A Light in the Darkness: The Slavic Empire

What is the purpose of the autocracy? To answer that question we need to discuss the nature of humankind. Humans are base, corrupt and but for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ dammed to the everlasting fire. Humans are weak, and in this time of ending they need all the help they can get to achieve salvation. And we shall take all necessary steps to ensure that this comes to pass. We shall beat them, we shall shackle them in chains, we shall starve them and worship with them until they repent of all their sins and embrace the one true God. That is the purpose of the Autocracy.

Glory to the Tsar.

It is an empire with no name, or a thousand names; it depends upon whom you ask. Some call it the Dominium Mundi, the universal monarchy, the empire of east and west reunited, the empire of the three Romes, the last empire, the holy roman empire, the second kingdom, the eurasian empire, the Romanov autocracy, united christendom, the Slavic imperium, the empire of the white tsar, the dominion of the little father, the empire of all the Russias. Russia. To its inhabitants it is simply the Glorious Empire, Slavanyy Imperiya, first chosen of the Christ himself and the rightful ruler of the world. The most heavily populated and one of the most technologically advanced state on planet, the vast legions of the White Tsarina fight abominations, infidels and machines to establish the kingdom of god across the entire globe. From the five golden towers of Holy Mother Moscow to the ramshackle redoubts of Novya Archangel and Jerusalem, the writ of the Tsars is law across a vast area of the tortured globe. Many contemporary observers at the dawn of the Golden Age of Progress thought that the ramshackle Tsarist empire would soon collapse, the victim of some inevitable movement of history. The Romanov autocracy has confounded these predictions, maintaing itself for over a thousand years of imperial domination. The Tsarist Empire was isolationist for much of the Halcyon Days, not involving itself in the global dance of power between London, Paris, Berlin and Washington except where it could gain ground in its Asiatic and Balkan fringes. Technological advance was kept strictly under government control, with all drachenflieger and other forms of flying machine personal property of the Tsar, only lending them to his troops, nobles and State-run commerce companies. These forces helped the autocracy challenge, defeat, and break the revolutionary movement. The Baku uprising was smashed by the air-forces of the Autocracy. Political opponents were exiled to remote villages in Siberia. For the two centuries of the Halcyon age Russia slowly expanded and modernised. The scramble for China saw Sinkang, Mongolia, Korea and Manchuria brought under St Petersburg’s rule. Rumania, Bulgaria and Serbia were conquered from the Ottomans in the early 20th century, Kaiser Rudolf of Austria being distracted by the reforms which transformed the Dual-Monarchy into the federal Danubian Empire. Later wars saw Persia, Constantinople and yet more of China brought under Romanov rule. Soldiers from the borderlands would be used to suppress unrest in Russia proper, just as Russians were used to keep the periphery under control. The Tsardom was neutral in the Great European War, preventing the complete destruction of the empire (although a majority of the Tsar’s subjects still died in the ensuing eternal night).

The actions taken by the Russian government following the Last Day remains the subject of morbid recollection by autocrats and generals who fear for their souls. Choices had to be made, for although Russia had been spared to horror of the Great European War the redoubts could only shelter a fraction of the empire’s populace. The imperial bureaucracy ground into action, making choices who would live, and who would be left to die under the cold uncaring stars. Tsar Nicholas IV went mad with grief and guilt, his conscience unable to bear the orders he had given. He died of a stroke in his private chapel after days of prayer without sleep, food or water. Grief. All consuming grief, fear and regret. Words unsaid, deeds undone, work uncompleted. This was the legacy of the fall of night and the death of the old world in ice and endless darkness. Every surviving subject of the autocracy had lost someone, knew someone who had been left beyond the doors of steel to die in the snow. In a nation as fanatically devout as Russia the meaning of these events was clear. This was the end of days, and the last judgement was at hand. Following the fall of night the autocracy experienced an upsurge in popular millenarian and apocalyptic orthodoxy, which threatened to destabilise the entire state. All that saved the Romanoff dynasty was the division of the theocrats into several competing groups. The most radical were the ’Dugashvillniki’ (named after Josef Dugashvilli, a prominent 20th century cleric ultimately exiled to Siberia for heresy) demanded the implementation of a theocratic government, the redistribution of property, and the extermination of all abhumans within the empire. While initially popular this group was ultimately outmanoeuvred by the moderate (and less heretical) factions, whom the autocracy compromised with, allowing to implement their various reforms and programmes within the hierarchy the church, provided they continue to accept that church’s ceasaropapist foundation.

Over four centuries later, the empire remains theocratic, militaristic, autocratic and expansionist; bent upon placing the entire world under a single universal monarchy. This mission is so foundational that the empire does not even have any formal diplomatic relations with any other human state.The official line is that, since by rights the Tsar rules the world, that any state which refuses to acknowledge imperial sovereignty is guilty of treason and rebellion, and cannot be negotiated with on an equal level. The Slavic Empire has no coalition of allies like the Utopian States’ ‘Alliance for the implementation of the new world order’ and fights its wars alone. Its vast size and industrial capacity means that it’s perfectly capable of this, despite the vast profusion of threats surrounding them. Barbarians, rival redoubt states and monstrosities alike find their works torn down and smashed under vast hosts of jackbooted soldiers, each man chanting ‘Slava! Slava!’ The Tsarists, while not totalitarian like the majority of human polities, remain extremely involved in the life of every imperial subject. The gendarmes aid the church-run morality police in bringing in heretics, sinners and blasphemers, the imperial civil service keeps records on every imperial subject to help bring in the conscription quotas, and it is known by all that the Okhrana is always watching (this is more rumour than actual fact, but the generalised terror this impression creates does more than a thousand informers). The Empire has several military and paramilitary organisations, all answering back to the imperial throne. The largest of these is the Imperial Army, the second largest military organisation in the world (after the Collective’s army). The Imperial Navy is a secondary institution, in receipt of less attention and resources than its terrestrial rival. Women are not conscripted into the Navy or the Army, but are allowed to volunteer for the Battalions of Death. Equipped to the same standards of the army, but under considerably stricter religious law, as they are technically a quasi-religious order, they are used as shock troops of the autocracy, feared worldwide for their fanatical devotion to the tsarist state. The Gendarmes are responsible for maintaining law and order, which they do with the aid of tear gas and truncheons

The Cossacks and the Jews occupy a special place within the empire, as they are forbidden from dwelling within the redoubts by law. The purpose of the Cossacks is to patrol the wastes, hunting down lone monstrosities and providing advanced warning of larger groups, which will be dealt with by the Imperial Army or the Battalions of Death. In return for this dangerous service the Cossack hosts are given a wide degree of self-government and independence, although they are banned from possessing heavy armour in case this independence breeds rebellion against the Tsar. The Jews are a slightly different case, historically the subject to progroms and other forms of organised violence within the empire, anti-semitism is still common (although officially discouraged) among the rest of the Imperial population (abhumans, themselves the recipients of organised discrimination, are rather prone to picking on Jews). During the fall of night the Imperial government kept much of its Jewish population alive (if in horrible conditions in camps outside the redoubts) in order to fulfil an ancient biblical prophesy, that the Jews would convert to Christianity at the second coming of Christ. In the meantime they serve as an caste of wasteland explorers similar to the Cossacks, although with a greater focus on recovering anomalous artefacts and scouting out mineral deposits for mining. Jews and Cossacks have a fierce rivalry, with skirmishes between the two groups being common (although joint ventures are also quite frequent). Unlike most human polities the empire does tolerate the existence of abhuman populations under its control. This does not mean that abhumans are popular, or treated equally by the government, of course. Abhumans are dived into three different classifications. The ‘Abhorred’ are species of abhumans which are to be killed on sight, judged irrecoverably monstrous they are be destroyed without hesitation by any loyal subject of the autocracy. The ‘Chained’ are the species the Imperial government is prepared to tolerate, the majority of their population being forced to live in slums and ghettos, and their movements heavily restricted. Finally there are the ‘Sanctioned’, made up of members of the same species as the chained, the sanctioned have sworn oaths declaring their intention to uphold ‘decent, seemly behaviour’ and have abandoned their prior culture. They nominally have the same rights as any other Imperial subject, but are also required to carry around their identity papers at all times, and typically are forced to work in jobs where their natural skills will be useful to the government.  

The Romanov State is obsessed with the apocalypse, which they believe began with the fall of night and is continuing in the present day. The immanency of the last judgement has raised religious feeling in the empire to a hysterical ferocity. The desire to be on the side of right is so vitriolic that the Slavic Empire makes some decisions which, unless you thought that the world was ending, would seem rather insane. The autocracy, despite its technological edge over much of the rest of mankind, refuses to use any technology which makes use of the hideous mathematics, claiming that they are the tools of the devil. The tsarists have no energy weapons, nor the rare and elusive technology known as ‘shields’. Instead they put their faith in conventional technology, gunpowder, armour and galvanic-magnetic weapons. The government also expends a considerable amount of energy on imposing its grim interpretation of morality upon its populace, in an effort to ensure that as many of the tsar’s subjects as possible are saved. This obsession is the legacy of the terrible guilt that stems from the fall of night, when those very subjects were left starving and screaming for help outside doors of steel and concrete, and the government did not answer. Centuries of emperors have made the same decree, the same oath upon their assumption of the autocracy.

Never again.