Soviet Steam
20-02-2008, 09:57
Initial Notes: The mention of the three different tech levels(Late 1800s realistic PT, Steampunk and Fantasy) is because Soviet Steam is compatible with roleplaying on one, two or three combined of those tech levels. Steampunk is also known as Alternate Tech or AT. Also this is a work in progress I will be updating without regularity, but I won't leave it unfinished either.
If there are any incoherent or seemingly disconnected facts in this thread, it is because A Wizard did IT
I'll conveniently separate the elements of each into tech levels to make reference easy for each type of tech level, so if you are RPing with Soviet Steam at PT, you can easily know which of the elements can be safely ignored, and so on. Certain things are almost self-evident. On the surrounding territories on Soviet Steam fictional continent represent its division between magic and technology and are for character-centered roleplaying purposes primarily, though I might have future plans for them.
Legend
Normal text means Past Tech content based on RL late 1800s.
Red Text means Steampunk Only
Blue Text means Fantasy Only
Text Between "" might mean biased phrases on purpose according to Soviet Steam cultural PoV. I have not marked all biased parts on this text, but they are obvious anyway.
Quick Overview
They are commies in the 1890s somewhere between Leninism and Democratic Socialism. Cities(Soviets) are run by democratically elected leaders but the federal government is a dictatorship, although the selection of the feds leader happens through a mix of sortition and technocracy with an establish limit of mandate of 4 years for each leader. It is a quite socially progressive nation with lots of civil rights, from abortion and euthanasia to freedom of religion(something uncommon for countries like it), despite being a semi-dictatorship, and most is allowed as long as it does not involve trying to overthrow the government or to exploit others to become rich. They have a decent, growing economy, live in a large continent, hate capitalists, monarchists, reactionaries in general, occultism and magic. Compared to nearby nations, they are technologically ahead. However they can't resort to handwaving, as it disrupts everything, thus they prefer to just shoot anything that makes Isaac Newton roll over in his grave with this (http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?showtopic=3509), or with a heavy machinegun, or with a howitzer... you get the picture.
http://www.nationstates.net/images/flags/uploads/soviet_steam.jpg
Historic Overview
To understand the massive but relatively sparsely populated nation of Soviet Steam, one must go further through the past and analyze thousands of years of a long history that traces back from the Dark Ages, times when superstition and ignorance were imperative, and people bowed to a clergy in worship of nonexistent gods or of a tyrannical god which demanded the blood of all through the Inquisition, the opiate of the masses and theocratic basis of the pre-capitalist society that existed much before. Everything changed in the beginning of the 19th century... this century, when the invention of the steam engine catalyzed hundreds of years of the conflict between scientific method and mysticism, logic and superstition, rationality and ignorance, technology and the forever ineffective magic, or at least that was what was thought before an event that changed everything happened, technology and science finally gave their final blow on the decadent feudalism remains in the world, or in most of them.
The previously developed basis of the "bourgeoisie" now had at their hands a technology which would allow them to enrich and accumulate wealth at never seen before levels, furthering even more the gap of injustice and oppression between them and the proletariat. Children, women and men work at inhuman conditions in filth and polluted factories at shifts of more than twenty-four hours. Countless have died from the most brutal exploitation of man by man in what was the apogee of capitalism: the dawn of the industrial age. But human beings were not mere animals to be exploited. In fact even irrational animals struggled against attempts to exploit and dominate them. Soon the first signs of resistance came, Luddites preceded the appearance of the first Unions and eventually the Communist Manifesto came. France, the basis of the bourgeois French Revolution would see a new revolution, a true people's revolution that is honored continually by Soviet Steam: the Paris Commune.
Unfortunately the people's struggle was brutally smashed by the oppression of the "capitalist pigs" and its military lackeys and the Commune was very short lived, but it "proved that socialism was not a dream: It is a reality". A few years later, perhaps as a sort of revolutionary spring. The First Russian Revolution have successfully overthrown the reactionary and outdated Tzar's monarchy which still clang to rotting feudal system vestiges, replacing it with a government system which is completely unique, a combination of meritocratically selected autocrats for 4 years mandates with sortition democracy of randomly selected rulers from the most capable among the people. It was a long way since then and much have changed. The white army has successfully seceded Novaya Russia from the Soviet, and other, more urgent problems have arose... Nobody can remember, or could remember properly the most strange anomalous event that happened in that night, 6th of June of 1879. There was no visible immediate effects of it for those who were already asleep, but those who were still awake witnessed something that would change their lives forever.
According to their reports, the land twisted and their vision became blurry, slight quakes shook the earth and then, in an instant they ended in an entirely foreign land, which although similar, was completely different from anything else they knew in Earth, landlocked cities became harbor cities, places where there were rivers before became dry and many other shifts in the landscaped happened, almost like if they were, in something that challenged all scientific laws, transported to an entire alien continent, and soon they would discover that they were not in Earth anymore, but in a new, strange and different world that seemed to be shaped by beliefs first and by laws of physics second.
Contact was lost with half of the existing cities, and eventually strange happenings began in those new lands they ended at. People started to disappear misteriously, strange sightings were claimed to be seen of "ghosts" and "spirits" and the Communist Party became enraged by such claims. A full investigation has begun, and it would not take too much time to discover that they were being stalked by all sorts of magical beings that they thought to be mere inventions of their forgotten Slavic mythology... Baba Yagas were the most proeminent of them and infamous for luring children out of their homes at night, and assault teams soon gave the first hints that soon science and magic would become antagonistic expressions of power from opposing ideologies and beings. Not only that, but as recoinassance continued further, it was discovered that a part of Novaya Russia also ended in that strange world, and that two other nations did exist... a reactionary monarchy and a reactionary theocracy which apparently were still at the early Renaissance or late Middle Ages regarding technological development, having only primitive gunpowder weapons like muskets and arquebuses and still clinging to full plate mails, swords, crossbows and alike.
The first encounter between Soviet Steam and these two civilizations happened as the truce with Novaya Russia became more uneasy. And they were definitively not interested in peace when they ruthlessly sent an invasion against Soviet Steam borders with a very strange, lawless territory which would be known as the Badlands. Although the first waves of anachronic knights, arquebusiers, musketeers and plate mail warriors were massacred by the sheer power of the automatic gatling gun, soon the greatest challenge in the battlefield would occur when witches and wizards were deployed in that incursion against the Soviet and the previous advantage of technological superiority became even when powerful wills capable of challenging and manipulating the laws of nature came against them. One by one, cities where overwhelmed by the sheer power of magic.
Everything was about to be lost, when a genial engineer named Yevgeni Lenin Zakharov have built the machines that would change forever the military doctrine of Soviet Steam: The Automaton (http://www.crabfu.com/steamtoys/info_faq/steampunk_robot.jpg). A powerful, autonomous three to five meters tall humanoid, or sometimes just legged, machine capable of wreaking havoc and breaking the enemy lines with its 5 to 15-pounder revolver cannons; the Steam Tank (http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/ww1/images/3g11079.jpg), a motorized, lightweight treaded machine of war capable of carrying a significant quantity of naval guns and gatling guns inside its belly and of breaking enemy forces with the same disposition of an automaton, but at a much higher cost-efficiency. Although slower than a well trained horse on its fullest speed, the steam tank offers unparalleled assault capabilities and have shaped forever the battlefield, and that can be used as basis for other sorts of steam combat vehicles as well... and the Combat Airships (http://images.elfwood.com/art/s/d/sdismukes/airship_sunset.jpg), lighter-than-air and also helix and steam powered flying titans capable of giving air support and aerial reconaissance to ground forces, which gave to Soviet Steam a new, never before tried field except for a try of Napoleon to use balloons for such role.
With these technologies, the tide of battle was turned again in favor of Soviet Steam as now the powerful witches were no match to the firepower of automatons, airships and steam tanks which roamed and destroyed, and eventually the war stalled due to the massive dimensions of the disputed continent, coupled with the ever-important need of logistics support that no magic or existing technology could remove in a blink. After tense years the conflict ended in a cease-fire and uneasy truce, and with the less than willing alliance with Novaya Russia to counter together the threat of the brutal and savage Yaga Kingdom to the northwest, rumored to be a place where all firstborns are sacrificed in a gruesome and painful way to ancient gods or spirits, and of the outdated and hypocritical holier-than-thou Theocracy of Perun to the southwest.
Since then low intensity conflicts continue among these two "alliances" of respectively magically and technologically inclined civilizations. And now they war, rather than in their own territories, in a stateless buffer territory known as the Badlands, which is, too conveniently, rich in both coal and in strange ores that seem to amplify magic, the sort of location that every nation in that huge pangea would like to have as its holding. Hundreds die every year in a bloody battlefield as those lands became more and more scorched by magics and explosives, trenches dug deep within the bowels of Earth, serving as host for all sorts of diseases into a living hell of an endless low intensity war which might soon become full-scale again.
And eventually new, previously unknown magical abominations were drawn by the bloodbath of the battlefield, among them the mythological vampires, while legends about a perfectly immortal wizard who kidnaps young women called Kashchey the Deathless and many others pierced through the skepticism of Soviet Steam's people and soon became widely accepted and believed, despite several failed attempts to cover up the existence of magic, due to a primal fear that it would draw Soviet Steam people to practice it. This fear was consolidated when a group of ten women were caught practicing witchcraft and summarily executed. In face of the continual threat of magic, a secret police tasked with the investigation of the supernatural and with the hunt of witches and traitors among Soviet Steam people was created by the now dictator Zakharov.
Even proeminent Party members were lured by the powers of this magic, and an alarmingly slow but continual increase in the number of caught magicians became a critical worry, something had to be done soon or magic would corrupt their socialist ideal. Some people were apparently born more "gifted" than others regarding the innate capability of using one's will to create magic, and as a privilege, should it become widespread the feared consequence would be the separation between the "haves" and "have-nots" of magic and subsequent return to a capitalist economy... or worse. The solution was more and more brutality, and soon the practice of torture against witchcraft was authorized to the point it was, ironically, in no way different from the Inquisition practices from the Dark Ages.
These events brought Soviet Steam it is today: an authoritarian but willing bastion of steam-powered technology much beyond that existing in its contemporary Earth, and of socialism in a world dominated by magic, privilege and reactionary thought... a nation which hates the mostly dark and nightmarish nature of magic on all its forms with a fanatical and ideological passion, comparing the magicians of this strange world with the clergy or with the bourgeois of Earth, allied in a less than willing way with a capitalistic but pro-science nation in mutual defense against the magical reactionary forces. A nation struggling in a quasi-eternal war for the coal and mineral riches of the Badlands, facing magical beasts with steam power and electricity, a nation which north borders a lifeless and riches-less Wasteland which is assumed to be the result of a much more brutal war from the past in such world. Such is the nature and past of the Socialist Republic of Soviet Steam... a nation in eternal war against supernatural forces.
Geography
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/8536/map5rp1.png
Map for Steampunk + Fantasy version, PT or Steampunk only is located in the RL Russia instead
Territory
At 9 million square kilometers, the Socialist Republic of Soviet Steam is the largest nation of the massive Pangea it is located at. From the strange world where such continent is located, due to the knowledge of climate being hotter to the south, from the use of compasses and from the way water rotates in counter-clockwise whirls when falling into sinks, it was concluded that such continent is located at the northern hemisphere. Bathed by both the Vostok and Sirkorsky Oceans, it is bordered by the New Urals to the west, where it shares its southernmost border with Novaya Russia, and further through northwest, an stateless no man's land known as the Badlands is located, characterized as a landscape of scorched earth and man-made trenches, while to the north, a massive arctic desert, known for harboring no form of life, and from where nobody who dared to go into came back, called the Wastelands, is theorized to contain massive amounts of poisonous substances on its surface, claimed to be the sequels of a possible war that happened a long time ago there, which are kept from reaching Soviet Steam through airborne means by the northern Garvosk Hills. Coupled, these two stateless territories sum an extent much larger than that of any existing nation in Pangea.
Soviet Steam: 9 million sq. km
Novaya Russia: 2.5 million sq. km
Theocracy of Perun: 3.4 million sq. km
Yaga Kingdom: 2.72 million sq. km
No man’s land: 14.5 million sq. km
Pangea(Entire Continent): 32 million sq. km
Rivia 70,000 sq km.
Buyan Island: 120,000 sq km.
Environment
The weather in Soviet Steam ranges from arctic to subtropical, including a few stances of Mediterranean climate, with varying degrees of humidity. Deserts and tundra do exist, and a diverse plant life is known, with, inspired by the pioneer works of men like Charles Darwin, more than 900 species catalogued. The most common occurrence is that of temperate forests, however, reckless human expansion and urban growth are slowly deforesting Soviet Steam territory and putting many species at the risk of extinction, while the smog from the factories and steam powerplants has become a known feature, most intact locations are only found near the borders to the west. Average temperature is 16 degrees Celsius and average humidity level is 15%. Due to the strong east-west winds caught by the New Urals, the eastern valley, in the borders of Soviet Steam, contains some fertile climate for agriculture characterized by a more common occurrence of rain than in other regions, specially in the subtropical southernmost area which also hosts the only few beaches of Soviet Steam, where all the hard-working comrades of the Soviets can enjoy their deserved vacations.
In the Pangea section controlled by the Soviet, the wolf is the most predominantly found animal, followed by deers, bears and other animals known for inhabiting temperate and arctic climates, including to the extreme north a small population of polar bears, which is diminishing due to their skins being sought for fur coats to endure the harsh winters by the population. There are 150 known mammals, more than 200 species of birds, 100 reptile and amphibian and a countless quantity of insects known by biologists.
Economy
The Socialist Republic of Soviet Steam is organized under a command economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_economy) controlled by the Communist Party, managed by the Parintern, or Committee of Steam, which is a singular, heavily branched and decentralized organization composed by Marxist economists and specialists, divided at national, regional and municipal levels, from which each have a significant degree of autonomy, these specialists are chosen through sortition. Its economy is sustained by abundant coal reserves, and characterized by the latest developments of the Industrial Revolution, taken from the bourgeois hands to benefit the people: the recent expansion of electric energy into national infrastructure and by revolutionary developments of engineering, particularly in the vein of new steam compression methods and high-efficiency boilers for steam-propelled machines. Calculated in the latest four-year plan census, the estimated gross domestic product of Soviet Steam is of about 9.320 trillions of United States dollars, which is also the largest GDP of Pangea, something explainable by the level of technological backwardness of some of its neighbors, considering that it's for now the only known continent, although expeditions with oceanic ironclads, airships and steam-powered ships are being planned to map the entire planet once other more pressing issues are solved. It is responsible for 40% of the entire estimated continental GDP. It ranks as the second from the continent in nominal GDP per capita, at US$17,550, something which is in certain ways irrelevant due to how its society does not operate on traditional monetary values, for regarding "purchasing power parity", it stands as the first in the continent with an estimate of US$ 35,000. Less than willing, the Soviet Steam is a common importer of mostly agricultural goods from Novaya Russia due to its lack of fertile soil, while exporting to them a significant quantity of steam-powered technology and expertise, with electricity as a second product. There is no private sector, logically, with the government controlling 100% of the economy with no exception. The economy is obviously industrial, with 55% of its GDP coming from heavy industry. The prioritized industrial sector by the government is that of Arms Industry as of now, due to the imminent war with Yaga and Perun, with electricity, transports and logistics industries coming as secondary priorities. A hefty 20% of its GDP is dedicated purely for education, research and development. It's the largest productor and consumer of coal and electric energy from the continent, as well of saltpeter, charcoal and sulphur, in the entire continent. Agriculture, organized into more decentralized collective soviets of peasants for both subsistence and supplying the nation to the best possible, which are usually only eventually supervised by the central government, makes about 4% of its GDP, being known for the production of olive oil in some of the southernmost regions, and for the distillation of alcoholic beverages led by Vodka. Most common crops are rice, nuts and wheat.
The increasing complexity of its growth is slowly demonstrating the inefficiency of a central planning authority. Its top-down chain of communication has been blamed for the relative lack of further economic prosperity, and for the disaster of the town of Provost, which, lacking self-sufficiency, collapsed from lack of basic supplies, where many of those who did not left ended dying of starvation until its population became small enough to achieve sustainability, following a bureaucratic dispute between two economists on how much to allocate to it to stimulate its people to be more enthusiast about work and to reward their exceptional productivity. Following this incident a massive reformulation known as the "Soviet Basis Plan", which also included significant political changes was implemented, effectively giving full autonomy to individual municipal soviets to manage most of their own economies and also participate directly into the national planning, while fully removing government controls over collective agriculture as a sign of trust. Its goal was to create a more decentralized state control of the economy in the hopes of correcting the inefficiencies and the erroneous measures taken from central control, and has brought much better results since then.
If there are any incoherent or seemingly disconnected facts in this thread, it is because A Wizard did IT
I'll conveniently separate the elements of each into tech levels to make reference easy for each type of tech level, so if you are RPing with Soviet Steam at PT, you can easily know which of the elements can be safely ignored, and so on. Certain things are almost self-evident. On the surrounding territories on Soviet Steam fictional continent represent its division between magic and technology and are for character-centered roleplaying purposes primarily, though I might have future plans for them.
Legend
Normal text means Past Tech content based on RL late 1800s.
Red Text means Steampunk Only
Blue Text means Fantasy Only
Text Between "" might mean biased phrases on purpose according to Soviet Steam cultural PoV. I have not marked all biased parts on this text, but they are obvious anyway.
Quick Overview
They are commies in the 1890s somewhere between Leninism and Democratic Socialism. Cities(Soviets) are run by democratically elected leaders but the federal government is a dictatorship, although the selection of the feds leader happens through a mix of sortition and technocracy with an establish limit of mandate of 4 years for each leader. It is a quite socially progressive nation with lots of civil rights, from abortion and euthanasia to freedom of religion(something uncommon for countries like it), despite being a semi-dictatorship, and most is allowed as long as it does not involve trying to overthrow the government or to exploit others to become rich. They have a decent, growing economy, live in a large continent, hate capitalists, monarchists, reactionaries in general, occultism and magic. Compared to nearby nations, they are technologically ahead. However they can't resort to handwaving, as it disrupts everything, thus they prefer to just shoot anything that makes Isaac Newton roll over in his grave with this (http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?showtopic=3509), or with a heavy machinegun, or with a howitzer... you get the picture.
http://www.nationstates.net/images/flags/uploads/soviet_steam.jpg
Historic Overview
To understand the massive but relatively sparsely populated nation of Soviet Steam, one must go further through the past and analyze thousands of years of a long history that traces back from the Dark Ages, times when superstition and ignorance were imperative, and people bowed to a clergy in worship of nonexistent gods or of a tyrannical god which demanded the blood of all through the Inquisition, the opiate of the masses and theocratic basis of the pre-capitalist society that existed much before. Everything changed in the beginning of the 19th century... this century, when the invention of the steam engine catalyzed hundreds of years of the conflict between scientific method and mysticism, logic and superstition, rationality and ignorance, technology and the forever ineffective magic, or at least that was what was thought before an event that changed everything happened, technology and science finally gave their final blow on the decadent feudalism remains in the world, or in most of them.
The previously developed basis of the "bourgeoisie" now had at their hands a technology which would allow them to enrich and accumulate wealth at never seen before levels, furthering even more the gap of injustice and oppression between them and the proletariat. Children, women and men work at inhuman conditions in filth and polluted factories at shifts of more than twenty-four hours. Countless have died from the most brutal exploitation of man by man in what was the apogee of capitalism: the dawn of the industrial age. But human beings were not mere animals to be exploited. In fact even irrational animals struggled against attempts to exploit and dominate them. Soon the first signs of resistance came, Luddites preceded the appearance of the first Unions and eventually the Communist Manifesto came. France, the basis of the bourgeois French Revolution would see a new revolution, a true people's revolution that is honored continually by Soviet Steam: the Paris Commune.
Unfortunately the people's struggle was brutally smashed by the oppression of the "capitalist pigs" and its military lackeys and the Commune was very short lived, but it "proved that socialism was not a dream: It is a reality". A few years later, perhaps as a sort of revolutionary spring. The First Russian Revolution have successfully overthrown the reactionary and outdated Tzar's monarchy which still clang to rotting feudal system vestiges, replacing it with a government system which is completely unique, a combination of meritocratically selected autocrats for 4 years mandates with sortition democracy of randomly selected rulers from the most capable among the people. It was a long way since then and much have changed. The white army has successfully seceded Novaya Russia from the Soviet, and other, more urgent problems have arose... Nobody can remember, or could remember properly the most strange anomalous event that happened in that night, 6th of June of 1879. There was no visible immediate effects of it for those who were already asleep, but those who were still awake witnessed something that would change their lives forever.
According to their reports, the land twisted and their vision became blurry, slight quakes shook the earth and then, in an instant they ended in an entirely foreign land, which although similar, was completely different from anything else they knew in Earth, landlocked cities became harbor cities, places where there were rivers before became dry and many other shifts in the landscaped happened, almost like if they were, in something that challenged all scientific laws, transported to an entire alien continent, and soon they would discover that they were not in Earth anymore, but in a new, strange and different world that seemed to be shaped by beliefs first and by laws of physics second.
Contact was lost with half of the existing cities, and eventually strange happenings began in those new lands they ended at. People started to disappear misteriously, strange sightings were claimed to be seen of "ghosts" and "spirits" and the Communist Party became enraged by such claims. A full investigation has begun, and it would not take too much time to discover that they were being stalked by all sorts of magical beings that they thought to be mere inventions of their forgotten Slavic mythology... Baba Yagas were the most proeminent of them and infamous for luring children out of their homes at night, and assault teams soon gave the first hints that soon science and magic would become antagonistic expressions of power from opposing ideologies and beings. Not only that, but as recoinassance continued further, it was discovered that a part of Novaya Russia also ended in that strange world, and that two other nations did exist... a reactionary monarchy and a reactionary theocracy which apparently were still at the early Renaissance or late Middle Ages regarding technological development, having only primitive gunpowder weapons like muskets and arquebuses and still clinging to full plate mails, swords, crossbows and alike.
The first encounter between Soviet Steam and these two civilizations happened as the truce with Novaya Russia became more uneasy. And they were definitively not interested in peace when they ruthlessly sent an invasion against Soviet Steam borders with a very strange, lawless territory which would be known as the Badlands. Although the first waves of anachronic knights, arquebusiers, musketeers and plate mail warriors were massacred by the sheer power of the automatic gatling gun, soon the greatest challenge in the battlefield would occur when witches and wizards were deployed in that incursion against the Soviet and the previous advantage of technological superiority became even when powerful wills capable of challenging and manipulating the laws of nature came against them. One by one, cities where overwhelmed by the sheer power of magic.
Everything was about to be lost, when a genial engineer named Yevgeni Lenin Zakharov have built the machines that would change forever the military doctrine of Soviet Steam: The Automaton (http://www.crabfu.com/steamtoys/info_faq/steampunk_robot.jpg). A powerful, autonomous three to five meters tall humanoid, or sometimes just legged, machine capable of wreaking havoc and breaking the enemy lines with its 5 to 15-pounder revolver cannons; the Steam Tank (http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/ww1/images/3g11079.jpg), a motorized, lightweight treaded machine of war capable of carrying a significant quantity of naval guns and gatling guns inside its belly and of breaking enemy forces with the same disposition of an automaton, but at a much higher cost-efficiency. Although slower than a well trained horse on its fullest speed, the steam tank offers unparalleled assault capabilities and have shaped forever the battlefield, and that can be used as basis for other sorts of steam combat vehicles as well... and the Combat Airships (http://images.elfwood.com/art/s/d/sdismukes/airship_sunset.jpg), lighter-than-air and also helix and steam powered flying titans capable of giving air support and aerial reconaissance to ground forces, which gave to Soviet Steam a new, never before tried field except for a try of Napoleon to use balloons for such role.
With these technologies, the tide of battle was turned again in favor of Soviet Steam as now the powerful witches were no match to the firepower of automatons, airships and steam tanks which roamed and destroyed, and eventually the war stalled due to the massive dimensions of the disputed continent, coupled with the ever-important need of logistics support that no magic or existing technology could remove in a blink. After tense years the conflict ended in a cease-fire and uneasy truce, and with the less than willing alliance with Novaya Russia to counter together the threat of the brutal and savage Yaga Kingdom to the northwest, rumored to be a place where all firstborns are sacrificed in a gruesome and painful way to ancient gods or spirits, and of the outdated and hypocritical holier-than-thou Theocracy of Perun to the southwest.
Since then low intensity conflicts continue among these two "alliances" of respectively magically and technologically inclined civilizations. And now they war, rather than in their own territories, in a stateless buffer territory known as the Badlands, which is, too conveniently, rich in both coal and in strange ores that seem to amplify magic, the sort of location that every nation in that huge pangea would like to have as its holding. Hundreds die every year in a bloody battlefield as those lands became more and more scorched by magics and explosives, trenches dug deep within the bowels of Earth, serving as host for all sorts of diseases into a living hell of an endless low intensity war which might soon become full-scale again.
And eventually new, previously unknown magical abominations were drawn by the bloodbath of the battlefield, among them the mythological vampires, while legends about a perfectly immortal wizard who kidnaps young women called Kashchey the Deathless and many others pierced through the skepticism of Soviet Steam's people and soon became widely accepted and believed, despite several failed attempts to cover up the existence of magic, due to a primal fear that it would draw Soviet Steam people to practice it. This fear was consolidated when a group of ten women were caught practicing witchcraft and summarily executed. In face of the continual threat of magic, a secret police tasked with the investigation of the supernatural and with the hunt of witches and traitors among Soviet Steam people was created by the now dictator Zakharov.
Even proeminent Party members were lured by the powers of this magic, and an alarmingly slow but continual increase in the number of caught magicians became a critical worry, something had to be done soon or magic would corrupt their socialist ideal. Some people were apparently born more "gifted" than others regarding the innate capability of using one's will to create magic, and as a privilege, should it become widespread the feared consequence would be the separation between the "haves" and "have-nots" of magic and subsequent return to a capitalist economy... or worse. The solution was more and more brutality, and soon the practice of torture against witchcraft was authorized to the point it was, ironically, in no way different from the Inquisition practices from the Dark Ages.
These events brought Soviet Steam it is today: an authoritarian but willing bastion of steam-powered technology much beyond that existing in its contemporary Earth, and of socialism in a world dominated by magic, privilege and reactionary thought... a nation which hates the mostly dark and nightmarish nature of magic on all its forms with a fanatical and ideological passion, comparing the magicians of this strange world with the clergy or with the bourgeois of Earth, allied in a less than willing way with a capitalistic but pro-science nation in mutual defense against the magical reactionary forces. A nation struggling in a quasi-eternal war for the coal and mineral riches of the Badlands, facing magical beasts with steam power and electricity, a nation which north borders a lifeless and riches-less Wasteland which is assumed to be the result of a much more brutal war from the past in such world. Such is the nature and past of the Socialist Republic of Soviet Steam... a nation in eternal war against supernatural forces.
Geography
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/8536/map5rp1.png
Map for Steampunk + Fantasy version, PT or Steampunk only is located in the RL Russia instead
Territory
At 9 million square kilometers, the Socialist Republic of Soviet Steam is the largest nation of the massive Pangea it is located at. From the strange world where such continent is located, due to the knowledge of climate being hotter to the south, from the use of compasses and from the way water rotates in counter-clockwise whirls when falling into sinks, it was concluded that such continent is located at the northern hemisphere. Bathed by both the Vostok and Sirkorsky Oceans, it is bordered by the New Urals to the west, where it shares its southernmost border with Novaya Russia, and further through northwest, an stateless no man's land known as the Badlands is located, characterized as a landscape of scorched earth and man-made trenches, while to the north, a massive arctic desert, known for harboring no form of life, and from where nobody who dared to go into came back, called the Wastelands, is theorized to contain massive amounts of poisonous substances on its surface, claimed to be the sequels of a possible war that happened a long time ago there, which are kept from reaching Soviet Steam through airborne means by the northern Garvosk Hills. Coupled, these two stateless territories sum an extent much larger than that of any existing nation in Pangea.
Soviet Steam: 9 million sq. km
Novaya Russia: 2.5 million sq. km
Theocracy of Perun: 3.4 million sq. km
Yaga Kingdom: 2.72 million sq. km
No man’s land: 14.5 million sq. km
Pangea(Entire Continent): 32 million sq. km
Rivia 70,000 sq km.
Buyan Island: 120,000 sq km.
Environment
The weather in Soviet Steam ranges from arctic to subtropical, including a few stances of Mediterranean climate, with varying degrees of humidity. Deserts and tundra do exist, and a diverse plant life is known, with, inspired by the pioneer works of men like Charles Darwin, more than 900 species catalogued. The most common occurrence is that of temperate forests, however, reckless human expansion and urban growth are slowly deforesting Soviet Steam territory and putting many species at the risk of extinction, while the smog from the factories and steam powerplants has become a known feature, most intact locations are only found near the borders to the west. Average temperature is 16 degrees Celsius and average humidity level is 15%. Due to the strong east-west winds caught by the New Urals, the eastern valley, in the borders of Soviet Steam, contains some fertile climate for agriculture characterized by a more common occurrence of rain than in other regions, specially in the subtropical southernmost area which also hosts the only few beaches of Soviet Steam, where all the hard-working comrades of the Soviets can enjoy their deserved vacations.
In the Pangea section controlled by the Soviet, the wolf is the most predominantly found animal, followed by deers, bears and other animals known for inhabiting temperate and arctic climates, including to the extreme north a small population of polar bears, which is diminishing due to their skins being sought for fur coats to endure the harsh winters by the population. There are 150 known mammals, more than 200 species of birds, 100 reptile and amphibian and a countless quantity of insects known by biologists.
Economy
The Socialist Republic of Soviet Steam is organized under a command economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_economy) controlled by the Communist Party, managed by the Parintern, or Committee of Steam, which is a singular, heavily branched and decentralized organization composed by Marxist economists and specialists, divided at national, regional and municipal levels, from which each have a significant degree of autonomy, these specialists are chosen through sortition. Its economy is sustained by abundant coal reserves, and characterized by the latest developments of the Industrial Revolution, taken from the bourgeois hands to benefit the people: the recent expansion of electric energy into national infrastructure and by revolutionary developments of engineering, particularly in the vein of new steam compression methods and high-efficiency boilers for steam-propelled machines. Calculated in the latest four-year plan census, the estimated gross domestic product of Soviet Steam is of about 9.320 trillions of United States dollars, which is also the largest GDP of Pangea, something explainable by the level of technological backwardness of some of its neighbors, considering that it's for now the only known continent, although expeditions with oceanic ironclads, airships and steam-powered ships are being planned to map the entire planet once other more pressing issues are solved. It is responsible for 40% of the entire estimated continental GDP. It ranks as the second from the continent in nominal GDP per capita, at US$17,550, something which is in certain ways irrelevant due to how its society does not operate on traditional monetary values, for regarding "purchasing power parity", it stands as the first in the continent with an estimate of US$ 35,000. Less than willing, the Soviet Steam is a common importer of mostly agricultural goods from Novaya Russia due to its lack of fertile soil, while exporting to them a significant quantity of steam-powered technology and expertise, with electricity as a second product. There is no private sector, logically, with the government controlling 100% of the economy with no exception. The economy is obviously industrial, with 55% of its GDP coming from heavy industry. The prioritized industrial sector by the government is that of Arms Industry as of now, due to the imminent war with Yaga and Perun, with electricity, transports and logistics industries coming as secondary priorities. A hefty 20% of its GDP is dedicated purely for education, research and development. It's the largest productor and consumer of coal and electric energy from the continent, as well of saltpeter, charcoal and sulphur, in the entire continent. Agriculture, organized into more decentralized collective soviets of peasants for both subsistence and supplying the nation to the best possible, which are usually only eventually supervised by the central government, makes about 4% of its GDP, being known for the production of olive oil in some of the southernmost regions, and for the distillation of alcoholic beverages led by Vodka. Most common crops are rice, nuts and wheat.
The increasing complexity of its growth is slowly demonstrating the inefficiency of a central planning authority. Its top-down chain of communication has been blamed for the relative lack of further economic prosperity, and for the disaster of the town of Provost, which, lacking self-sufficiency, collapsed from lack of basic supplies, where many of those who did not left ended dying of starvation until its population became small enough to achieve sustainability, following a bureaucratic dispute between two economists on how much to allocate to it to stimulate its people to be more enthusiast about work and to reward their exceptional productivity. Following this incident a massive reformulation known as the "Soviet Basis Plan", which also included significant political changes was implemented, effectively giving full autonomy to individual municipal soviets to manage most of their own economies and also participate directly into the national planning, while fully removing government controls over collective agriculture as a sign of trust. Its goal was to create a more decentralized state control of the economy in the hopes of correcting the inefficiencies and the erroneous measures taken from central control, and has brought much better results since then.