((ESR Only)) "To sustain you is no benefit, to kill you is no loss."
Djakarta, Java, The Pyekan-Kuogu
On such a day as this, humid, hotter than Hell and maddeningly still, one of Pyeki's largest cities appears unreal. Though the air could not be felt to move, it could be seen. The city was shimmering, after a fashion. The world is upside down, here.
The gun-and-armour cruiser Pan Jaya sits off shore, glistening in mid twentieth century glory.
The air is broken not by winds but by heat and sheer stench. So many canals sunk by wise white men, grid like and efficient, immediately over-come with sewage and the waterborne diseases that infest the equatorial zone. So much for planning and foresight!
The whole city is rancid. Every third person, near enough, has some chronic illness, but most deal with it. So you have ten bowel movements a day? So what? Everyone's backside is raw! Get back to work!
As waterways meant to ease movement and commerce generate heat through the decay of all that has had the misfortune to slip under their surface, the Emperor, Pan Yoshimura, decrees that the city be saved. And so it shall be. The Emperor, after all, is infallible.
"Filthy island rats!" This the foremost opine of the ship's officers as they over-see public works. Thousands of Javanese are put to work under the Pan Jaya's eight-inch rifles. Filling up canals, laying foundations, tracing out roads, flinging up bridges. Pyeki's economy may be behind, but sheer manpower will catch her up!
Development in Java, however brutally it is carried through, is ordinary in the Empire, as her neighbours will come to learn.
The Pyekan-Kuogu is being hauled to its many feet.
OOC: I'm assuming here your country doesn't have an open-door policy for tourists or...just generally people.
The Indian Confederacy had always wondered about their mysterious neighbours. Many a foreign office meeting had seen them dominate the agenda, mostly through speculation...asking questions like "who is this strange Emperor?", "how do there people remain so locked up?". Indra Patel, despite styling himself as an all knowing Prime Minister, never knew the answer. He was cold about them in his speeches, labelling them "tyrants" and calling them a "threat to South Asia", but yet they had never attacked, never provoked their massive neighbours.
He had of course sent spies, though getting into the core of the country through the dense Burma proved near challenging. He had information on all nations, as they most probably did on him, but this one remained relitively in secret. The spies had brought back something, the few that did return, though the voice of one he will always remember, shocked to the bone upon return he simply whispered "they are a sick nation, a sick race like no other on this earth". Some of their citizens had come to India over the years, though their journeys had mostly all but killed them and the information only reaffirmed the thought that this nation was stuck in an age where illness and slavery tortured the country. The funding towards finding out information of the country decreased since then, Indra had given up much hope on finding more info, though their creaky tanks did not worry him greatly, and he did not desire to know too much more.
Yangon (Rangoon), Pyeki
Observation satellites passing over the reclusive Pyekan Empire have no doubt been paying close attention in recent months to an area near this large city's chief port. Massive human labour has in that time carved out the biggest slip in the Pyekan-Kuogu, and materials have been gathered fit for the construction of a large warship.
Clearly, manpower has continued to prevail over technology in the construction of the vessel itself, which is gradually taking shape. The Empire has apparently been adapting 1930s and '40s technology to cast massive guns, possibly 18.1" rifles, in an attempt to recapture the glory of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Current projections are likely to suggest that the battleship Mekong could be launched for final fittings during this year.
Down at the slip, another political prisoner meets his end, falling from part of the hull into the depths of great armoured beast, to be entombed within its armoured belt along with numerous comrades who have gone a similar way.
The Pyekan Imperial Navy has apparently adopted a Trident, or Big Three plan, under which Mekong will join the heavy cruiser Pan Jaya and the light aircraft carrier Panaku as the trophy pieces of the fleet, which is chiefly comprised of much smaller vessels.
Panaku is widely thought to be too small to meet conventional carrier battle groups on the high seas with an air wing likely to match them, and Pyeki's localised sphere of influence, in which it has territories close to every possible conflict zone, may render the carrier superfluous to requirement in any conflict. Pan Jaya's archaic sensors have already allegedly enabled primitive PIN SSKs to sneak-up on her during exercises and deliver would-be kill shots from point-blank range. But there is little point to questioning the wisdom in this environment of building a battleship during the twenty-first century, or that of a nation developing almost from scratch the facilities to construct and maintain only one such ship.
For, as every Pyekan child knows, Emperor Pan Yoshimura is infallible, and this, clearly, is his decision.
Pyeki is the name given by Pyekan nationalists to a broad geographic area that they consider their homeland. This covers Burma and Thailand principally, though border disputes with Indochina derive from Pyekan claims to parts of Laos and what the Pyekan call Kampuchea.
Beyond Pyeki, the Pyekan people control much territory, namely the islands of Indonesia. This they call the Pyekan Kuogu, or Empire, which they view as the devinely ordaned successor to the Japanese Empire, a civilisation regarded in Pyeki with much the same awe and respect afforded in the west to ancient Rome.
In addition to Indonesia, the whole of the Federated Straits Settlements, India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, and Indochina are all held by the nationalist Pyekanma Doctrine to be rightful components of the Pyekan Kuogu.
The recent coronation of Emperor Pan Yoshimura, son of Pan Yubande, the first Pyekan Emperor, has reinvigorated the Pyekanma Movement. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been invaded, and negotiations initiated with the Indochinese Republic, apparently with a view to recognition for that state in return for border concessions to Pyeki.
Once again, expansion is the name of the game as Nay Pyi Taw joins Yangon in pursuit of the imperial dream. To the world, the question is put: appease, or oppose? The Pyekan legions are mustering...