Armandian Cheese
03-07-2006, 03:02
The Unified Combine of Armandian Cheese
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“They are not men, spawned from the swirling dust of chaos, but machines, forged from the cold steel of order.” ---W. R. Spencer
“No place on earth is closer to the final stages of human development…the question the remains, having come so far, will it be able to go even further, or has it already pushed it’s luck too far?”---Karl Marx
Geography: Iran, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, North Hindustan
(NOTE: The geographic region of Iran is referred to as “Armand” in AMW.)
Population:
Armenia: 2,976,372
Azerbaijan: 7,961,619
Georgia: 4,661,473
Iran: 68,688,433
Total: 284,287,897
History
The Muslim Invasions
The history of what is today known as The Combine begins in what is today Armand, with the Islamic invasions of the Sassanid Empire beginning in 634 AD. After Mohammed succeeded in unifying the Arab Peninsula under the Islamic Caliphate shortly before his death in 632, his successor, Abu Bakr, launched a campaign to first consolidate control over the Arabian Peninsula, and then to absorb the Palestinian and Syrian Arabs into his nascent Islamic Empire. These territories had long been claimed by the Sassanid Empire (Which was composed mainly of Armand and Iraq), and thus a titanic struggle emerged. While a vigorous counter attack at the Battle of the Bridge gave the Sassanids hope that they could repel the invaders, it soon became clear that the Islamic tide was unstoppable. Disunity quickly became a problem, as various rebellions broke out within the Empire, splitting it along ethnic, religious, and political lines.
By 640, Arabs effectively ruled all of Mesopotamia, and all that remained of the once mighty Persian Empire lay in the steppes of Armand. Caliph Umar ordered a final assault on Armand, and Arab raiding parties swarmed over the Zagros mountains. Desperately trying to cling onto his empire, King Yazdegerd rallied his forces for one, last stand against the Muslim invader. By 641 he had raised a formidable force, which took a stand at Nihavand, some forty miles south of Hamadan in modern Armand, as Sa'ad ibn-Abi-Waqqas and his infamous cavalry raced loomed menacingly.
The stage was set for a dramatic final clash between the armies of the two Prophets, Mohammed and Zoroaster…
“I had never expected nature’s simple gift
a piece of cheese
a simple yellow wedge
To be my savior, to be my lift
the essence of life
the strength of unity
It told me the direction in which we must run
For to be strong, to be saved, we must become
One”
---Poem Written in traditional Armandian style by King Yazdegerd
Several weeks before the enemy force reaches Nihavand, the King reportedly had a vision. What exactly occurred in that vision has been lost to the ravages of time, except for the fact that it somehow referenced cheese, but what resulted because of it has not. The King became convinced that the only way he could save his Kingdom was to embrace a movement that had begun to sprout amongst the scattered villages of his empire. That fateful night, he chose to declare the Cult of the One the state religion, and nothing was ever the same again…
The Cult of the One
There is no clear, exact origin of the Cult, and in fact, it likely occurred spontaneously in several places. The period of Arab invasion had thrown an ancient society with clearly defined rules and traditions into total upheaval, and many simply couldn’t cope with the new found choas in their lives. Villages all across Armand took to worshipping Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god, with renewed fervor. The worship soon took on principles that extended far beyond those of Zoroastrianism. The need for order was so great that they began worshipping an entity known as “the One”, an entity that was like Ahura Mazda, but included the consciousness of all Cult members. Reports to the Caliph from this time speak of Arab raiders discovering towns where the citizens were almost zombie like, with their actions, ideas, and words all merging into one, homogenous entity. These villagers had adapted themselves to think, speak, and act similiarly, and ha d drilled an eerie degree of coordination into their movements. These cults were disparate and scattered, however; they lacked a cohesive set of ideals and would quickly crumble under the might of a determined Islamic regime.
The Combine is Born
Yazdegerd had not only adopted the Cult of the One as his empire’s faith, but added a new principle unto its doctrine. He declared himself the “Higher One”, the physical focus on earth of the entire entire Cult. Their gathered, unified minds would find their focus in his flesh, which made him not quite Divine, but very close. Seeking comfort and security, Armandians flocked to his banner, and the small force at Nihavand grew into a truly massive one. These new recruits soon indoctrinated the Higher One’s older forces, and what was the first true Army of the Combine was formed. The clash at Nihavand was tremendous, but the still outnumbered and outgunned Cultists managed to shatter the Arab cavalry through their amazingly coordinated and controlled tactics.
Abu Mu’amar, a Muslim soldier who survived the battle, would later remark,
“We had never seen anything quite like it. None panicked, none fled, none showed any indiividual course of action at all. Oh, yes, there were a few slips, here and then, but overall…it was like fighting an impenetrable, unrelenting dust storm…”
Caliph Umar’s forces were routed at the battle, but the war continued for several years afterwards, as the Caliph refused to surrender. But the Higher One’s power only grew, as more and more warriors flocked to the odd banner of the Cheese. In fact, it was ironically the fault of the Muslim’s that the movement gained so much strength, for the longer they remained, the more villages rallied to the cause. Still, the Muslims far outnumbered the Armandians, and were skilled warriors, so the war dragged on for years. After several years of brutal warfare, the Higher One approached the Caliph with a deal. The Muslim armies would be allowed to cross through Armand to launch assaults on what is now known as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other Asian territories, but they would have to respect the sovereignty of the Higher One’s new nation, which at the time was known as the Empire of the Higher One. A deal was thus struck, and the newly forged nation went into several centuries of isolationism.
Pax Armanda
The period from roughly 640 AD-1000 AD saw the greatest expansion of Armandian culture, technology, and economy. The lack of a unifying threat relaxed Armand to such a degree that there was nothing to hold the war time group think together, and many villages began to revert to individualist modes of thought. The government’s task over the four centuries was to forge a society and an educational machinery that encouraged the unifying aspects of the Cult of the One. The clash between individuality and conformity resulted in a flourishing of the arts, literature, and technology. By 1000 AD, society had made significant progress towards establishing unity. The communist economic model, whereupon all goods were communally owned and all received an equal share of the resources, was implemented, albeit without the nationally organized structure that would emerge later. Individual creativitiy was stamped out, as even the writing of an Armand style poem required a collective effort. Although no wars were fought in this time period, the Armandians raised their war making prowess to an incredible level, with units fighting in nearly machine like precision. However, some vestiges of individuality still remained. People still married, they still bore individual names, and of course, there still was a king, of sorts. Things did continually march in a Progressive direction, however, and all was generally peaceful.
Too peaceful.
The Era of Expansion
The development of whole, coherent ideology for the Armandians also had the side effect of filling the Armandians with a revolutionary zeal. Beginning in 1005 AD, they quietly dispatched exploratory units to the India and and Central Asia, looking for nations vulnerable to conquest. In 1021, they launched assaults on what we know as Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, quickly consuming the small kingdoms and flooding them with immigrants. Portions of southern Afghanistan were also put under the Armandian sword, but the natives were reluctant to surrender their individuality, and thus this holding proved shaky, at best. In the meantime, the Indian Expedition met with little success, as it encountered a series of powerful kingdoms and vigorous, individualistic cultures. All of this changed, however, in the region of North Hindustan. North Hindustan had long been ruled a confederation of anemic, feuding princes, and the region was so impoverished and war torn that the population had long ago lost faith in all gods and all institutions, and had been reduced to a cowed, fearful, one might even say sheeplike, state.
In the eyes of the Higher One, this made them ripe for the taking. However, there was one fly in the ointment, a fly that would continually irritate the Armandians.
The Geletians.
An account by the Armandian expedition member Niktos Putin, provides us a glimpse into the first encounter between the Combine and Beth Gellert….
“It was a beautiful summer’s day, as our Expeditionary Unit sat in what the Kanpurans call a ‘bar’, which is a place that alcoholic beverages are served. We did not consume of the beverages, but instead focused on a plan to pierce the city’s defenses. A rude interruption came in the form of a wine glass being smashed over our heads, [Editor’s Note: All Armandians refer to individual members of the Combine in the plural sense, so it is often difficult to ascertain if events occurred to the entire group or a single one.] which was accompanied by a roaring laugh. Standing before us was a gigantic mess of muscle and red hair who we immediately recognized as a danger due to two factors: he was armed and he was heavily intoxicated.
‘I’m sorry, mate. I thought you were the bastard my wife’s been cheating on me with. I was wondering how you got here all the way from Portmeiron…Anyhow, we’re all of you from? I’ve never seen your kind around here.’
‘We hail from the Empire of the Higher One.’
‘Never heard of it. Sounds a tad pretentious, if you ask me. Heh, I doubt it’s anything compared to the Bedgellen tribes. Speaking of, I better get back to my camp…’
‘Camp?’
‘Well…you are out of the loop…Don’t you know? The Bedgellen tribes have formed a confederation…North Hindustan shall be ours, soon.”
“We would suggest you tell your leader that it’s not wise to make claims on future members of the One.”
“Hah, leader? We’re not as regressive as you may think…Ever heard of democracy you twat?”
“Your ‘democracy’ must retreat if it hopes to survive.”
“You zombie bastards couldn’t kill a fly…look at you, marching in lockstep like ants! No individual spirit at all. Get out of here, scram, before you get hurt!”
“You were warned.”
We pulled out our short swords, and lunged onto the towering man. With his left arm he smashed the head of our first attacker, and with his right arm, which bore a sword, he sliced off the second one’s head. He then leapt into the air, whirling multiple times, and landed on the table, sword in his hand and maniacal grin on his face. We launched ourselves upon him with an intense ferocity, but it was no use, as he simply batted us away like flies. The battle raged across the bar, as we tore through containers and tables, and more and more of our number fell.
After the initial shock, however, we managed to regain our unity of spirit, and maneuvered the muscle laden creature against a wall. A comrade on the right swept at the Bedgellen’s head, and the Wootz blade easily batted aside our steel. But a comrade on the left struck at the man’s leg, which the man was just barely able to defend against. Finally, we drove a blade directly into his chest, and he crumpled, leaving us with only a few words…
“This isn’t the last you’ve seen of Beth Gellert…”
And indeed it was not…
The War of North Hindustan
The stage was set for one of the most dramatic and protracted struggles India had ever seen. Putin’s expedition established a fort and sent back a detailed report, recommending that the Higher One launch an assault on North Hindustan’s confederation of princes. Significant expanses seperated Armand from its desired conquest, however, and the march was long and arduous. It was only the discipline of the Armandians that allowed them to endure such a long journey and then make war, and it was their sheer might that allowed them to cross various foreign territories unhampered. One principality tried to repel the Armandian wave, but their army was quickly batted aside, and their fields, temples, homes, and people were so thoroughly ravaged that few would even remember the principality’s existance, and, more importantly, stand against the Armandian force.
In 1028, Armandian forces arrived at North Hindustan’s frontier cities, and began calmly, coldly, and methodically smashing opposing forces and assimilating new territories. Kanpur, Shansi, Agra, Bareilly…All crumbled with an almost horrifying ease.
Yet the Armandians knew that they had yet to face their true foe…the Bedgellens. While the Armandians advanced from the south west of North Hindustan, the Bedgellens had taken a southeastern route. Their armies were set to meet dead center, in Lucknow…
The Bedgellens issued, in their trademark style (which one could call “arrogant” or “confident” depending on how you liked the dwellers of Beth Gellert), a demand for outright surrender. The Armandians replied by lobotomizing the messenger and returning him with note declaring they had done the man a favor by returning him to the unthinking, animalistic state all Bedgellens seemed to want to achieve. This infuriated the Bedgellen commander to such a degree that he made the fatal mistake of charging directly into the massed pike formation of the Armandians. The commander himself, along with tremendous numbers amongst his comrades, was slaughtered outright on the first day of battle. However, the Bedgellens were able to regroup and rally, thus prolonging the battle by several days. In the end, a well calculated series of thrusts by the Bedgellen cavalry won the day, and the Armandians were forced to retreat to their fortress.
The Armandians appeared to be beaten, and Bedgellen forces soon began to encroach upon their hard won territories. But they had counted the Armandians out far too early, for they had forgotten one key fact about the Higher One’s people.
The Armandians were like one organism.
And an organism adapts.
Brutalized by the Bedgellen forces once, they were not apt to let it happen again. The next encounter saw the Bedgellens win again, but by a smaller margin, and so on and so forth, as the Armandians grew to understand and exploit the techniques of the Bedgellens, until one day….
…they won.
The war raged for over a century, and whole generations of men grew up knowing nothing but war. Much blood was spilled and much treasure spent, but by 1139, North Hindustan had become a part of the Empire, and the nation of Beth Gellert had become its newest foe.
A Period of Consolidation
From 1139 to roughly the 16th century, Armand saw no further expansion. Instead, the nation consolidated its holdings in North Hindustan, fighting a series of border wars with the Bedgellen tribes and other Indian states, and waged several inconclusive wars with its age old enemy, the Arabs. Gradually, North Hindustan became absorbed into the hive like mentality of Armand, and Armand itself began to move away from its Zoraostrian roots. Ideas of good and evil slowly gave way to a morality defined by the idea of a moral ladder, with what would become The Combine at the top and everyone else further down in varying degrees, according to how closely they resembled the society of Armandians.
The Great Decline
During the 17th century, imperial powers like Portugal, France, and especially Great Britain and Tsarist Russia began to seize footholds within the Empire. A series of weak and incompetent Higher Ones, along with a Western technological advantage, allowed Armand to become a pawn in the power struggles of the West. Specifically, Armand became ensnared in The Great Game between Russia and Britain, which was a long struggle for control of Central Asia between 1813 and 1907. A serious decline of the Empire began in the 1800, when Tsar Paul I of Russia annexed Georgia. In the Russo-Armandian Wars that followed, Armand lost part of Azerbaijan in 1813, and then the rest of Azerbaijan, along with Armenia, in 1828.
Britain seized the moment of Armandian weakness and, with help from vengeful Bedgellen mercenaries, seized control of North Hindustan in a brutal struggle.
Limping and weakened, the Empire reached its lowest point in 1830, when the Higher One at the time (the Higher Ones no longer bore names) issued the famed Declaration of Surrender. It was a simple, one line note written in the ancient Armandian tongue, declaring that all Armandians must “cease resisting until the time is right to rise again.” Instead of fighting their colonial masters, Armandians were told to “bide their time, and learn. Learn what makes you weak and what makes them strong, so that one day we may rise again.” And this they did, much to the surprise of the British and the Russians. They became model subjects, obedient of every order, and willing to work slavishly to supply their colonial masters with material goods. More menacingly, they became excellent mercenaries, putting down the often bloody Bedgellen rebellions and taking part in the British conquests of Arab lands. Some scholars were unnerved by their distinct refusal to accept British and Russian culture and customs, but these were a distinct minority of voices.
In 1907, Russia and Britain, having already taken Armand’s northern posessions and its Indian ones, respectively, carved up the heart of the Empire into spheres of influence with the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. In a move to prevent the rise of a strong Armandian Higher One, and to gain control of newly discovered oil reserves, the British established a puppet constitutional monarchy and Parliament.
The World Wars
With the break out of WWI, Armand was used as a military base for Russian and British troops, and after Russians withdrew in 1921, the British attempted to turn Armand into a fully fledged protectorate. Interpreting this as “the time to rise again”, certain segments of Armandian society rallied around a military officer by the name of Reza Khan, who overthrew the previous Higher One and established himself as a military dictator in 1925. Khan expelled the British from mainlaind Armand (although he failed to regain control of North Hindustan) and tried to implement capitalism and modern technology within the country. His reign was short lived, however, as he failed to unify Armandian society around him, and indeed created one of the rare splits in Armandian public opinion.
In August 1941, Soviet and British forces exploited this weakness, and occupied Armand due to its nature as a vital link in the lend lease supply chain. In September, they overthrew Khan, and installed his son, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, who they felt would be more amenable to their interests.
While the 1943 Constance Declaration promised to respect the sovereignty of Armand, both Britain and the Soviets flagrantly violated its clauses. The British maintained control through Pahlavi, while the Soviets propped up several seperatist regimes in the north. This instability continued until 1947…
The Combine Revolution
Ghandi’s independence movement in India reached its climax in 1947, when the British finally gave in and declared India independent. The nation collapsed soon after, as Beth Gellert, the INU, North Pakistan, Andaman and Nicobar, and others emerged out of the chaos as independent states. North Hindustan was supposed to have been given to INU, but much to the Hindustanis’ dismay, it was this moment that the Armandians decided to rise again. A Congress for Independence rallied in North Hindustan, revoking the Declaration of Surrender and hoisting a black flag above the newly declared capitol of North Sienna. INU forces made a half hearted attempt at invasion, but were too busy holding onto dear life as the Principality made mince meat of its forces to make much of an impact.
The Revolutionary fires spread to Armand proper, and in 1951 the Higher One was overthrown. Forced into exile, he moved to Tulgary, where he currently resides as one of the Holy League’s seemingly endless supply of kings-in-exile. The British attemped to convince the Quinntonians to implement Operation AJAX in order to prop up the Higher One, but it is unclear whether they cooperated. Either way, the operation failed, and a full blown, democratic communist state was thus born, and a Revolutionary Congress soon sought out to reorganize the nation into a unique framework. (Exact government structure organized later)
The Revolution was surprisingly orderly, as if society itself had expected it for a long time, and none of the mass purges and street riots that are usually associated with a revolution occurred. Instead, the Armandians simply established the Unified Combine of Armandian Cheese, and went about the business of forging a cohesive communist economic structure.
Oddly enough, Armandian uprisings did not occurr in the Soviet Union. This was likely because the Combine perceived that it would need the aid of the Soviets to establish itself as a power in a sea of hostile nations. The USSR and the Combine enjoyed close relations through much of the Cold War, though they were ideologically dissimiliar. Relations with Beth Geller continued to be hostile until the emergence of the First Commonwealth, while relations with the INU proved ambiguous. The Combine generally viewed the Hindustanis favorably, but much resentment remained over the issue of North Hindustan. The greatest tensions, however, emerged between the Combine and United Elias. Indeed, the Cold War in the Middle East was largely channeled through the rivalry of those two great powers.
The Armandian-Elian War
Tensions between the Communist Combine and the capitalist Federal Republic eventually exploded in 1980, when Elian forces launched a raid into the oil rich province of Nina (Khuzestan) and quickly broke through the disorganized Armandian lines. The Armandians were able to use waves of infantry to push back the Elians, however, and the war soon dragged into a conflict of attrittion. The Elians were backed by several capitalist powers, while the Armandians were backed by the nascent Progressive Bloc, and as such neither side managed to gain a decisive advantage over the other. The war saw each side launch SCUD missiles at each other’s capitals, and rumors of a chemical and biological weapons use still persist. (Indeed, while the Combine has no nuclear weapons program, it now boasts one of the world’s most extensively developed Bioweapons programs. This is highly classified, however.) The war ended inconclusively in 1988, although some Elian scholars claim it was a success simply because it prevented the spread of the Revolution throughout the Middle East.
Afghanistan
With the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan after the disastrous invasion, the Afghan Revolutionary Central Committee, desperate to survive, called upon the Combine to save what remained of its control over Afghanistan. Combine forces obliged, and began to make inroads into southern Afghanistan. However, the Communist government soon collapsed, with key members of the hierarchy fleeing to the undefined southern Combine zone. The Combine has never stepped up its efforts and launched a fully fledged invasion, due to fact that the Afghani populace was very independent minded and individualistic, which made assimilation difficult. Border conflicts with the Taliban still continue to this day, and the zone remains one of the most undefined and vague borders in the world.
The Thawing of the Cold War
With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, the Combine’s mood lightened up signficantly. The peaceful return of Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani territories marked the beginning of a “National Celebration”, which served as a warming point in general worldwide relations. Mumbai, Lyong, the Southern Confederacy, and even Beth Gellert were aggressively courted, and the doors to oil exports were flung wide open. For the first time, Armand participated in global events like Eurovision and the FIFA world cup.
The exposure to the outside world soon brought the ideas of the Environmental movement to the Combine, which shook the country to the core. The once barren land was utterly transformed within the span of several years, as aggressive terraforming projects were undertaken to “green-ify” the country. Trees, grass, bushes, and flowers of all kinds now adorn the Combine, making it one of the few nations in the world to buck the trend of desertification. Environmentalism pierced through other parts of the nation’s culture as well, as the country converted to solely electric powered vehicles in the mid 1990s, and relies on an electric grid powered by a combination of nuclear, solar, and wind technologies. While the country still does export oil, and uses diesel for its combat vehicles, in country use of oil is minimal. The Combine has also championed a treaty calling for reduced emissions worldwide, which it brands the “Constance Protocols” after the nation’s capital.
The Combine Today
The Combine today stands at a bit of a crossroads, and what path shall it travel? Well, this is where decide. It is time now for us to make history…
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v232/Futureworldruler/Black_flag.jpg
“They are not men, spawned from the swirling dust of chaos, but machines, forged from the cold steel of order.” ---W. R. Spencer
“No place on earth is closer to the final stages of human development…the question the remains, having come so far, will it be able to go even further, or has it already pushed it’s luck too far?”---Karl Marx
Geography: Iran, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, North Hindustan
(NOTE: The geographic region of Iran is referred to as “Armand” in AMW.)
Population:
Armenia: 2,976,372
Azerbaijan: 7,961,619
Georgia: 4,661,473
Iran: 68,688,433
Total: 284,287,897
History
The Muslim Invasions
The history of what is today known as The Combine begins in what is today Armand, with the Islamic invasions of the Sassanid Empire beginning in 634 AD. After Mohammed succeeded in unifying the Arab Peninsula under the Islamic Caliphate shortly before his death in 632, his successor, Abu Bakr, launched a campaign to first consolidate control over the Arabian Peninsula, and then to absorb the Palestinian and Syrian Arabs into his nascent Islamic Empire. These territories had long been claimed by the Sassanid Empire (Which was composed mainly of Armand and Iraq), and thus a titanic struggle emerged. While a vigorous counter attack at the Battle of the Bridge gave the Sassanids hope that they could repel the invaders, it soon became clear that the Islamic tide was unstoppable. Disunity quickly became a problem, as various rebellions broke out within the Empire, splitting it along ethnic, religious, and political lines.
By 640, Arabs effectively ruled all of Mesopotamia, and all that remained of the once mighty Persian Empire lay in the steppes of Armand. Caliph Umar ordered a final assault on Armand, and Arab raiding parties swarmed over the Zagros mountains. Desperately trying to cling onto his empire, King Yazdegerd rallied his forces for one, last stand against the Muslim invader. By 641 he had raised a formidable force, which took a stand at Nihavand, some forty miles south of Hamadan in modern Armand, as Sa'ad ibn-Abi-Waqqas and his infamous cavalry raced loomed menacingly.
The stage was set for a dramatic final clash between the armies of the two Prophets, Mohammed and Zoroaster…
“I had never expected nature’s simple gift
a piece of cheese
a simple yellow wedge
To be my savior, to be my lift
the essence of life
the strength of unity
It told me the direction in which we must run
For to be strong, to be saved, we must become
One”
---Poem Written in traditional Armandian style by King Yazdegerd
Several weeks before the enemy force reaches Nihavand, the King reportedly had a vision. What exactly occurred in that vision has been lost to the ravages of time, except for the fact that it somehow referenced cheese, but what resulted because of it has not. The King became convinced that the only way he could save his Kingdom was to embrace a movement that had begun to sprout amongst the scattered villages of his empire. That fateful night, he chose to declare the Cult of the One the state religion, and nothing was ever the same again…
The Cult of the One
There is no clear, exact origin of the Cult, and in fact, it likely occurred spontaneously in several places. The period of Arab invasion had thrown an ancient society with clearly defined rules and traditions into total upheaval, and many simply couldn’t cope with the new found choas in their lives. Villages all across Armand took to worshipping Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god, with renewed fervor. The worship soon took on principles that extended far beyond those of Zoroastrianism. The need for order was so great that they began worshipping an entity known as “the One”, an entity that was like Ahura Mazda, but included the consciousness of all Cult members. Reports to the Caliph from this time speak of Arab raiders discovering towns where the citizens were almost zombie like, with their actions, ideas, and words all merging into one, homogenous entity. These villagers had adapted themselves to think, speak, and act similiarly, and ha d drilled an eerie degree of coordination into their movements. These cults were disparate and scattered, however; they lacked a cohesive set of ideals and would quickly crumble under the might of a determined Islamic regime.
The Combine is Born
Yazdegerd had not only adopted the Cult of the One as his empire’s faith, but added a new principle unto its doctrine. He declared himself the “Higher One”, the physical focus on earth of the entire entire Cult. Their gathered, unified minds would find their focus in his flesh, which made him not quite Divine, but very close. Seeking comfort and security, Armandians flocked to his banner, and the small force at Nihavand grew into a truly massive one. These new recruits soon indoctrinated the Higher One’s older forces, and what was the first true Army of the Combine was formed. The clash at Nihavand was tremendous, but the still outnumbered and outgunned Cultists managed to shatter the Arab cavalry through their amazingly coordinated and controlled tactics.
Abu Mu’amar, a Muslim soldier who survived the battle, would later remark,
“We had never seen anything quite like it. None panicked, none fled, none showed any indiividual course of action at all. Oh, yes, there were a few slips, here and then, but overall…it was like fighting an impenetrable, unrelenting dust storm…”
Caliph Umar’s forces were routed at the battle, but the war continued for several years afterwards, as the Caliph refused to surrender. But the Higher One’s power only grew, as more and more warriors flocked to the odd banner of the Cheese. In fact, it was ironically the fault of the Muslim’s that the movement gained so much strength, for the longer they remained, the more villages rallied to the cause. Still, the Muslims far outnumbered the Armandians, and were skilled warriors, so the war dragged on for years. After several years of brutal warfare, the Higher One approached the Caliph with a deal. The Muslim armies would be allowed to cross through Armand to launch assaults on what is now known as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other Asian territories, but they would have to respect the sovereignty of the Higher One’s new nation, which at the time was known as the Empire of the Higher One. A deal was thus struck, and the newly forged nation went into several centuries of isolationism.
Pax Armanda
The period from roughly 640 AD-1000 AD saw the greatest expansion of Armandian culture, technology, and economy. The lack of a unifying threat relaxed Armand to such a degree that there was nothing to hold the war time group think together, and many villages began to revert to individualist modes of thought. The government’s task over the four centuries was to forge a society and an educational machinery that encouraged the unifying aspects of the Cult of the One. The clash between individuality and conformity resulted in a flourishing of the arts, literature, and technology. By 1000 AD, society had made significant progress towards establishing unity. The communist economic model, whereupon all goods were communally owned and all received an equal share of the resources, was implemented, albeit without the nationally organized structure that would emerge later. Individual creativitiy was stamped out, as even the writing of an Armand style poem required a collective effort. Although no wars were fought in this time period, the Armandians raised their war making prowess to an incredible level, with units fighting in nearly machine like precision. However, some vestiges of individuality still remained. People still married, they still bore individual names, and of course, there still was a king, of sorts. Things did continually march in a Progressive direction, however, and all was generally peaceful.
Too peaceful.
The Era of Expansion
The development of whole, coherent ideology for the Armandians also had the side effect of filling the Armandians with a revolutionary zeal. Beginning in 1005 AD, they quietly dispatched exploratory units to the India and and Central Asia, looking for nations vulnerable to conquest. In 1021, they launched assaults on what we know as Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, quickly consuming the small kingdoms and flooding them with immigrants. Portions of southern Afghanistan were also put under the Armandian sword, but the natives were reluctant to surrender their individuality, and thus this holding proved shaky, at best. In the meantime, the Indian Expedition met with little success, as it encountered a series of powerful kingdoms and vigorous, individualistic cultures. All of this changed, however, in the region of North Hindustan. North Hindustan had long been ruled a confederation of anemic, feuding princes, and the region was so impoverished and war torn that the population had long ago lost faith in all gods and all institutions, and had been reduced to a cowed, fearful, one might even say sheeplike, state.
In the eyes of the Higher One, this made them ripe for the taking. However, there was one fly in the ointment, a fly that would continually irritate the Armandians.
The Geletians.
An account by the Armandian expedition member Niktos Putin, provides us a glimpse into the first encounter between the Combine and Beth Gellert….
“It was a beautiful summer’s day, as our Expeditionary Unit sat in what the Kanpurans call a ‘bar’, which is a place that alcoholic beverages are served. We did not consume of the beverages, but instead focused on a plan to pierce the city’s defenses. A rude interruption came in the form of a wine glass being smashed over our heads, [Editor’s Note: All Armandians refer to individual members of the Combine in the plural sense, so it is often difficult to ascertain if events occurred to the entire group or a single one.] which was accompanied by a roaring laugh. Standing before us was a gigantic mess of muscle and red hair who we immediately recognized as a danger due to two factors: he was armed and he was heavily intoxicated.
‘I’m sorry, mate. I thought you were the bastard my wife’s been cheating on me with. I was wondering how you got here all the way from Portmeiron…Anyhow, we’re all of you from? I’ve never seen your kind around here.’
‘We hail from the Empire of the Higher One.’
‘Never heard of it. Sounds a tad pretentious, if you ask me. Heh, I doubt it’s anything compared to the Bedgellen tribes. Speaking of, I better get back to my camp…’
‘Camp?’
‘Well…you are out of the loop…Don’t you know? The Bedgellen tribes have formed a confederation…North Hindustan shall be ours, soon.”
“We would suggest you tell your leader that it’s not wise to make claims on future members of the One.”
“Hah, leader? We’re not as regressive as you may think…Ever heard of democracy you twat?”
“Your ‘democracy’ must retreat if it hopes to survive.”
“You zombie bastards couldn’t kill a fly…look at you, marching in lockstep like ants! No individual spirit at all. Get out of here, scram, before you get hurt!”
“You were warned.”
We pulled out our short swords, and lunged onto the towering man. With his left arm he smashed the head of our first attacker, and with his right arm, which bore a sword, he sliced off the second one’s head. He then leapt into the air, whirling multiple times, and landed on the table, sword in his hand and maniacal grin on his face. We launched ourselves upon him with an intense ferocity, but it was no use, as he simply batted us away like flies. The battle raged across the bar, as we tore through containers and tables, and more and more of our number fell.
After the initial shock, however, we managed to regain our unity of spirit, and maneuvered the muscle laden creature against a wall. A comrade on the right swept at the Bedgellen’s head, and the Wootz blade easily batted aside our steel. But a comrade on the left struck at the man’s leg, which the man was just barely able to defend against. Finally, we drove a blade directly into his chest, and he crumpled, leaving us with only a few words…
“This isn’t the last you’ve seen of Beth Gellert…”
And indeed it was not…
The War of North Hindustan
The stage was set for one of the most dramatic and protracted struggles India had ever seen. Putin’s expedition established a fort and sent back a detailed report, recommending that the Higher One launch an assault on North Hindustan’s confederation of princes. Significant expanses seperated Armand from its desired conquest, however, and the march was long and arduous. It was only the discipline of the Armandians that allowed them to endure such a long journey and then make war, and it was their sheer might that allowed them to cross various foreign territories unhampered. One principality tried to repel the Armandian wave, but their army was quickly batted aside, and their fields, temples, homes, and people were so thoroughly ravaged that few would even remember the principality’s existance, and, more importantly, stand against the Armandian force.
In 1028, Armandian forces arrived at North Hindustan’s frontier cities, and began calmly, coldly, and methodically smashing opposing forces and assimilating new territories. Kanpur, Shansi, Agra, Bareilly…All crumbled with an almost horrifying ease.
Yet the Armandians knew that they had yet to face their true foe…the Bedgellens. While the Armandians advanced from the south west of North Hindustan, the Bedgellens had taken a southeastern route. Their armies were set to meet dead center, in Lucknow…
The Bedgellens issued, in their trademark style (which one could call “arrogant” or “confident” depending on how you liked the dwellers of Beth Gellert), a demand for outright surrender. The Armandians replied by lobotomizing the messenger and returning him with note declaring they had done the man a favor by returning him to the unthinking, animalistic state all Bedgellens seemed to want to achieve. This infuriated the Bedgellen commander to such a degree that he made the fatal mistake of charging directly into the massed pike formation of the Armandians. The commander himself, along with tremendous numbers amongst his comrades, was slaughtered outright on the first day of battle. However, the Bedgellens were able to regroup and rally, thus prolonging the battle by several days. In the end, a well calculated series of thrusts by the Bedgellen cavalry won the day, and the Armandians were forced to retreat to their fortress.
The Armandians appeared to be beaten, and Bedgellen forces soon began to encroach upon their hard won territories. But they had counted the Armandians out far too early, for they had forgotten one key fact about the Higher One’s people.
The Armandians were like one organism.
And an organism adapts.
Brutalized by the Bedgellen forces once, they were not apt to let it happen again. The next encounter saw the Bedgellens win again, but by a smaller margin, and so on and so forth, as the Armandians grew to understand and exploit the techniques of the Bedgellens, until one day….
…they won.
The war raged for over a century, and whole generations of men grew up knowing nothing but war. Much blood was spilled and much treasure spent, but by 1139, North Hindustan had become a part of the Empire, and the nation of Beth Gellert had become its newest foe.
A Period of Consolidation
From 1139 to roughly the 16th century, Armand saw no further expansion. Instead, the nation consolidated its holdings in North Hindustan, fighting a series of border wars with the Bedgellen tribes and other Indian states, and waged several inconclusive wars with its age old enemy, the Arabs. Gradually, North Hindustan became absorbed into the hive like mentality of Armand, and Armand itself began to move away from its Zoraostrian roots. Ideas of good and evil slowly gave way to a morality defined by the idea of a moral ladder, with what would become The Combine at the top and everyone else further down in varying degrees, according to how closely they resembled the society of Armandians.
The Great Decline
During the 17th century, imperial powers like Portugal, France, and especially Great Britain and Tsarist Russia began to seize footholds within the Empire. A series of weak and incompetent Higher Ones, along with a Western technological advantage, allowed Armand to become a pawn in the power struggles of the West. Specifically, Armand became ensnared in The Great Game between Russia and Britain, which was a long struggle for control of Central Asia between 1813 and 1907. A serious decline of the Empire began in the 1800, when Tsar Paul I of Russia annexed Georgia. In the Russo-Armandian Wars that followed, Armand lost part of Azerbaijan in 1813, and then the rest of Azerbaijan, along with Armenia, in 1828.
Britain seized the moment of Armandian weakness and, with help from vengeful Bedgellen mercenaries, seized control of North Hindustan in a brutal struggle.
Limping and weakened, the Empire reached its lowest point in 1830, when the Higher One at the time (the Higher Ones no longer bore names) issued the famed Declaration of Surrender. It was a simple, one line note written in the ancient Armandian tongue, declaring that all Armandians must “cease resisting until the time is right to rise again.” Instead of fighting their colonial masters, Armandians were told to “bide their time, and learn. Learn what makes you weak and what makes them strong, so that one day we may rise again.” And this they did, much to the surprise of the British and the Russians. They became model subjects, obedient of every order, and willing to work slavishly to supply their colonial masters with material goods. More menacingly, they became excellent mercenaries, putting down the often bloody Bedgellen rebellions and taking part in the British conquests of Arab lands. Some scholars were unnerved by their distinct refusal to accept British and Russian culture and customs, but these were a distinct minority of voices.
In 1907, Russia and Britain, having already taken Armand’s northern posessions and its Indian ones, respectively, carved up the heart of the Empire into spheres of influence with the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. In a move to prevent the rise of a strong Armandian Higher One, and to gain control of newly discovered oil reserves, the British established a puppet constitutional monarchy and Parliament.
The World Wars
With the break out of WWI, Armand was used as a military base for Russian and British troops, and after Russians withdrew in 1921, the British attempted to turn Armand into a fully fledged protectorate. Interpreting this as “the time to rise again”, certain segments of Armandian society rallied around a military officer by the name of Reza Khan, who overthrew the previous Higher One and established himself as a military dictator in 1925. Khan expelled the British from mainlaind Armand (although he failed to regain control of North Hindustan) and tried to implement capitalism and modern technology within the country. His reign was short lived, however, as he failed to unify Armandian society around him, and indeed created one of the rare splits in Armandian public opinion.
In August 1941, Soviet and British forces exploited this weakness, and occupied Armand due to its nature as a vital link in the lend lease supply chain. In September, they overthrew Khan, and installed his son, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, who they felt would be more amenable to their interests.
While the 1943 Constance Declaration promised to respect the sovereignty of Armand, both Britain and the Soviets flagrantly violated its clauses. The British maintained control through Pahlavi, while the Soviets propped up several seperatist regimes in the north. This instability continued until 1947…
The Combine Revolution
Ghandi’s independence movement in India reached its climax in 1947, when the British finally gave in and declared India independent. The nation collapsed soon after, as Beth Gellert, the INU, North Pakistan, Andaman and Nicobar, and others emerged out of the chaos as independent states. North Hindustan was supposed to have been given to INU, but much to the Hindustanis’ dismay, it was this moment that the Armandians decided to rise again. A Congress for Independence rallied in North Hindustan, revoking the Declaration of Surrender and hoisting a black flag above the newly declared capitol of North Sienna. INU forces made a half hearted attempt at invasion, but were too busy holding onto dear life as the Principality made mince meat of its forces to make much of an impact.
The Revolutionary fires spread to Armand proper, and in 1951 the Higher One was overthrown. Forced into exile, he moved to Tulgary, where he currently resides as one of the Holy League’s seemingly endless supply of kings-in-exile. The British attemped to convince the Quinntonians to implement Operation AJAX in order to prop up the Higher One, but it is unclear whether they cooperated. Either way, the operation failed, and a full blown, democratic communist state was thus born, and a Revolutionary Congress soon sought out to reorganize the nation into a unique framework. (Exact government structure organized later)
The Revolution was surprisingly orderly, as if society itself had expected it for a long time, and none of the mass purges and street riots that are usually associated with a revolution occurred. Instead, the Armandians simply established the Unified Combine of Armandian Cheese, and went about the business of forging a cohesive communist economic structure.
Oddly enough, Armandian uprisings did not occurr in the Soviet Union. This was likely because the Combine perceived that it would need the aid of the Soviets to establish itself as a power in a sea of hostile nations. The USSR and the Combine enjoyed close relations through much of the Cold War, though they were ideologically dissimiliar. Relations with Beth Geller continued to be hostile until the emergence of the First Commonwealth, while relations with the INU proved ambiguous. The Combine generally viewed the Hindustanis favorably, but much resentment remained over the issue of North Hindustan. The greatest tensions, however, emerged between the Combine and United Elias. Indeed, the Cold War in the Middle East was largely channeled through the rivalry of those two great powers.
The Armandian-Elian War
Tensions between the Communist Combine and the capitalist Federal Republic eventually exploded in 1980, when Elian forces launched a raid into the oil rich province of Nina (Khuzestan) and quickly broke through the disorganized Armandian lines. The Armandians were able to use waves of infantry to push back the Elians, however, and the war soon dragged into a conflict of attrittion. The Elians were backed by several capitalist powers, while the Armandians were backed by the nascent Progressive Bloc, and as such neither side managed to gain a decisive advantage over the other. The war saw each side launch SCUD missiles at each other’s capitals, and rumors of a chemical and biological weapons use still persist. (Indeed, while the Combine has no nuclear weapons program, it now boasts one of the world’s most extensively developed Bioweapons programs. This is highly classified, however.) The war ended inconclusively in 1988, although some Elian scholars claim it was a success simply because it prevented the spread of the Revolution throughout the Middle East.
Afghanistan
With the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan after the disastrous invasion, the Afghan Revolutionary Central Committee, desperate to survive, called upon the Combine to save what remained of its control over Afghanistan. Combine forces obliged, and began to make inroads into southern Afghanistan. However, the Communist government soon collapsed, with key members of the hierarchy fleeing to the undefined southern Combine zone. The Combine has never stepped up its efforts and launched a fully fledged invasion, due to fact that the Afghani populace was very independent minded and individualistic, which made assimilation difficult. Border conflicts with the Taliban still continue to this day, and the zone remains one of the most undefined and vague borders in the world.
The Thawing of the Cold War
With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, the Combine’s mood lightened up signficantly. The peaceful return of Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani territories marked the beginning of a “National Celebration”, which served as a warming point in general worldwide relations. Mumbai, Lyong, the Southern Confederacy, and even Beth Gellert were aggressively courted, and the doors to oil exports were flung wide open. For the first time, Armand participated in global events like Eurovision and the FIFA world cup.
The exposure to the outside world soon brought the ideas of the Environmental movement to the Combine, which shook the country to the core. The once barren land was utterly transformed within the span of several years, as aggressive terraforming projects were undertaken to “green-ify” the country. Trees, grass, bushes, and flowers of all kinds now adorn the Combine, making it one of the few nations in the world to buck the trend of desertification. Environmentalism pierced through other parts of the nation’s culture as well, as the country converted to solely electric powered vehicles in the mid 1990s, and relies on an electric grid powered by a combination of nuclear, solar, and wind technologies. While the country still does export oil, and uses diesel for its combat vehicles, in country use of oil is minimal. The Combine has also championed a treaty calling for reduced emissions worldwide, which it brands the “Constance Protocols” after the nation’s capital.
The Combine Today
The Combine today stands at a bit of a crossroads, and what path shall it travel? Well, this is where decide. It is time now for us to make history…