Morrdh Factbook
OOC: This is a rough draft and I'll probably edit it following feedback and as more information is added.
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The Unified Republic of Morrdh
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y81/mad_ruskkie/Stuff/albion.jpg
History
Pre-1900
Survivng records say that the island of Morrdh was once a province of the now defunct Ruskkie Empire. The island was believed to have been conquered by the Ruskkies at some point during the Middle Ages.
By the end of the 19th Century Morrdh had been swept up by the Industrial Revolution, its cities transformed and was on its way to becoming a regional power. The post of Lord Governor of Morrdh was created in 1814 and by 1837 the Morridane Militia was granted its own Command but was still answerable to the Ruskkie High Command. From 1854 to 1865 Morridane Militia units fought alongside the Ruskkie Imperial Army during the Great Steam War against the Holy Artian Empire, though despite being selected for "duties unsuitable even for penal corps" Morridane troops were awarded a great many medals and honors. By the war's end Morridane units were regarded as some of the most elite that the Ruskkie Imperial Army had to offer.
Then eventually in 1879 Home Rule was officially granted by the Imperial Order of Tzar Nikola Serlov VI, a new age dawned for Morrdh.
1900-1905
At the turn of the century Morrdh was a thriving province, regarded as one of the major trade routes of the Ruskkie Empire. Industry was booming and the Morridane Militia had earned its reputation as an elite Imperial force.
It was also a step away from independance, something which worried many in the Ruskkie Imperial court.
In 1901 a group of Ruskkie Princes set about gaining control of the province and replacing the Lord Governor with their own puppet. Once their man was in power they set about taking over a number of businesses and industries whilst replacing the Morridane Militia with their own troops. Things came to head in 1902 when famine struck the province as corps failed resulting in food riots a few months later which were brutally put down. 1903 dawned with the threat of civil war as the Tzar repelled the Morrdh Home Rule Act of 1879 and ordered the Imperial Army mobilized.
Thus began the Ruskkie Empire's decline into total collapse.
Post-1905
The advances of the previous century and barely two years worth of civil unrest came to a halt with the outbreak of the Plague in the winter of 1905.
Without warning, the dead began to rise and feed on the flesh of the living. The effects of the Plague can scarcely be overstated; overnight the cities of the Ruskkie Empire were overrun and survivial became the primary occupation. The very natures of life and death were utterly and irrevocably altered the evening of 9th December 1905.
(continued)
Millions perished in the nightmare that followed as cities and towns fell to the walking dead. Within a few hours of its initial appearances, the infection had spread far beyond the possibility of containment. Confused and stricken by panic, the people of the time failed to take the appropriate sanitary measures, and the infection was permitted to spread virtually unimpeded through that critial period. The cities bore the brunt of the contagion: aided by crowding and the disastrous consequences of panic in the enclosed streets and buildings, the infection spread rapidly , closing off any possibility of rescue or escape for teh city dwellers. On the third day after the onset of the infection, the cities were declared to be beyond reclamation. The military units deployed in response discharged a massive array of incendiaries into the centres of infected areas, beginning the event still known today as the Burning.
In Morrdh and elewhere in the Ruskkie Empire, the cities were devasted by conventional weapons and ravaged by the fire raging uncontrolled. Particularly hard hit in Morrdh were the industrial cities that dominated the island. Overcrowded with the poor working class, these cities were transformed into death traps as animates stormed through the streets, devouring all living flesh in their path. The Imperial Navy blasted much of Saltaire to the ground in an attempt to destroy the heavy concentration of animates within the city before they could escape into the surrounding country side.
Civilian survivors gathered in overcrowded refugee camps that offered some solace from the unmitigated bloodshed. There was no way to make preparations for the millions made homeless by the Plague. Mass starvation and secondary epidemics brought about by crowding began to take their toll on the camps. Within many of these early encampments, which were crippled by poor hygiene and lack of medicine, deaths from natural causes such as disease and starvation occured at an alarming rate. It was quickly discovered that these dead, though their extinguishment was due to natural causes, would rise of their own accord as one of the animated dead even though they had no known exposure to the infection. These were as any other animate corpse - fearsome, insensate, and hungry - and many times these unforseen resurrections took heavy tolls within the barricades of these early compounds. Disbelieving friends and family would then fall prey to the same panic that had felled teh cities. Reclamation teams of later years were to find the ruins of many such communities, where only a few artefacts and desperate letters to the future remained to tell the story of their fall.
1906-Onwards
At the beginning of 1906 the Tzar ordered all Imperial units to return to the mainland to deal with the animate threat that had begun to overwhelm the Empire, leaving the by now worn out Morridane Militia units to defend the remaining Morridane people.
This was the last time that anyone heard from the Ruskkie Empire.
Alone and cut off from help the Morridane people squared their shoulders and set about shoring up the few fortified settlements that now existed. Within a few years contact and irregular trade began between these settlements as the Morridane Parliament-in-exile, which had sought refuge in Fort Ragnar, began to reform the Militia out of the surviving units. In 1908 the Morridane Reclamation forces began to make their first forays into what is now dudded the Wastes, where they discoevered a new threat.
The land itself seemed to suffer from the tide of death that was sweeping the lands. Large areas of formerly fertile, arable land began to wither and change. The plant life in these regions began to alter. Livestock in these blasted lands, gone feral with the human abandonment of the countryside, began to die or change. Vast regions of farmland fell to this inexplicable blight, bringing famine to an already desperate people.
Faced with the spreading blight and the continued threat of reanimation, the survivors turned inward, struggling to live. They became insular, building their walls higher and stronger against the things that moved through the lands outside. Engineers worked tirelessly, devising new and more perfect ways of exterminating the monsters of this strange and terrifying new age. Only the Reclamation forces, few though they were at this time, ventured outside the protective walls to bring back reports of the nation's decline.
By 1914, the Morridane people had begun to rebuild. In this year, the first major organized efforts to clear the countryside of animates began. The brains of the freshly dead were destroyed and their bodies burned on great funeral pryes before they could rise. The remains were buried in mass graves across the countryside. The first settlements, originally little more than reinforced encampments, grew into new cities. Though the old, adbandoned ruins had been indefensible death traps, easily overrun by the hungry dead, these new cities were built behind towering walls guarded by armies of men. Their streets were laid out on simple grids with narrow streets and alleys. These places were built to last.
The Plague continued to take its toll on human life, but the survivors had learned to preserve themselves against the threat of reanimation. The animate dead remained a constant threat but could be held in check with the proper precautions, especially within the fortications. Only a fractiom of the unbitten dead would rise - though, in some areas, as many as one in three - but most of these were burned.
Though sheer perseverance and great cost of life, the countryside was painstakingly cleared of the ambulatory dead. Large animate concentrations were located and destroyed with extreme prejudice. Despite these accomplishments, the clearing of teh countryside was ultimately in vain, though it allowed reclamation efforts to centre on cities during the pivotal years of the Reclamation. Inevitably, any attempt to establish new settlements, such as farming communities, in the Wastelands has been doomed to failure, rsulting in the settlers adding to the population of animates stalking the Wastes.
By 1927, most of the countryside was clear of the animate dead and the survivors turned their attention to the cities still overrun with zombies. These cities terrifically dangerous, often still smouldering from the fires that spread during the Burning Days of the Plague Years. Though the cost in human life was astronomical, Morridane pride demanded the liberation of these cities. Those that fought to free them not only faced the dead hungry for their flesh but also endured crumbling ruins lacking electrical power or running water. Many times even after the last of the zombies had been put to rest in a given area, a military casualty or one of the settlers' dead would spontaneously rise, initiating a new wave of contagion and forcing the whole process to start from the beginning.
Such was the case when Ludford was finally liberated in 1931. After months of fighting house to house to clear the city of the walking dead, a soldier returned to his unit and failed to mention a bite on his left arm. By the time the first work crew arrived to commence restoration efforts a week later, the Plague had decimated the military presence of the city. The events of 1931 marked a major failing in the Morridane Militia's medical examination process, an event that was thankfully seldom repeated. It would be another fifteen years before Ludford would finally be clear of major animate incursions once and for all.
this is pretty good so far. I presume you're going to go up to present date.
Yes I am planning to cover up to the present day, which is about another 70 odd years left to cover of Morrdh's history.
I had rather a brief history for my nation. Lynion is just an exiled alien race.
The Reclamation
The Reclamation truly began with the passage of the Reclamation Act of 1933. The Act outlined a comprehensive, systematic plan to retake those settlements that had fallen to the animates. It marked a major turning point for the Morridane people. This was an era of hope in which ordinary men and women valiantly struggled to take back their world. A renewed nationalism swept Morrdh.
The process of reclamation is simple and is still used today when a settlement or borough succumbs to an outbreak of the Plague. Reclamation teams enter the occupied area and clear it of animates through any means necessary. Once enough of the city has been secured to begin reconstruction efforts, civilian construction teams move in to start rebuilding. The military defends these sites and uses them as forward bases to extend their control over the region. As more of the city is cleansed, the barricades are extended and more of the city can be rebuilt. During the first step of reclamation, temporary walls are put in position to seal off the perimeter from zombie attacks. Debris is then cleared inside the secured area so that construction can begin. The process of rebuilding often takes decades to complete, as the cities must not only be restored but also thoroughly fortified.
Where encampments could be found within cities, the first priority of the reclamation teams was to reintegrate those encampments and use these facilities as a jumping-off point for full-fledged reclamation efforts. Despite the offers of military support and aid, many of these pocket communities founded by the labouring class were dubious of the wisdom of surrendering their autonomy to military authority. Many felt that any government after such a disaster would serve the interests of the aristocrats and the forces of industry, not of the workers. As word of "reintegrated" labour freeholds and the actions used to reintegrate them reached neighbouring settlements, resistance to the military increased. The military began to face two options: destroy the freeholds and their much-needed manpower or pressure the provisional Parliament to work with labour to find a solution. The Committee for Morridane Defense advised Lord Governor William Morris that they could see no option but to deal with labour freeholds; the manpower and facilities were despreately needed, and the military could not face a rebellion in the midst of the Plague. Morris acquiesced, and in 1940 a reformed Labour Representation Committee was formed and given a role in Parliament. This role was confirmed and legitimised by both the Houses of Councillors and Commons in 1943.
Despite the theoretical simplicity involved in reclamation, casualties among military forces were horrendous. The smouldering cities were zombie-infested death traps of unstable architecture and ruined streets. Countless men were lost to the contagion they struggled to contain. As losses mounted, military scientists sought to create alchemically perfected super soldiers, troops immune to the ravages of the Plague who could fight zombies on their own terms. The result of these experiments was the Kurger, a primal brute who was entirely fearless and completely uncontrollable. After some limited initial success, the program was scrapped in 1951 after the monsters turned on their creators and fled into the Wastelands. Even now, the legacy of the Kurgers haunts civilized men, for like the animate, the curse of the Kurger is spread through its infectious bite.
Even as the cities were being reclaimed, a major effort was launched to repair the railways that spanned the nation. The railways were indispensable in rebuilding the blasted cities. In the modern era, railways have become the safest and most realiable mode of transportation across the country. The trains themselves have been reinforced and heavily armoured to ensure that external threats can be kept at bay while they and their cargo speed overland. In addition to safely moving passengersand cargo, trains also provide settlements with a degree of protection. Annually hundreds of shambling zombies are crushed beneath the wheels of trains as they make their ways across the wasteland. After moving through high-risk areas, most trains are quickly washed before the stench of decomposing corpses overwhelms passengers onboard. A number of terminals include water jets that provide this service to passing trains.
The greatest setback to reclaiming Morrdh occured on 13th January 1958, when the de facto capital of Fellig was besieged by thousands of animates outside the city walls. While soldiers would occasionally have to deal with the odd animate or two approaching the fortifications, this was the first major incursion of its kind. Hundreds of zombies penetrated the defences and poured into the city, taking the Morridane Militia completely by surprise. Quick thinking and judicious use of incendiaries kept the attack from being a complete disaster. Three days later, order had been restored ast the cost of some six hundred lives.
The most disturbing part of the attack was its undeniable co-ordination. In the following days, military intelligence gathered eyewitness accounts from survivors who had seen animate hordes on the move as they made their way toward Felling. Groups of slow-moving animates assualted many smaller settlements en route to the city, gathering more zombies in their wake with every attack. Survivors claimed these creatures acted with purpose and did not allow themselves to simply feed on every fallen man. Something was clearly in control of their actions.
Similar attacks have been occasionally reported throughout Morrdh ever since. These attacks always seem to come without warning and are frighteningly organized for creatures thought to lack any intellect. They always start the same way: hordes of animates strike smaller communities to increase their numbers before converging on a major fortification. Generally these attacks are repelled with some loss of life, but in rare instances, they have overwhelmed whole cities. Once the attack begins, the animates attempt to surge over walls or through the gates. Once through the gates, the zombies revert to their natural behaviour.
It would be decades before the discovery of so-called zombie lords, thinking animates with limited control over the more common zombies. At teh time, reports of organized zombies on the move were dismissed; after all, halfway through the Reclamation, who really wanted to consider the possibility of an escalating plague? It was not for another fifty years that the theorists in the Nonhuman Pathology Department at the University of Fellig began to unravek certain horrific, albeit all too likely, explanations for the attack of 1958.
OOC: Map added to the first post. ;)
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The University of Fellig was one of the first of Morrdh's major institutions to be retaken. The libraries of this university, which sustained only minor damage during the Plague Years, became the main resource for the reengineering of Morrdh's cities. The problem of constructing an energy infrastructure that could be extended into the incompletely reclaimed zones and that could withstand the necessary disruptions caused by periodic, large-scale fires was solved by the brilliant implementation of the radiant energy technologies of Nikola Tesla by Prof. Ashley Byrnes, an engineer and survivor of the Plague Years. After reestablishment of communications with the outside world, following the Reclamation of Saltaire, the continuing innovations of Nikola Tesla were incorporated into the developing design of the array. Beginning in Ludford's East End, a series of Tesla towers were constructed for conversion and aetheric transmission of energy obtained from the burning of coal. The network of towers was expanded as the walls of the city crept forward, creating a web of accessible energy. Galvanic weapons and communications devices were developed to make use of the radiant energy, eliminating the need for heavy backup power sources and speeding the clearing of Ludford. Reemerging industry adapted its machinery to make use of this radiant power; the homes and businesses that grew up beneath the walls ran on radiant energy. Today, all of Morrdh's reclaimed cities are powered by massive networks of Tesla towers, radiant energy across a spectrum of wavelengths supplied to every district within the walls of each and every city.
During the latter years of the Reclamation, the population between the expanding walls of the reclaimed cities began to swell. The food provided by the farmlands under the peripheral walls, never substantial since the first days of the Plague, failed a little more every year. The solution came in 1953 from an interdisciplinary team at the University led by botanist Erich Merck and engineer Carol Zimmermann, who designed and put into action the first subterranean single-celled food tanks in Fellig. These tanks were fed with sanitized slurry from the wastewater systems, converting the organic wastes of the city into nutritious, high-protein microbial biomass, which was in turn harvested, sanitized, dried, and processed for consumption.
Originally intended as a supplemental food source, the tanks came to be relied upon as a major source of nutrition as the vitality of the land continued to decline. The poor and working classes in particular came to rely on this single-celled protein food, commonly called "scop", as the prices of farm-raised food climbed out of the reach of the labouring class. Now days, the entire wastewater systems of Morrdh's cities are focused through a massive network of filters and tanks beneath each city, supplying the needs of a vast populace who rarely taste any other food.
Generally tasteless and greasy, scop, often sold in dried cakes or as a ready-made porridge is a staple of the working-class diet. A number of firms make incredible sums of money selling dired and canned scop to the poor. Those who refuse to eat the stuff are forced to either forage for themselves, trap rats, fish the tainted waters of Morrdh's rivers, or live off the scant supplies of pallid fish and shellfish sold by costermongers at market. While scop is unpleasant, it is least less hazardous than most of the other foods available to the Morridane working class.
The varieties of scop organisms have grown over the years as scientists optimised the systems, seeking ways to utilize every scrap of nutritive value that could be obtained from the wastewaters of Morrdh's cities. Several of these species are yeast varieties, fermentative organisms; the output from these harvets is sold, minimally processed, as an alcoholic drink called "slap". The liquid is foul-tasting but nutritive, high in vitamins, and, above all, effective. This liquid is also sold in a distilled and refined form, called "gin", presumably out of habit. Very few in modern day Morrdh can afford the grain-distilled liquors of the previous age.
The scop supply has, in recent years, proven insufficient on seaveral occasions to meet the demends of the growing populace. Nutrient inputs from the failing farmland decrease every year, and the capacities of the nutrient reclamation systems feeding the scop tanks have been pushed to the limit. Projections by government scientists predict even greater shortfalls in the food supply in coming years unless some major innovation is made or some way of increasing the nutrient inputs can be found. Recently, disturbing rumours have begun to circulate that bodies collected by the Morridane Department of Health are being rendred down to base components for the scop tanks and sold back to the public as food. Such ghoulish tales could easily be passed off as idle paranoia if they were not so prevalent. The implications of such an obscenity are so great that the Morridane government has not risked a public denial of the accusation.