was an expedition into the Yellow River, raiding enemy forts and destroying warp gates that enabled reinforcements from "Lower Xen" (what Nihilanth had renamed old Xen) to enter Upper Xen. This was the first of many such campaigns China in this universe would see. Zheng He's legacy in this universe was the first recorded use of Marine-type infantry in Upper Xen, and a great heroic service.

As Zheng He was fighting his front, other generals soon challenged the might of Nihilanth. Peasants and Moslem rebels revolted in Yunnan Province, joining with Zheng He and throwing the Governor there out of his palace window.

In Japan, the great clans, never really accepting their subservient status despite their elite titles and postitions of power, revolted under the leadership of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. Using guerrilla tactics, and excellent tactical and strategic leadership, he proclaimed the Ashikaga Bakufu in Kyoto, and slew the Nihilanthite Governor there. Moving into the palace, he declared war on "the tyrant Nihilanth and his band of fools." This opened a new front, and soon, the Japanese portion of the War of Restoration, called the "Sengoku Jidai," would mirror the greater War of Restoration, going on and off for the next 381 years under different generals.

After the initial surge of patriotism (the "mutiny" phase), Nihilanth rebuilt some of his Warp Gate networks in central China, and launched a new offensive into central China, recapturing the Western Yellow River Valley and making incursions into the rebel-held areas. This forced the rebels into a defensive position, and they fortified their postitions in Fujian and Yunnan Provinces. Meanwhile, Nihilanth's forces also launched an expedition to Japan, recapturing Shimonoseki, Western Kyushu, and Shikoku. Even worse, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu was killed on January 12, 1410 in battle with Xenizen forces, and the rebels in Japan were left leaderless.

This phase (the Countermutiny) continued for several years. Then, in 1435, new leadership and mistakes by Nihilanth ensured rebel victory. New generals in Japan (Takeda Shingen) later led to campaigns in Northern Honshu, and the rise of rebel actions in Yunnan Province led to the seizure of Sichuan Province in 1465. In Manchuria, native tribes that had traditionally opposed to the Nihilanthite government joined with the Brotherhood, and in a guerilla campaign on the steppes, far from any Warp Gates, they freed Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.

This phase, called the Reaction phase, led to many successful offensives, in which land was reclaimed. Only the personal assumption of command by Nihilanth himself stopped the rebels from destroying his realm entirely. By 1600, when the phase was done, only the central Yellow River Valley, Canton Province, Hunan Province, Shikoku, and Hokkaido remained under the control of Nihilanth.

The next period (the "Stalemate") saw much on-off, inconclusive fighting. Nihilanth tried to retake Yunnan, but he failed again in 1606. Meanwhile, Japanese forces under Tokugawa Ieyasu attempted to take Shikoku in 1653, but was only able to get a few enclaves there. Toyotomi Hideiyoshi did make some gains, siezing the mouth of the Yellow River in 1655. But for the most part, peace seemed elusive, and for a while, no fighting actually occurred........

However, in the 1700's, an influx of foreign technology and volunteers would help the Chinese and Japanese finally acheve their freedom. Modern firearms like muskets and cannons helped the Japanese to finally conquer Shikoku and Hokkaido in the Great Campaigns of 1750-1754, finally uniting the Japanese home islands under a Japanese government.

bump

Half-life= best game EVER

Amen to that. You geting HL2?

hell yay

in the history are you going to metion where gordon kills the ninhlath??

Yes.....when its time.......

New section.....note that Gordon Freeman has a different background here, and so do the other Half-life characters. This was to ease them into the 18th Century, as gracefully as possible. All quotes and associations with RL history are fictional.

-----THE WAR OF RESTORATION, Pt. 2-----

The foreign technologies that had served the Japanese well also benefited the Chinese, enabling them to advance onto Hunan Province and destroy the Nihilanthite troops there.

It was not so on the outside, but to one Elder class member, a General Xonxt Kr'nck on the inside, this grew frustrating. This went against everything he was taught! Humans were supposed to be weak, and their dependence on "technology" made them as such. They were to be servants, harvesting resources for their masters, and occasionally providing hosts to the hungry Headcrab classes for zombification (to him, that little facet of the Headcrab caste was quite crude, but he supposed "well, its their culture"). However, these campaigns in Hunan and Shikoku had begun to persuade him otherwise. He felt that maybe after all, humans weren't weak. Perhaps that their technology has given them an opportunity we lost. He tried to tell Nihilanth. But the Great Lord merely laughed, and scoffed at him. "Relax," he told Xonxt. "The humans are and always will be lesser than us. We don't need things to crush them! The very nature of what you suggest not only isn't needed, but is heresy and contradicts my infallible will. Now leave me, and never speak of this to anyone again, lest you wish to suffer." Dejected, Xonxt left, fearing the worst for the Elders and the Great Lord. He knew their arrogance would be their end. He just didn't know how.....and the way it would would be the stuff of legends.

During the final push into Hunan he led a force of 10,000 Alien Grunts. To his horror, all of their Hivehand weapons and armor were naught against the Chinese guerillas, and the hidden cannons and sharpshooters they placed in the hills. When he was captured, initially, the sight of an Elder begging for mercy in broken Chinese amused the men. But later, as he plead his case to the local leader of the rebels, Kangxi (a Manchu who had become a great general during the Stalemate Phase by stopping an invasion of Manchuria, and later led aligned himself with the Brotherhood), Xonxt's position soon changed. People were amazed at him. What was this? An Elder trying to join the rebellion? Huzzah!
Maybe they were winning after all.

Xonxt soon turned to the side of the Brotherhood. This earned him a 150,000 gold bounty on his head from Nihilanth, and the questioning looks of the humans he soon commanded. His knowledge of the inner workings of the Elder system, and his intellgence on a massive fortress on the Yellow River called "Gonarch's Lair" however, soon proved valuable. In addition, his defection soon persuaded other Xenizens to try and defect. Though they were a distinct minority, Nihilanth knew that trouble was ahead. If his soldiers could not be trusted, then he was doomed......

This phase, beginning with Xonxt's Defection in 1756, is called the "Downfall." It would result in Nihilanth's death, and the breaking of the shackles that held the people in a most unpleasant state of bondage. But first a few more ingredients would need to be added to the pot.

Far away, in Northern New York, lived one of these ingredients. He was a perfect Enlightenment era renaissance man. He was an ameteur scientist (having published several important papers on the nature of electricity and energy), believed in the natural rights of the people, and was a carpenter. He had an usually characteristic beard, black-rimmed glasses, and maybe as a result of his profession, carried a red crowbar always. He used it to fight evil in his home colony, be it wolves, thieves, bandits, or the occasional French raid. His name: Gordon Freeman.

Gordon was involved in the French and Indian War, leading a militia force against the Iroquois and the French in the border regions near Canada. Here, he gained great prestige and fame for the use of his crowbar in battle. Many observers who fought with him claimed he never fired a shot. He would always use his crowbar to answer any challenge the French posed, and they soon feared him as "Le Homme avec un pied-de-biche:" the Crowbar Man.

As this fight was proceeding, he met a few more people that would soon liberate Upper Xen. During this time, a particularly useful and helpful person met Mr. Freeman and joined his infantry force. He was an Irish backwoodsman who, though not sharing Freeman's interest in science and "natural rights," did like guns. He was, in his home village, a gunsmith, a town watchman, and an excellent marksman. His bravery (some would say, to the point of stupidity) saved Freeman from a surprise night attack, earning him Gordon's lifelong respect. This man was Barnabas Calhoun.

"Barney," as he was called, proved to be a true friend to Gordon, and the two bailed each other out on numerous occasions. After the war, the two went their seperate ways, though they wrote often. Barney moved his gunsmithing business, and did a brisk trade, while Gordon continued his scientific pursuits, joining with two others: a retired Professor from Yale College named Walter Bennett, a physician named Dr. Kleiner, and a free black man with his own almanac and a shipping company named Dr. Eli Vance. The group, calling themselves the Lambda Society for Reason and Intellectual Perfection, continued blissfully pursuing science, until another cataclysm hit New York: the American Revolution. The war turned them into Patriots, but the Lambdas had to flee into the backwoods to avoid being caught by the British. They soon joined with other Patriot forces from Upstate, and fought the forces of the British generals St. Leger and Burgoyne. The two generals soon commented that their Indian and Loyalist allies and their regulars were all quaking in fear "over some damn fool with a carpenters' implement," to quote Burgoyne.

"That damn fool with a carpenters' implement" soon got his old reputation back, as at Oriskany and later at Saratoga, he and his friends began to perform heroic acts of bravery. Some recounted Freeman's charges into British cavalry lines with only a crowbar, some recounted Calhoun's use of several pistols at once, Pirate-style, to take down incoming Indians. Stories soon abounded, not all of them true. Whatever is true or not, there is only one certain thing. After the Revolution, Freeman was eager to settle down, and go back to science. But the traders returning from China sson brought tales of an epic battle for freedom, against a foe that seemed to have come from Hell itself. To prove this, a Chinese man had come to America, with a Vortigaunt in tow. The display and the Chinese man's speech, filtered through a Yankee interpreter, proved motivating, but America, busy with trying to establish itself as a nation, could not spare forces to aid China or Japan.

But Gordon Freeman could spare himself. He persuaded Barney, whose village was sacked by the Mohawks in a retalitory raid during the Revolution, to join him, along with the rest of the Lambda Society on what Freeman wrote was "a quest for liberty, and to bring light into darkness." Eli organized an expedition using the funds from his almanac, pruchased a ship, and organized an expedition.

Several months later, Gordon and Company, aboard a Yankee Clipper Ship called the SS Pequod, landed in Ningbo. By this time, Nihilanth had lost control of the Yellow River, and much of his warp system was destroyed.

Yet he still held on. The mad being still held Canton in his clutches and fortified it with a huge network of fortresses, warp gates, and increasingly, Shocktrooper mercenaries from another world, Race X. It was rumored that an agent of Nihilanth's had actually gone to Europe to witness how these humans developed their "technology," and this visit resulted in the development of Vauban-style fortresses in a huge network around Canton and the Pearl River, called, the Nihilanth Line. He was confident no humans could get in, and in fact, he even dreamed of rebuilding his empire.

OOC: How's this? Don't worry, Nihilanth dies later. But how, I won't reveal now.

---THE WAR OF RESTORATION, Pt. 3---

Little did Nihilanth know, however, that Gordon Freeman, Barney Calhoun, and the Lambdas, plus his rebellious Chinese and Vortiguant subjects, were craftier than he thought. They knew very well that for all of his fortifications, for all of his mercenaries, he was not invincible.

The Forces of Freedom had a Teleporter, used by the hated foe. The Lambdas discovered that this gate could be used to travel anywhere, as long as it had power and was connected to other gates.....but htey had no power.

Then, Gordon and his firends saw what the Chinese resistance and the Vortiguants had known for years. That the way to power these on Earth, was to use a special type of crystal, brought by the Borderworlders, that would create some kind of reaction that would open a portal. We know this reaction now as a Resonance Cascade, and this rediscovery proved useful, especially when a band of Chinese were able to acquire some, by means unknown to this day. They were able to open the portal, using the crystal and a lighting bolt......plus a good amount of luck.

The portal opened, Gordon, Xonxt, Barney, a Chinese man known only to us as the "Warrior" and a kuniochi ninja, whose name too has been lost to history, stepped through the portal. By good chance, they entered the castle of Nihilanth......and the Tale of Gordon Freeman tells what happened next.

"...they stepped inside, and were greeted with a most hideous dungeon. Gordon frowned at the sight, it was disgusting, the Spanish Inquisition would be proud of the torture machines and macabre instruments inside. A living factory seemed to exist, seeming to make soldiers out of a green jelly....Barney said to Gordon, 'I have a feeling that we will have many trophies tonight.'

It is then reported that Gordon and Company fought through the Complex, they systematically destroyed the factory, and fought many warriors, remaining unscathed. They reached Nihilanth's inner sanctum, where, in a fantastic fight, he and the rest of the crew fought Nihilanth using swords, crowbars, and 18th-century Grenades. In the end, the Grenades did the trick, weakening Nihilanth to the point where it took only one hit with Gordon's crowbar to finish him off.

The war was over, the Warp Gates to Xen stopped working, as their master and controller was no longer there to control them.

The people were free......now, the rebuilding had to begin. This was the hard part.

---Rebuilding---

The War of Restoration had left China and Japan in ruins. Farms were destroyed, cities in shambles, the great Palaces of the Khans and the Daimyos had been reduced to rubble.

But from this, the Lambdas hoped, they could remake society. They were hoping that a stable Xenizen Republic could be made, like that of America. It could help, republics were being hated upon constantly, the French were getting beaten back and nobody treated America with respect.

There was division on how to do this. Barney was an anti-Federalist by belief, he liked a Confederate, loose-knit type government. Gordon wanted a more unified Republic, whereby the central government would have more power than the states. These issues would resurface again, but for now, material rebuilding was essential.

A Provisional Government was formed in Hong Kong, two days after the death of Nihilanth, on April 4th, 1782. Led by Emperor Kangxi and Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, they marshaled the people into a frenzy of rebuilding. In particular, Kleiner and Vance took the opportunity to apply Enlightenment-era ideas to this rebuilding, planning the rebuilding of cities using public libraries, grid systems (though they didn't know the Chinese got there first with that concept), and modern fire and police departments. They also established schools and colleges in conjunction with local authorities, the first such being Kleiner Polytechnic College in 1783, outside of Hong Kong. By 1784, China's cities were repaired, and things there seemed to go back to normal. Japan was more fortunate, having been freed earlier, but it still was considered rebuilt by scholars by around the same time.

It took longer to repair the countryside. Despite a rise in the material standard of living for the farmer, and increased crop yields, plus the introduction of new crops that improved nutrition, problems remained.
Headcrabs, a deadly predator, would haunt farmers and villagers for years to come, and despite a Headcrab Watch, the threat was not contained until 1986. Also, new technologies reached the peasants, but the one thing that could help them, land reform and freedom from tax, did not. The peasants found themselves under a new dictator, greedy landlords who thought of nothing but money. This situation, unfortunately, would not be solved until the 20th Century....

As material standards of living were being adjusted, the political and spiritual matters of the state were being attended to.

Baptist missionaries from New England came to South China, and Catholics from Portugal brought more Catholicism to Japan, and Moslem traders strengthened Islam's presence in Yunnan province. these men were met with resistance, but also, they sowed the seeds of a strong Christian presence in Upper Xen. Buddhism itself grew, as people sought a faith they could take stock in. Politicians encouraged this growth, to keep order and in some ways, to resist the coming of the white missionaries, who they thought were dangerous.

Politics were more tenuous. The division in philosophy between Gordon and Barney, plus the imperial ambitions of Kangxi and Tokugawa, made things quite interesting.

Barney's Anti-Federalist ideals became popular in Japan, if nothing else, they promoted an individualistic agenda that would keep their culture separate, if they had to stay united with the Chinese. This led to the rise of the Katsujen-Ken Society, a society dedicated to the creation of a Confederacy, whereby China and Japan would be loosely tied together.

They reasoned that this was the best way to keep the Japanese culture separate and allow it to have an equal but powerful say in government. They, in particular, formulated a "compact theory" of how Upper Xen should be run (the government of UX was a compact between China and Japan, and the Japanese, if the government did something they objected to, they did not have to follow it, it was not their choice), and some radical thinkers even endorsed an early form of Nullification. An irony of history is that this philosophy was also embraced by rural Chinese farmers, who formed the "China Association."

The Imperialists, who wanted a Monarchy, were strong in both areas, and felt the Enlightenment ideals of the Lambdas were too radical. They wanted an Upper Xen whereby Asians would rule, and the people would be subjects to a Divinely Inspired and Infallible Emperor, who knew best. They looked both to the pre-Nihilanth Chinese Empire and the monarchies of Europe as models.

The Republicans, most powerful among thinkers and middle class people in the cities of both areas, were moderates that looked to the Government of the French Republic, and later, after the signing of the US Constitution, the US, as models. They agreed wit the Katsujen-Kens that the Rights of Man had to be protected, but they felt a strong government that shared power with the provinces was the best way to do this.

By 1786, the consensus swung to the Republicans, who, compromised with the Imperials and the Katsujen-Kens to create the First Xenizen Republic. This government had a Congress, a President, was based at Hong Kong, now Xonxtopolis, and was technically a Republican Democracy with an American-type Constitution.

However, it was also more Confederate in nature, as it allowed the states greater leeway in domestic issues, made a Provincial Tribunal consisting of representatives from the Provinces to decide the legality of laws in lieu of a Supreme Court, and a number of other measures conducive to states' rights, like an expanded version of the Tenth Amendment, among other things (there was a National Army, but the provinces had their own militias that they could deploy at anytime). Also, the President did not have a veto power, only the Provincial Tribunal could veto bills. This was a loose system, which sometimes could and did get stuck in sectional debate and chaos. The President later got a veto power in 1812, after the failure of the Tribunal to decisively act on several bills.

This arrangement lasted until 1889, where sectional divides and the failure of this loose system to keep everything together caused a Civil War.

Gordon Freeman and Barney did not like associating themselves with these movements, they felt like most Americans at this time that parties were divisive, and instead worked together. After the forming of the First Republic, Gordon served as Secretary of State for the Kangxi-Tokugawa government, and traveled to Europe and the US.

He got recognition from America and France, but Britain was frightened at this. Another republic? With those Americans?! Good God!

The result was an initial war between Britain and UX, called the War of 1799. There, British navy forces and Xenizen troops fought. The Xenizens beat the British on land, but lost at sea.

This highlighted the need for improvement, and the Xenizen government got aid from Napoleonic France and the US. Given better guns, artillery, and American-type Ships, plus training by French forces, they later improved dramatically, and beat the British again in 1810-1812, in the Tibetan War.

Still, despite these unifying victories, the seeds for future conflict between the Xenizens was sown.

The Chinese were beginning to resemble the American South. They had an agricultural society based on peasant farmers and debt peons, with landlords on top, mainly, and promoted a way of life that emphasized honor, and tradition, based on Confucian and Buddhist ideals. They despised the Japanese, who they felt were too Westernized, effeminate, greedy and pugnacious. The Chinese, for sure, had more industry than the RL American Antebellum South, but they generally saw industry in a negative light, seeing it in some ways as unnatural and dirty.

Thew Japanese were becoming like the North. They were the center of a rapidly developing industrial juggernaut. Steel mills and textile mills in Tokyo, Sendai, and rubber and chemical plants at Akita were just a few examples of the rapid growth of Japan. The Japanese had more banks than the Chinese and had a more diversified economy. They considered the Chinese to be "Rednecks" and "hillbillies" who were uncivilized, and felt that their industrial society was they way of the future, and that the Chinese were holding them back. They differed from the North in that they did not actively embrace an ideology of free labor and social mobility, but they did feel that the ideals of the Chinese landlord class and their supposed lack of respect for the Rights Of Man was a step backward.

And to make things worse, each side saw the other as stubborn, and unrealistic. Throw in traditional racism, and the fact the Japanese did dominate much of the railroads and industry in UX, and you get a very strange and conflicted climate indeed. Everytime the Japanese tried to expand industry, they were resisted by the Chinese. Everytime the Chinese tried to lower tariffs, the Japanese resisted.

Radicals on both sides, who had strong support, backed the Parties of Confederation, the Katsujen-Ken and the China Association, as they did not want anything to do with each other. This increased tensions, as both sides often used racist and sectioanlist language, inflaming debates. They also pushed for laws to weaken the unity of the system, and both pushed for Nullification, after John C. Calhoun introduced it in 1830. There was a storng National Unity movement in the Nationalist Party, which had formed by the merger of the Imeprials and the Republicans in 1820, but they seeemd powerless to stop the tide of madness.

Things were not looking good....and this conflict of ideas on how Upper Xen should be, combined iwth a weak political system, would make a very horrible bloodbath indeed.

I'm very tempted to say, get a life, but it was a cool read.

So instead, I'll say, you need to get an NSwiki or something for all this. You've obviously put quite a bit of thought into it. Congratulations.

---EXPLODING TENSIONS---

By 1850, tensions were boiling over. The industrial might of the Japanese section, which was making China dependent on the Japanese for goods and rail service, plus the factional extremism of all the partes dedicated to Confederacy, made a war inevitable.

Things went downhill with the election of 1854. There, Katsujen-Ken and China Association Party members took control of the Congress and the Tribunal, beginning a period of indecision, and tension that would last until 1889.

Things began with the proposed Annexations of Hawaii and Korea. After the US failed to take Hawaii in 1854, the Xenizen Government tried to buy Hawaii. Korea also was a potential colony, many Chinese and Japanese had came to the area. A takeover of Korea by Chinese settlers and an expedition by Saigo Takamori led to a debate over whether it should be annexed.

Japanese legislators saw this move as a Chinese plot to extend their Confucian Empire, and would have none of it. The Chinese saw the Japanese stonewalling as an attempt to subjigate them, and a hilarious attempt to prevent the inevitable.

The eventual annexation bills were deadlocked in Congress, and its passage was marked with fist fights and canings. Things resulted in Hawaii and Korea remaining free, but as Hawaiii could breathe easy, Kaorea remained a thorny issue that served to only make things worse.

Then, the National Railways Act was being debated. The act called for the creation of Xenizen National Railways, a government chartered company to manage railroads in UX. The challenge was to see who would get on the Board of Directors. The result was the "Railroad War," a political battle where the Chinese and Japanese fought to get their candidates on the Board. Such was the frenzy of this that the President defied his powers, declared martial law, and forced the two sides to compromise, making a fifty-fifty ratio of Chinese and Japanese on the Board. This left ill feelings between the sides that increased the conflict.

More issues rose in the 1830's and 1840's. A Westernization movement, known as the Asia-America Society, wanted to use the Gregorian calendar, Western first names, Roman letters and Arabic numbers for words and spelling, the metric system, and, in an extension of a popular trend, force government workers to wear Western clothing. These reforms sparked a debate, which not only inflamed sectional debate but also made everybody nervous. In China, the adoption of Western names and Western Clothing for government workers, along with Gregorian time-keeping, was adopted, but only the Gregorian calendar was used in Japan (many workers already wore Western clothing and they didn't want to have to use western names). Both sides resisted the use of Roman letters and Arabic numbers.

Another event many historians say increased the divide was the Tribunal Reforms. The inefficient Tribunal was to be refined, the Nationalist Party President, Harold Wong, an decent Administrator but a person who tried to please everybody, had the idea to get rid of it and make a formal Supreme Court. He was met with opposition from both sides. In response, he decided on appointing a popular vote to decide the fate of the Tribunal. The pro and anti-Tribunal forces duked it out in the streets, and after two different elections, the first contaminated with fraud, he made the Court official on Sept. 1, 1861.

The Court turned into a sectional tool, as the Chinese and Japanese judges that packed it in the same fifty-fifty arrangement that was used for the Railway Board led it to be replaced with an all Chinese court. The court soon began invalidating laws that restricted industry, and began backing laws that helped the Chinese. They backed a law that tried to outlaw the Samurai in 1876, leading to the Satsuma Province's attempt to nullify the bill and secede, only to be stopped by Government troops.

In response, the next election saw the rise of the Katsujen-Kens. They began opposing the Chinese Court at all costs, ignoring it, bribing its members and even resorting to assassination to force compliance. And even then, this failed.

Things came to a head in 1870 with the Electoral Reform Law, and the Bank Act, a set of laws that decreased the tax but added literacy tests in both Chinese and Japanese and other, newer property requirements for voting, and required the National Bank to move its HQ to Tokyo and required it to accept only gold and rely on gold shipments form the Provincial treasuries to fund it.

The response was feverish. These laws clearly benefited the Japanese, and the Chinese would have none of it. The laws were passed by the House and Senate, but failed in the Court and was vetoed by the President. In response, the Japanese felt they had been frustrated enough. Eventually, a compromise was made, and this staved off conflict.

But things were growing even more tense. Legalities aside, on both sides of UX, the two sides were to be seen beating each other's citizens, boycotting each other's goods, and harassing each other, using internal tariffs and extralegal means. Every election year since 1854, the cast and crew changed, but their goals, domination of the other section, remained the same.

The only thing they did agree on was a campaign of relocation and extermination versus the Borderworlders. Since 1801, they had been forced to live on reservations, most in Central China, though a few were in Hokkaido. They were often targets of racism, segregation, and laws that restricted their rights to own property and travel. Many resisted, to no avail. The epic tale of Ainu and Vortiguant fighters in the joint "Hero Brigades" fighting the government in Hokkaido during the Great Northern War of 1867-1871 made Saigo Takamori famous, resstarted the career of Nathan Bedford Forrest and led to the near extermination of the Ainu and the Borderworlders in Japan, as well as their mass expulsion in 1872. Not until 1968 would the Borderworld peoples be allowed to return to Japan, and would laws be passed protecting the Ainu.

A court case involving a Chinese man accused of murder in Yokohama that resulted in a death sentence using very shaky evidence electrified the nation, and the depictions of the brutal conditions of Chinese peasants and Japanese industrial workers alike in books and magazines, mainly written by both humanitarians and sectionalists, each hardened the views of the people, as both came to say that each system was a threat to the health of its laborers. Japanese industrialists accused the Chinese of promoting unions to weaken them, and the Chinese would often say that the japanese were tightening the money supply (which they were), to "make us into debt slaves."

This mischief was known as the "Dirty War," and it lasted until 1885, where a Compromise, the Unity Act, tried to smooth things over, using an omnibus bill that addressed issues such as trade (addressing the internal tariffs and other restrictions the sections were putting on each other), bimetallism (using both silver and gold to please the Chinese, and reforming the Bank so it would remain neutral from both parties), railroads (reforming the board and requiring its members to be impartial), monopolies (it began to break up bot the zaibatsus and the landlord coalitions), electoral reform (it removed property requirements and literacy tests), civil service reform (it mandated a 50/50 quota of Japanese and Chinese and required that they have skills), and others.

This bill worked for a time, but its attacks on monopolies and its attempts at reform were ill enforced, and the Court, dominated by sectionalists from Japan, ruled much of it illegal.

This was the last straw. A riot broke out in Shanghai, and several Japanese were lynched. A retaliatory riot in Yokohama's Chinatown brought cries of secession from China, and soon, on May 15th, 1889, the Chinese rallied around Sheng-Ji Yang, a prominent merchant and landlord from Canton, who declared China's independence. The Japanese soon found an heir to the imperial line, and crowned a new Emperor, named Meiji, the son of an industrialist.

Both sides began raiding armories, raising armies, and sending representatives abroad to gain recognition. This was not new, Fujian Province had tried to secede in 1864 over tariffs, and Satsuma Province had tried to secede in 1876 over a proposed act that tried to ban the samurai class, but each time, things were smoothed over.

This time, it did not look like that was going to happen. The wars in Congress had broad public interest and backing, and they had influenced the two sides, who now saw each force as a dangerous element that would destroy UX. Now, there was only war.

OOC: If I went too much into legalisms, my bad, but this was very hard to do, making a transition to the Great Civil War.

---THE GREAT CIVIL WAR---

The Great Civil War now began in earnest. Two days after the Chinese Declaration of Independence, naval forces of the two fleets met at the Battle of Shenjiamen, where a force of Chinese and japanese destoryers met, and after six hours, left in a draw.
----------------------------------------

---Strategy and Tactics---
The advantages of each side were not readily apparent. Both had the same level of training for their officers (they were trained in the Prussian style for army, British for Navy), both had ready industrial bases to produce needed war materials, and both had both had plenty of men and advanced technology, needed to carry on a an extended conflict, which was apparent after Shenjiamen.

However, looks were decieving. China may have had industry, but Japan still had even more. They had much of the shipyards, ten to China's four. They did not have as much food production, they had to import much of their food from CHina, but their larger navy ensured that they could keep supply lines open and strike the Chinese coast at will. They had more banks, they could raise more money to pay for war upkeep. And, they had better sialors.

The Chinese had more food production, more men than the Japapnese, and all the advantages of an army fighting a defensive war: they knew the terrain, they had shorter supply lines and they could count on unified support in case of invasion. They had less industry and naval might than the Japanese, and their banking system certainly was not as well developed, but compared to a similar scenario, that of the Confederate States of America in the US Civil War, the Chinese were not actively forced to use paper money, and their financial system could pay for the war.

Both sides tried to actively seek foreign aid. China sided with France, Japan, with Germany. They bought guns from them, the Chinese bought several frigates from the French, they got recoginition, and they opened a dangerous opportunity for the Western Powers: the opportunity to dominate Asia, either with a puppet or by an outright conquest.

Strategy on both sides soon became clear. For China, the key to victory was the strangulation of Japan and the defense of China's coastline, and for Japan, an outright conquest of China, dividing it by taking the Yellow River, and foreign, preferably European, acceptance of the Meiji crown.

----------------------------------------

---The Early Stages of the Great Civil War, 1889-1890---

The Central Front

On June 10th, the Japanese commenced a landing near Shanghai. Their target was Fort Vance, on the Island of Heng Sha, the main fort guarding the entrance to the mouth of the Yellow River and Shanghai, also at the entrance to the Yellow River. An army of 25,000 men, led by none other than Saigo Takamori himself, one of the most famous generals in UX, was chosen for this campaign.

The Battle of Fort Vance lasted two days, from June 10th to June 12th, 1889. This pivotal first battle resulted in 8,000 Chinese casualties, and 9,800 Japanese casualties. The Japanese failed to crack Ft. Vance, and the Japanese were forced to retreat further down the coast.

The resulting actions are known as the Shanghai Campaign. Here, Japanese troops under the command of Saigo Takamori along with troops in another attack north of the Mouth of the Yellow River (25,000 troops successfully landed North on Chongming Dao Island, forcing their way inward) were able to force their way onshore near Laogang, and fought ferociously on the 12 km trek to Nanhui. There, for five days, they resisted attacks by Chinese troops under the command of Li Hu-Jin at nearby Huangjialu (June 21st), and Situanciang (June 22nd), before receiving reinforcements- 34,000 Imperial Marines and 5,000 Cavalry, some of the best troops the Japanese could muster, along with new cannons from Krupp, which were to be used on Shanghai.

With these fresh troops, Saigo's men on both sides marched west, meeting Li Hu-Jin's troops at the Battle of the Crossroads near Xinchang (July 16th) and the Battle of Nanbu (July 17th) and being stopped by them, if only momentarily, before going North, close to Shanghai.

Saigo knew he was in a tenuous position. His supplies and men were limited, available only via a tenuous route to the sea near his beachheads. He knew Liu to be an aggressive general, his attacks upon him at Huangjialu and Situanciang had illustrated that. The Chinese used a strategy of attrition, one that served them well, their human wave attacks and habit of screaming like banshees had inflicted plenty of casualties on his men, physically and psychologically.

He had to press on, his main plan was to link up with the Northern Force, which was to cross the Yellow River and and march to the South of Shanghai, where they would meet with Saigo's main force, and besiege Shanghai, and force it into submission.

The Northern Force began fighting hard, taking Chongming on August 18th. Then, they moved under the cover of darkness, and stormed the other side of the river. After a hard campaign, the two forces met, and the Siege of Shanghai began in earnest on Sept. 1, after the Mayor refused to surrender. The siege lasted for a while, and became one of the great survival stories of the war.

As the war progressed into 1890, things had hardened into Trench Warfare, and the High Command in Tokyo grew frustrated.....

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The Southern Front

In Canton, the Japanese attempted the same methods of amphibious assault and manuver that got them into the Siege of Shanghai. However, the Chinese general, Hu Long, laid a trap for them.

He initially abandoned Hong Kong, and had the government flee to Chungking. The Japanese, thinking that the Chinese had no backbone or stomach for battle, took HK on July 15th, 1889.

Soon, Hu's trap was sprung. A disasterous attempt to move up the Pearl River and a seige of Hong Kong trapped the Japanese forces, and contained them in Hong Kong, where they fortified themselves after a fruitless attempt to advance outside the city on August 24th. The small Japanese garrison was soon smashed, and forced to surrender three days later.

The Japanese then tried to attack Fujian. Initial landings near Foochow and Amoy on Sept. 1 were more successful, but resistance from Fujianese and Cantonese Chinese regiments forced the Japanese back, frustrating them.

The only thing they could consider a victory was the seizure of Hainan Island and Taiwan in January and February 1890. The Chinese forces in those areas were weak, and they fell easily to the Marine attacks. Still, strong Chinese defense would make attacking from these areas difficult.

----------------------------------------------------
The Northern Front

The Northern Front in Manchuria and Korea was something different.

Few, if any, set piece battles were being fought in Manchuria, much of the war there was fought between bands of guerrillas, mainly Chinese, Korean and Japanese settlers, plus Russian and even ex-Confederate mercenaries. The two largest bands were the Chinese "Freedom Army" and the Japanese "Sekiho Army," and these bands were often a combination of groups; the Sekiho Army itself had six cavalry warbands made of Manchu horsemen, a Cossack division, and two Korean Infantry companies.

The war in Manchuria was brutal, and massacres, atrocities, looting, pillaging and misery on both sides were frequent. The war itself can be compared to modern Liberia, Somalia, or "Bleeding Kansas," in 1850's America, such was the insanity.

In Korea, the war was more subdued, and organized, but was still characterized by violence and cavalry skirmishes. The Koreans htemselves suffered greatly from the War, as many were pressganged to fight for both sides, and were terrorized by both sides, who wanted their land and their food, and often referred to them as inferior.

The Kingdom of Korea was officially neutral, but unofficially, the Korean monarchs had lost power years ago, much power was in the hands of Japanese and Chinese settlers. When war broke out, these groups soon, like their mainland and Manchurian bretheren, armed themselves and went to war.

When the Korean government tried to stop them, Japanese militiamen, led by the Sekiho Army General Tomonaga Yoshitsune, took the city of Seoul and imprisoned the Korean royal family. This led to a counterstrike by Chinese militias, who wanted to establish their own government. The result was the Battle of Seoul on July 6th, where the Japanese were forced out, and the Chinese Freedom Army took control. Sekiho Army militiamen soon assembled an army, mainly by kidnapping Korean peasants and hiring American and Russian mercenaries, and began a total war, buring crops and fighting Chinese regulars and their Korean Auxiliaries (who more often than not, were pressganged into fighting) in violent skirmishes.

An unlikely person was to be found here in Korea: Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of many Americans hired by Japanese forces to lead its forces, had made a name for himself as a violent butcher as well as a brilliant military strategist during the Great Northern War against the Ainu-Vortiguant Armies.

He was chosen to lead the cavalry forces in Manchuria against the "Mongol General," Yuan Shangol, and his Chinese/Mongol/Korean Militia. He accepted the job with glee, vowing to "teach those barbarians a lesson."

After sacking Namp'o on Aug 24th, Forrest's "Cavaliers" met Yuan's cavalry outside of Pyongyang on Sept 3rd. The forces fought each other to a standstill, but it became clear to Forrest that this guy was no pushover.

Gathering a massive force of Korean Auxiliaries, ex-Confederate mercenaries and Japanese Samurai Cavalry (the Samurai were never abolished in UX), he moved north, terrorizing the Korean countryside and attempting to deny Yuan food and shelter. Still, Yuan found the the resources to lanch fierce attacks at Sunan (Dec 24th), Pyongsong (Jan 4th), and Kangdong-up (Jan 18th).

The violence in Korea reached a frenetic crecsendo, and by February, despite all the killing, all the terror, all of the cavlary charges, there was no clear winner in Korea.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The War at Sea

At sea, initially, the Japanese were trouncing the Chinese handily, exploiting their naval advantages during the war to launch raids all over the Chinese coast.

Indeed, the early post-seccession Chinese Navy was a joke. Composed mainly of Monitor-type ships, it was only good for coastal defense. It had a few modern ships, but not enough to comabt the Japanese. The battles of the East China Sea (Sept 5), 1st Tsushima (Sept. 13th) illustrated the Chinese naval deficency, as Admiral Togo of Japan continously hammered away at them, and used his numbers and superior tarining to his advantage, outflanking and reducing the Chinese ships to little bits.

In response, the Chinese got smarter. They began to buy ten advanced battleships from France, plus the rights to that class, and by July of 1890, they were ready to take on the Japanese. In the battle of the Formosa Strait, on July 6th, 1890, the Chinese defeated the Japanese and forced them back to Taipei. The hero of that battle, Hung Wang-wai, was haild as the "Savior of China," and derided by the Japanese as "Inuyasha" or "the Dog Demon." They were shcoked more than anything. The Chinese could now actually fight at sea!? Inexcuseable!

They had more to worry about as well. Like the Japanese, they had hired foreign experts, too. Especially Americans.

One example, who is still honored in China, is Raphael Semmes. Yes, the Raphael Semmes, that infamous Confederate commerce raider that, for a long time until 1864, terrorized US shipping.

Now, with Henry Stanton in America calling for his arrest, the Chinese offered him a job in destroying Japanese shipping. Though old and tired, he took the job, and moved to Hong Kong. There, he put his skills, and the recently acquired French Battleships, to good use, and before long, Admiral Togo was spedning time hunting down what he called "some damned gaijin with a boat." He fought numerous battles with Togo, and forced him to play a cat-and-mouse game all around the Pacific.

These foreign experts and ships helped improve the Chinese Navy, and by 1890, it was apparent to Japan that conquering China was not going to be so easy after alll.....

bump for more to read.

One more bump, then I maybe will put something up.


I need opinions here, how does this history look?

---The Middle Stages of the Great Civil War, 1890-1891---

The Central Front

The intense trench fighting outside of Shanghai was growing more intense, it was eating men and machinery in an epic struggle that resembled World War I, which would come but a short time later......

The lines themselves stretched around the south of the city, forming a crescent shape. The Chinese were able to provide reinforcements and supplies from the North side of the Yellow River, but Japanese naval units made things difficult for them to do so.

Attempts to take Donggou on the 25th of July, and later Da Pu Qiao on August 6th failed miserably, with Chinese attackers, despite being low on ammunition and food from their state of siege, forcing the Japanese to sustain heavy casualties as they either were forced back or took mere yards of ground.

With High Command on both sides calling for an end to the bloody stalemate, and Saigo growing ever more frustrated, he decided to push forward on a general offensive, beginning in Sept. 1st. The Sept. offensive, as it was dubbed, finally made some headway, but at great cost to the Japanese, who took Shanghai after sustaining 50,000 dead, 150,000 wounded.

Such losses soon added to a chorus of antiwar voices on both sides, who wanted the war over. They were soon to gain great momentum, as the Western Powers took advantage of the slaughter for their own ends.

For now, Saigo rested in Shanghai, and prepared for the Yellow River campaign. Using a fleet of Monitor-type vessels and destroyers, eh would try to take the Yellow River Valley, and divide the Chinese.

He began in earnest, beginning Operation Kirin on December 31st. He moved up the river, and assaulted Chinese positions, taking them after a short surprise firefight.

Soon, in 1891, both sides were on the move, as Japanese riverine forces moved to take vital installations on the Yellow River and the Chinese tried to make a good defensive play...

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The Southern Front

The Japanese war in Fujian was looking not much better. Despite a breakout from their bases in Foochow and Amoy in March 1890, the desperate campaign to subjugate Fujian, which culminated in the seizure of Sanming on August 8th, 1890, soon turned into a nightmarish guerrilla war for the Japanese. The Fujianese militiamen took to the hills, and began harassing the Japanese with sporadic raids and attacks on supply convoys and troops. This, combined with regular Chinese offensives, frustrated the Japanese.

The Japanese general in the Fujian theater, Hayashibara Roksaburo, soon resorted to tactics that earned him a place as the "Tyrant of Fujian."

He began to force the Fujianese into concentration camps, exposing them to filthy conditions where many were exposed to, and died from, disease. He also enacted a "food draft," whereby every Fujianese villager had to give half of his food to the Japanese, if he refused to comply, he or she was shot. A scorched-earth policy was also enacted, as well, and used in conjunction with the food draft to reduce the supply of food available to Fujianese guerrillas. Hayashibara especially was fond of letting his troops perform impressment in the Fujianese, many men, women and children were impressed for labor and fighting.

Eventually, the success of the Chinese forces, and outcry from America and Britain forced him to stop much of these policies, but the Fujianese guerrillas didn't stop, and by the end of 1890 to early 1891, much of the countryside was a no-go zone.

----------------------------------------------------
The Northern Front

In the North, Forrest and Yuan were still going at it, yet none had won a decisive victory over the other. Despite some gains in Northern Korea, Yuan forced him back in North Central Korea, at Puk'chang, in late February, 1890. The winter was taking its toll on the cavalry, and the lack of forage in the rugged mountains of the area forced him South to Pyong'yang, where Yuan struck on March 4th.

The coming spring of 1890 saw Forrest attempt his most ambitious offensive yet. Gathering a cavalry army of almost 60,000-120,000, he moved north in a brilliant war of maneuver, forcing Yuan back to the Yalu river. This drive to the Yalu was successful initially, but a counter-offensive by Chinese Freedom Army forces forced Forrest back to what is now the Chosin Reservoir. A violent campaign for the area soon turned into a stalemate, and soon, by summer, the campaign had ground into a violent war for the Chagang-Do region, which saw some of the most violent fighting of the war, including Chon'chon (June 25th), Kop'ung (July 10th-15th), and Kanggye (July 18th-23rd). The results of the battles were that Forrest was able to get a hold in Northern Korea, but the Freedom Army and Yuan was able to as well.

By 1891, the situation had settled into a stalemate. Still, Forrest planned a major offensive that would force the enemy out of Korea and win the day.

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The War at Sea

At sea, Hung Wang-wai and Hehichiro Togo turned into bitter enemies. The Pacific Ocean their boxing ring, they tussled from the Tsushima Strait (2nd Tsushima, Feb. 4th), to Hawaii (Diamond Head, June 6th), and even the US West coast, fighting up and down from San Diego (Sept. 2nd), to Washington State and even into British Columbia (Juan de Fuca Strait, Sept. 29th, Vancouver Island, Oct. 10th).

The British and the Americans were nervous, these two giants tussling in their backyards were not good for trade and certainly a threat to security. So, under gunpoint, the two opposing admirals took their war back into the Pacific. The world watched them, like they were boxers, the kings and leaders of the world were eagerly casting bets to see who was the winner.

By now, both were exhausted, but both were determined to fight to the death. One had to fall........

It was Togo. Near Mexico, off of Mazatlan, the two men clashed for the last time on Jan 1., 1891. They sparred, maneuvered, and gave a performance befitting two skilled military men.

Togo was low on ships, men and guns, however. Exhausted, he made one last charge against Hung. Hung simply blasted him out of the water with a volley of shells.

Togo decided to go down with the ship. However, before he could drown, Togo was picked up by the Chinese, who surprisingly treated him well, as they took him to China as a POW.

China taught Japan a lesson, now, as 1891 approached, they had the ships (several more French ships, locally made ships, and new submarines designed by John Holland), the experience, and the capacity to begin a mass blockade of the Japanese coast.

With their best Admiral in Chinese hands, the Japanese had a tough act to follow....

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The War in the West

In the West, the powers of Russia and Britain viewed the war with uncertainty, and with avaricious, devious intent.

The Czar, especially, wanted more land, Manchuria, for all of its violence, was also a fertile land with resources that could be put to good use for the Empire, like grazing land, iron, etc. Also, if the Brits expanded into Tibet, taking Xinjiang would be a good buffer for his Turkestani lands.

Britain wanted to settle old scores with Xen; they still claimed Tibet and Yunnan as territory of their Indian Empire. This was a thorny issue, several border wars had erupted as a result of this, and many people in Parliament were calling for a speedy resolution of this issue.

They needed a good reason to intervene....

They found it soon enough. When Chinese Navy officers fired on a British merchant ship by accident, the British declared war, and invaded Tibet in January 1891. Led by General Horatio Kitchener, they were determined to "teach the uncivilized ones a lesson."

The Russians would wait, they needed an opportunity on their front. Then, things would turn in their favor.....

It's good man. I like it.

It's good man. I like it.

Thanks.....people in RL do say I have a good writing style, obviously, it must be paying off here.

The only problem about this is that it takes a long time to write the various segments, I have the ideas, but putting them on paper takes a while.....

Why not write it all before hand in Word and then copy and paste. Like I do.

Why not write it all before hand in Word and then copy and paste. Like I do.

OOC: I'll keep that in mind. I use word to keep these archived before posting, as Jolt does wierd things.......

Yeah she does.

hey man, great history stuff.

I think I'll make a thread for Huntaer's history.

Starting from the revolution and the formation of huntaer, all to the way of the union of the two houses of Aelikes and Dominkive (the democrats and republicans of huntaer) which formed the great empire it is today.

Eh! Be checking yer TGs UX.

hey man, great history stuff.

I think I'll make a thread for Huntaer's history.

Starting from the revolution and the formation of huntaer, all to the way of the union of the two houses of Aelikes and Dominkive (the democrats and republicans of huntaer) which formed the great empire it is today.

OOC: Good plan.

I'd like to see that......thanks!

---The Later Stages of the Great Civil War, 1891-1892---

The Central Front

The Chinese were now faced with their worst fear. The Japanese were on the move, they had the motuh of the Yellow River under their control, now, like locusts to crops ready to harvest, they swept into Anhui and Zhejiang Provinces, navigating the Yellow River and hoping to divide the land in two.

Saigo Takamori, who was moving down the River, used a brilliant land-water campaign that coordinated destroyers, Monitor-class ships, and landing boats with overland forces and artillery, to take much of the Eastern half of the Yellow River by Summer 1891.

The Western half would be another story. A new general, Zhu Yao, took command of the Chinese forces in the area, and decided enough was enough. Marshaling his men around Wuhan, he led a stubborn counter-offensive that threw the Japanese back. Brutal seesaw fighting around Huangzhou (Aug. 10), Huangxi (Aug 18th) and Xishui (Aug 27th) in the Hebei Campaign almost led to the encirclement of Saigo, as well as the near death of Zhu himself, as he often lead in the front. By September, the enemy was out of Hebei, by October, half of Anhui was in Chinese hands.

Saigo's riverine force was strong as ever, and he fought back at Tongling on Nov. 3rd, saving his men and his position in Anhui.

Saigo soon pushed forward to Anqing in Mid-November, but was repulsed. Soon, as Saigo settled to organize his forces, Zhu went on a general offensive, and by early January 1892, the war in the Central Front was looking good for the Chinese, the Japanese forced out of Anhui entirely.

All that remianed was to force them out of Nanjing and Shanghai. On January 16th, 1892, the Siege of Nanjing began, and Zhu, using Long Tom cannons and other advanced guns, bombarded the city with all of his might. He issued an ultimatum to Saigo:

"We have control of all the roads and rails leading into the city [Nanjing]...either Surrender your men and live, or be reduced to a very violent death. Your choice is simple, I give you 48 hours to comply."

Saigo chose to go out with a bang. In what is known as the "Great Banzai Charge," on December 24, 1892, his 25,000 men were ordered to storm the enemy positions. Everybody knew what the purpose was-to die with honor......

He did so. Saigo was last seem, katana exposed, running with his men into a hail of Chinese Maxim fire. He never returned.

The Chinese taking Nanjing, they were exhausted, and yet Zhu pressed on. He forced his way to Shanghai, where the Japanese garrison held out in another siege.......

As the costs of war were mounting, the deaths climing, many were weary of the war. Both sides wanted it to end, they wanted their boys to come home, they wanted the madness to stop.

But blind pride continued the fight. The stubborn Generals who ran the Meiji government wanted to teach the Chinese a lesson. But as they would soon realize, they were not masters of fate, fate was. And fate had an ugly gift in store for the Meiji.

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The War at Sea

By now, the Chinese had gained an equal naval footing with Japan. They soon used it to horrible effect, sweeping away the ineffectual Amdiral Ayasugi and imposing a blockade on the Home Islands.

The result was chaos. The superior economy of the Japanese was now weakened, the costs of war had piled up, debt was mounting, and now, thanks to the blockade, shortages of everything were emerging.

Food riots soon broke out in Yokohama in June. Tokyo saw a rash of robberies, as banks were raided and even attacked with cannon for the accounts inside. A record number of Japanese left the country, or tried, many ships were either stopped by the blockaders or simply sunk. Rice production, which fell due to the war's need for men, fell further.

People soon clamored for peace. Would the Meiji government listen to them?

Events would soon make that a necessity...for now, there were other losses to bear.

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The Southern Front

The Fujian campaign, brutal as it was, soon turned even more violent.

Rebel forces were in significant strength, operating without fear of Japanese patrols in many areas, it seemed as if the blockhouses and camps made to harm them were only making them stronger. Many Japanese troops, it was reported, show signs of fear, something they did not normally do.

By now, Japanese control was restricted to three cities: Sanming, Amoy, and Foochow. The Fujianese rebels and Chinese regulars, under the command of General Chang Ho, a descendant of the original Zheng He, knew that to take these cities was to deny the Japanese what little power they had. He also knew that the blockade of Japan would make it hard for troops and guns to get htrough.

He commencd this plan, called the "Python Plan," on Sept. 31st, 1891, with an attack on Sanming. The Battle of Sanming lasted until Jan. 31st., 1892, and resulted in a victory for the Chinese.

Sanming gone, Hayashibara fortified in Foochow and Amoy. He did not leave, even under orders. He made a few attacks, but they were repulsed.

Chang took advantage of this. He launched raids and assaults on the cities, beginning on Aug. 6th, similtaneously hitting the two cities at once. Hayashibara dug in, and fended off every attack, but the lack of suppklies from HQ and the fact his men were mutining was too much.

He committed seppuku on Aug. 31st, and surrendered. Fujian was liberated, the Southern Front was closed.

----------------------------------------------------
The Northern Front

The war in the North, between Forrest and Yuan, now reached its most violent peak, as the two sides fought for bitter control of the Chagang-Do region.

Forrest commenced his campaign, which was not affected by the blockade, as he mainly lived off of the land, on February 23rd, 1891, attacking in a general offensive, while Yuan had stopped to rest his men. He orechestrated the best movements of the war for the Japanese, besides Saigo's early Yellow River Campaign, taking few casualties and forcing Yuan to the Yalu again. This time, though, Yuan retreated, his forces exiting Korea by May 28th.

Forrest was puzzled by this development. Why was the man giving him Korea? It was a trap! That was the only way....he had used the feint well, so did Forrest, it worked wonders.

He then fortified his men and settled in. Then, he got the news, Yuan was reacting to an invasion by Russia. It seemed they had ambitions on Manchuria, and they were taking the opportunity to make them a reality.

Forrest had a choice. He could either support them or leave Yuan to the Russians, who were known to be tough customers in battle, especially the Cossacks, he worked with them before, they showed no mercy.

Forrest chose to aid his former foe. He sent a rider to Yuan and the Freedom Army in Manchuria, and asked to help them.

Initially misturstful of Forrest, he nonetheless agreed to meet with him at Sinujiu. The Sinujiu Pact, as was formed there, was the first step twoards the reunification of Upper Xen. Here, on a a very warm June 2nd, they signed a treaty agreeing to cease hostilites and join forces against the Russians.

The irregular forces of the Combined Sekiho-Freedom Armies were, however, little more than a roadblock to the Russians. Their leadership was uncharacteristically adept here, and the irregulars, though putting up a hard fight, were forced into the interior of Manchuria by the Russians.

By the end of the Year, the Russian army had occupied much of Northern Manchuria, and the CSFA was forced into the underground.

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The War in the West

The Russians, always looking to expand their empire wastward and looking for new materials, ahd always coveted Manchuria.

After some milling about, an event occured that gave Russia its excuse for war. Several Russian citizens had been arrested in Harbin, on charges of murder. The government demanded they be handed back, when the Leaders of China said no, the Czar was furious.

The Czar soon amassed an army of 500,000 men on the Amur River, and on May 1st, now called "The Day of Blood," these forces attacked, storming into Manchuria in an early blitzkrieg. They found it easy to get into Manchuria, the border was not defended, all the guards were in battle somewhere else.

The first forces they met of either militia were busy killing each other, not knowing that they would be soon victims of their own hate. The Russians had an easy time picking them off, scattering them from the field. The Battle of Xigangxi, two days after the Russian landing, was not so much a battle as it was a slaughter.

Freedom Army forces in Harbin reacted quickly, and so did the Sekiho Army. They both turned their citizen-militias against the Russians, and fought valiantly. But their disunity hampered operations, commanders refused to share supplies and information, and the Russians soon took advantage of this. In every battle they met them, the Russians forced them off the field.

One A. D. Suvorov desribed it like this:

"...We expected better from the Samurai, and the sons of those who killed Nihilanth. Instread, we found an army that was little more than thugs and criminals. We laughed, and cried as we forced them off the field. Such was the mediocrity of their performance, we did not bother capturing their standards."

Sensing a need to stop fighting each other and to actuially fight, the two forces joined up in the Sinujiu Pact. Still, by the time this happened, much of Manchuria was in Russian hands, and the forces arrived too late to stop the enemy. A failed campaign agaisnt the Russians near Changchun forced Forrest back to Korea to nurse his wounded army.

With the arrival of the Russians, the Chinese and Japanese slowly but surely realized the need to join forces. They may have been either one, but they were Xenizens, whether they liekd it or not. They were under threat, and if they did not join forces, they would suffer the same fate as the Sinujiu Pact forces.

With this in mind, both Meiji and Sheng-ji Yang met in Shimonoseki. Under the mediation of James G. Blaine of the United States, they hammered out a prelimnary peace called the Christmas Day Pact, signed Dec. 24th, 1892.

Reunited once again, peopel celebrated the end of the bloodshed. But soon, it became apparent to many in the newly reformed Xenizen Republic that if things were going to be truly back to normal, they had to stop Russia and Britain from taking Manchuria and Tibet.

---The Russo-Anglo-Xenizen War---Initial Steps

By now, the Russian and British challenges remained. General Kitchener was storming into Tibet, having taken Lhasa not long after the Peace of Shimonoseki was signed and bringing in more sepoys and British colonists than you could shake a stick at, legally, or illegally rather, annexing the area as "Indian Tibet," one of those mysterious legalisms.

The Russians, meanwhile, were fortifying their hold on Manchuria, even sending the Grand Duke Nicholas to rule Manchuria as Duke of Harbin along with 250,000 more troops. They began to build trenches and fortifications along their new border of their ill-gotten dominion, beginning near Shenyang and ending near Chifeng, in what they called the Jehol Line.

Thus, the challenge facing the Xenizens was formidible. Still, their war machines going, the two sides reunited and joined in a united front.

They began first to make war with the Russians. Admirals Togo and Hung, now reluctant allies, joined to combat the Russian Navy under Admiral Rozhdevensky.

They moved to deploy Marines at Dailan, on January 18th, 1893, and cut off the Russian Pacific Fleet, annahilating their antiquated fleet of ships.

Then, on land, General Zhu, fresh from his victory in Anhui, gathered an army of Chinese and Japanese, and Borderworlders and moved to attack the Jehol Line. The line itself was not finished, despite the Russian use of criminal and pressganged local labor, the main forts near Jinzhou and Chaoyang were only half-built.

Zhu took advantage of this. Moving his army from Beijing, he attacked the forts in the Battle of the Jehol Line on Feb. 1, 1893. The Russian troops were brave, and they Cossacks caused sever casualties, but supply problems and the fueding of commanders Samsonov and Rennenkampf caused the Russians to lose the fight.

The forts taken, Zhu pressed forward. Russian forces were regrouping, and fought a fierce battle near Beizhen, on Feb. 8th. The Russians initially held their ground, but the appearance of the Vortiguants and Alien Grunts soon frightened the Russians, who were not used to the creatures. Their powers not only helped to turn the tide, but also virtually ensured that only the bravest of Russians stayed on the field, the rest running in a panicky rout.

To quote Mr. Suvorov:

"...I was always taught in Seminary that there were Devils, and that Heaven and Hell existed, and that if you did bad things, you would go to Hell. I used to dismiss such tales as just that, tales."

"But those-things-that I saw that day were not only real, they made me recall Father Grigori's lesson. I had just gotten done having fun with some of the local women, and had been in a drunken state at the same time, and now, I felt God was punishing me....."

"Their animalistic looks, their terrifiying bolts of lightning that they could summon at will, and their near-invincibility made me consider the idea that perhaps, God existed. For if these creatures lived, there must be a Satan, and he was paying me a visit."

The Borderworld Regiments were so successful, that they are credited for helping to end the war quickly to this day. In reality, more factors than these were responsible, the Russians had poor supply lines, and of their commanders, only Alexei Brusilov was of any worth.

And that is where he comes in. Brusilov replaced the failed generals on order of the Czar, and his genius soon put Zhu to the test. He fended off Zhu's attack on Shenyang on March 7th, and he held against Zhu at Tongliao on March 15th.

After Brusilov held against the Xenizen forces, he launched an offensive into the Jehol region in April. The Spring Offensive, as it was called, forced Zhu to retreat and fall back to Beijing. Zhu was astounded by this man. He had Manchuria in his grasp, he could taste victory. Now, this fool took it away....

But in East Manchuria, Nathan Bedford Forrest, after getting fresh support and troops from the Xenizen Regular forces of Togo and Hung, launched an oiffensive into Jilin Province on April 24th, taking territory as far north as Hailong and Dunhua. He then skilfully destroyed any incoming Russian Cavalry regiments and managed to tie down Brusilov long enough that Zhu was able to move North once again. Historians debate the reason for Forrest's delay, but whatever happened, he came at the right time, and by late 1893, Southern Manchuria was back in Xenizen hands.

The War in Tibet fared much differently than the War in Manchuria. Xenizen troops were put under the command of Vortiguant Clan leader Xonxt Grut'ach.

He recruited much of his troops from his clan of Vortiguants and from the ranks of Alien Grunts, plus regular Humans, who proved valiant fighters in battle versus the British Sepoys and their Highlander regiments.

But this was Horatio Kitchener they were facing. he was a great general, an expert in stopping Native Revolts, he was the hero of the Sudan!

Nonetheless, Xonxt was dteremined to show the English his fighting spirit. He unleashed a massive invasion of the Tibetian Plateau, forcing the British back at the Battle of the Upper Salween on January 28th. A war of manuver soon began in Tibet, as the Vortiguants played a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with Kitchener, using their powers and a keen sense of the terrain to their advantage, forcing him to retreat at battles like Gyimda (March 4th) and Nagqu (April 5th).

The end of 1893 saw the seizure of Eastern Tibet from the British, but General Kitchener had learne from this, and he was about to strike back......

---The Russo-Anglo-Xenizen War---Counterstrike

The surprise offensives by Forrest and Zhu put Brusilov in a dangerous position, not tactically or even strategically, but with the Czar. The Czar, Nicholas II, was looking for a glorious war to distract the people from his faield policies at home. The war in Manchuria was not going so well, and the people were clamoring for results, the Czar had assured them the Xenizens were weak.

The Czar ordered Brusilov to expel Forrest and Zhu's forces, if he didn't, he would lose more than Manchuria.

Brusilov was willing to do this, with some trepidation, he was still in a good position, his men were recently resupplied and he had just finished fortifying himself, but morale was shaky, people had heard about the creatures that came with the Xenizens, they heard of their powers, and did not want to face them. This led Brusilov to issue a proclamation saying that:

"You are not to show fear. These things can be killed like any other being....the recent fear caused by them is irrational. Give them and those who work with them no quarter...."

This soon had the intended effect. At the Battle of Second Shenyang (Jan 4th-6th, 1894), as the Xenizens took Brusilov by surprise and stormed the defenses and took the outskirts of the city, a platoon of fifty Vortiguants was taken by the Russians. They then proceeded to execute them all, in what was called the "Shenyang Massacre."

This electrified the Borderworlders, who exacted violent revenge on the Russians on the 6th, demolishing two entire compaines of Cossacks and destroying six artillery guns. By then, the city was taken, and Brusilov was forced to fall back to Harbin, and his secondary defensive line, harrassed by Forrest's cavalry and Zhu's neverending advance.

Brusilov wisely decided to dig in. He soon forced the Xenizens into trench war when he dug in at Mukden, in February, beginning the epic Siege of Mukden, which would last into 1895.

In Tibet, Kitchener launched a massive counteroffensive using Sepoys and the famous Black Watch Highlanders in against the Tribal Army of Grand Master Xonxt Grut'ach. Xonxt held his ground against the offensive, and simply pressed forward, wresting the countryside from the British and surrounding Lhasa.

The Siege of Lhasa, which began in July 2nd, 1894 and lasted until October 10th with the surrender of Kitchener, was yet another epic siege, where Kitchener held out against incredible odds versus the fearsome creatures of the Borderworld, using only 5,000 Black Watch, 2,000 Sepoys and Ghurkhas and civilian aides.

In the end, Kitchener was not killed by Xonxt, instead, when Xonxt found him, he took him to the Indian border, and threw him into a local army post, after making him agree to never invade Tibet ever again.

Kitchener agreed, but he soon returned with more men and guns. Xonxt, in response, defeated his men at the Battle of the Mustang (December 1st), and killed Kitchener outright, putting his head on a pike as a warning to the British. Afterwards, the British agreed to meet with Xenizen envoys at Lhasa, where the Border with India was fixed at its current position. Not surprisingly, this was not the last time the two sides would meet in battle, the "Great War" would give them an opportunity to spar again.

---The Russo-Anglo-Xenizen War---Finale

The Siege of Mukden dragged on, as trench warfare proved to be a puzzle for both sides that was awfully expensive to solve. Eventually, one Borderworlder was credited with a solution.

Why not tunnel under and blow the trenches up?

The result was a massive tunneling operation, followed by a huge bomb inserted under the lines, aided by tons of gunpowder. The result was that as it was detonated on March 4th, 1895, it collapsed a major section of the Russian lines and caused severe panic. The result was the Battle of the Crater, an epic 4-day fight in the midst of what one Chinese soldier called: "Hell."

The results were good for the Xenizens, bad for the Russians, as scores of the Russian Army of Manchuria were obliterated in the fighting. Many on both sides died because they could not be reached in the dusty, smoky crater, and many could not see where they were going. But the attack, which was more well coordinated than the American attempt at Petersburg, was successful, and the Xenizens drove on, taking Mukden the next day.

The Russians, meanwhile, decided to reinforce their fleet. They sent new ships from the Baltic and Black Sea, hoping to fight the combined Naval Fleet of Togo and Hung. But the journey tired the ships, which were antiquated and barely seaworthy. And, they eventually arrived, low on fuel. Plus, to make things worse, a Xenizen spy had revealed that the Russians had deployed ships, so this gave the two time to get ready.

The result was that when Rozhdevensky entered the Straits of Tsushima, his fleet, in the famous "Togo's Turn" and "Hung's Charge," where Hung charged his ships at Rozhdevensky's, on December 9th, was annhilated, sending 200 sailors to their deaths and resulting in the taking of many more.

These and other defeats angered the Russian public, they demanded a peace. But the Czar held on. He wanted Manchuria. He ordered Brusilov, now at Harbin, to reinforce there. But, as supplies began to dwindle, and Russian supply trains became stuck, supplies were hard to coem by. And so were soldiers.

Brusilov, recognizing this, protested but got only, "Hold On." He fretted, and soon made a new defensive line, this time, with stone linings and concrete fortifications to prevent tunneling. He made his trenches deeper and thicker, and he moved Machine gunners and artillery to near the front. If hewas going to lose, he would go down fighting.....

This led to new trench war. The Battle of the Crater would not occur again, so the Xenizens used simple attrition...

To be continued