Many of you probably know a little bit about the history of early modern China—the fall of the Qing dynasty, the civil war, and the foundation of today’s China. Yet there’s more to the story of China’s path to socialism.

Chinese warlords may be a familiar term for some, and for me as well, yet for the longest time I only knew that they existed, not much about who they were, or what they did. A while ago I finally decided to pick up a book written by Lai Xinxia on this period of history. He is a very reliable scholar—after participating in the Chinese revolution he was assigned to sorting the archives of the Beiyang era, and over fifty years gradually improved his draft until publishing the final edition of his book, “History of the Beiyang Warlords”, in 2004. I have made a summary of it here to educate more people, something I have not spent as much time doing as I should have.

First, a definition. The Chinese term for a single warlord group is 系, which can translate to system, line, etc. The generally accepted english translation for this is ‘clique’, which I will use here. The english translations for the clique names seem to be based on location (province names) rather than abbreviations commonly used in Chinese. I will be using the Chinese versions here since I’m too lazy to find the english translations for all of them.

After the opium wars, many Qing officials realized the importance of self-strengthening and creating a modern army. Li Hongzhan, one of the many han officials who rose to prominence in the last years of the Qing empire, created his own army, the Xiangjun, with modern equipment and training methods. Eventually this unit proved instrumental in defeating the Taiping rebellion, and for a time there was hope within the empire that expanding the ‘new army’ would lead to the empire being able to resist foreigners and establish its sovereignty. The Empire also created two foreign affairs departments, Beiyang (north sea) and Nanyang (south sea) respectively. As an important Beiyang civil servant, Li Hongzhang was the forerunner of the powerful warlords who would come to control vast portions of China in the first few decades of the coming century.

Yet without changing society, the new armies soon fell to corruption, and by the time Japan declared the Jiawu war the Beiyang Fleet, a modernized fleet the Qing government had established, was largely corrupted, ineffectual, and quickly defeated by Japan despite strong patriotism and determined resistance by patriotic soldiers and officers alike.

Yuan Shikai was at this time only a minor officer, who at some point was stationed in Korea. Despite a minor incident in which he was reported to the government, many praised his effective training of his own army, with some westerners remarking that China would be saved if they had more units like his. Yet during the invasion of China by the eight powers, instead of going into battle he decided to withdraw to preserve his own strength, with the result that he took almost no losses while his sister units of the new army were completely crushed. After the ordeal, he then escorted Cixi back to the forbidden city, and won the affection of many in government with this action. One thing to note is that in 1895 Yuan Shikai began conducting military drills in Xiaozhan (little station) near Beijing, which many scholars consider to be the beginning of the Beiyang era.

In 1911 the Xinhai revolution erupted and the imperial system which had existed in China for millennia was overthrown. While this was a bourgeoisie revolution, it nonetheless pushed history forward greatly in China. Yet at this point many of the revolutionaries were politically naive, including Sun Zhongshan, the leader of the new Republic of China, and believed that their country could not succeed without existing figures of authority in government. This, combined with Sun’s own lack of political experience, led to the new government electing Yuan Shikai as its first official president. The Tongmenghui, Sun’s revolutionary party, decided to engage in parliamentary politics, and slowly began to lose its revolutionary characteristic.

Yuan was not content with merely being president and being constrained by the majority-tongmenghui (which around this time had rebranded itself as the Guomindang, ‘party of the national people’) parliament. So after a few years of rule and forcing through laws that increasingly gave him power, he finally declared himself emperor of the Chinese Empire and disbanded parliament. Before this, he had also secretly signed a humiliating treaty with Japan to win support secretly in 1915. This will become important later…

Yuan’s move was met with opposition from almost everyone in China, even including monarchists, who wanted the former Qing empire on the throne. His own subjects were also unhappy, as their potential position as Yuan’s successor was now only available to his children. After a few short months Yuan died from sickness, and democracy returned. Yet…

During Yuan’s monarchy, Sun Zhongshan had advocated for a Second Revolution. Working in the south and gathering the support of revolutionaries and local warlords, he managed to establish a southern government. Yet he controlled very few armies himself, with only a few fleets in the navy supporting him. Most of the armies fighting for the southern republic were warlords who only opposed Yuan for their own gain and cared little for progress in China.

In the North, after Yuan’s death splits began to appear in the previously cohesive Beiyang bloc. The Wan clique, led by Duan Qirui, and the Zhi clique, lead by Feng Guozhang. While Duan advocated for using force to unify China and defeat the southern government, Feng wanted a peaceful reunification, more because he was opposed to Duan than any other reason. To resolve their conflict, they appointed a third party, Li Yuanhong to take on the role of the president of China.

At this point, Zhang Xun, a staunch monarchist, led his army into Beijing with the pretext of mediating a negotiation between the Wan and Zhi cliques. Instead, he seized power with his ‘pigtail army’ and promptly reestablished the Qing empire, with the child emperor Puyi (who had been treated well and allowed to stay in the forbidden city by the revolutionaries) as its leader.

Of course this did not last long, with all the Beiyang warlords coming to oppose him. Duan Qirui gave himself the title of creating democarcy three times with his defeating of Zhang Xun, and the Wan clique at this point became the dominant player on the Beiyang stage. Yet the country was still divided into north and south, and tensions between the two cliques were growing more heated by the day.

(part 1 concluded)

In many ways the world of Muzhchina LA Mushina is about domination and subservience, both on a national level and on a gender level. But what I haven't talked about a lot here is the interpersonal level and the lives of those who inhabit this world.

Helene Batova is a slightly above average Burgunian who suffers under their political system. She's obviously very proud, but also cold to those around her. She thinks of herself as very mature yet often acts rashly, like when Pierre was grating on her with his enthusiasm for aviation. Deep down she did not really believe Andre's accusations against him, yet she cut off all contacts with him anyways. As she matures she constantly believes herself to have finally become a responsible adult, yet constantly learns that she's still far from grown.

In what has to be one of the least kinky aspects of MLM she eventually keeps Andre, now her lover, on a leash, as if to secure her control over him. She is only fooling herself and doing a poor job of it; Andre's power over her and the abuse he inflicts gradually breaks her in the years following her disconnection with Pierre. She could move to the Orenland occupation areas to find a life where she would be respected for her sex, yet her blind nationalism without being able to see through class relations chains her to Burgune. Even so she eventually manages to build her prototype of an aircraft, but ends up crushing both of her legs on her test flight due to sabotage that was aimed at Pierre, no less. Even when he takes care of her during her recovery, she can't find it within herself to love him because of what she's driven between them herself.

In contrast Zhigao is a much happier woman, from Xibei, which is basically China. While her entire family is dead, and she's heavily injured when she barely escapes to Burgune with the skin on her back, she's happy. According to her philosophy, as long as she's done the best she could, then there's no reason for her to lament her fate. And she still has plenty of loved ones to cling to: Fang Zheng (her boyfriend, still in Xibei and alive due to smoothened relations between the NPA and monarchy), and Pierre as well as his friends. Of course, she's a very sloppy person in her daily life, though determined (seen through the handkerchief she sewed with Zheng's name that Pierre finds while she's semi-conscious off the train), and she semi-secretly desires to be taken care of. And the young men and women she organizes with are truly her friends who would (and did, when she first was ordered to escape to Burgune due to her age) die for her, while many of Helene's 'friends' are quick to abandon her, if not outright manipulative.

At least during the first half of MLM, the culture within the NPA is much more open, with outright revolutionary factors flourishing, while Burgune is a typical conservative monarchy with a heavily oppressive society, weak to outsiders but harsh to its own citizens. Just through these two women alone, it's easy to see how big of an influence where you've grown affects the characters.

This one takes place in Burgune, which I don't think I've written about here, but you'll enjoy the expanded lore and story (I hope) anyways.

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4163135

I've tried many websites to download this but they all don't work. If it's possible, could somebody with HOI4 on steam download it and send the file to me? Thanks.

Sorry if this isn't allowed or anything, I'll delete this if that's the case.

Let's face it: ppb is stupid and no longer funny. All people are gonna do when they see it is shake their heads and think we're idiots clinging to a dead meme nobody ever thought was funny. They're not gonna magically become tankies because they saw an emoji of a fucking pig pooping on its testicles.

Know what's really devastating? What'll really throw them for a loop and send them crying back to their fascist hidey-holes? Skibidi fucking toilet, that's what. Imagine. We could be called 'hexskibidi' and our logo would be like the hexagonal bear but with skibidi toilet. We could just call everybody 'fellow ohio skibidi sigma rizzlers' and all the taglines could be changed to just 'SKIBIDI SKIBIDI SKIBIDI SKIBIDI' repeated over and over again like a trot insisting that THIS issue is totally gonna bring about the world revolution!

Then we could post pigskibidiballs and all the libs will be devastated, they'll cry and scream and not be very sigma when they see some five year old watching skibidi toilet on their ipad like they're being mind controlled by aliens and scream "NOOO SKIBIDI TOILET IS TANKIE!1!1!1!!!!1111!!!111" And then the republican campaign would be Donald Trump promising to bomb skibidi toilet to own the woke homosexual communists.

This is what we could have. This is what we're missing out on.

Pavel Arkhangelsky was born on February 13, 2006 in a hospital somewhere in Japan. His parents lived in the Soviet Union before its collapse. Afterwards, they moved to Japan due to programs that paid relatively well for their technical expertise in engineering. He was enrolled in a local high school, where he met Sayori, who was somewhat sympathetic to his cause. Indoctrination was wasted on him as he had learned Soviet patriotism from his parents from a young age.

Despite his best efforts, Pavel was never more than an average student, in part due to his alienation from his classmates who were complete slaves to capitalist ideology. For his first year, Sayori was his only friend. Though he attempted to join a socialist club, it was full of demsocs and he left angrily.

The following year he was invited by Sayori into the newly-formed literature club, which, under his guidance, became a sort of hub for socialist activities. This culminated in his invitation to Hope's Peak Academy as the Ultimate Marxist Leninist.

Unaware of what was going on at the time, he was thrust into the Killing Game. Though thrown off his footing at first, he was able to gain the trust of the remaining students and used his limited knowledge to construct simple devices such as molotovs and even a rudimentary cannon. Eventually, he was able to escape Hope's Peak Academy.

In March of 2029, when the duties of reorganizing post-verzwieflungkrieg society was at last completed, he married Sayori in Leningrad. Three years following, they had their eldest child, Kiril. Seven years following, another child, again a son named Milorad.

In terms of personality, on the chart thingy I made the fuck up, he can best be described as warm/passion. He obviously cares about his friends, and also excels at political agitation.

We know all about the edgy 'manosphere' bullshit that teenage males basically get shoved down their throats these days and gladly suck up since they don't see any alternatives, but what about women?

After watching the darwin 4 documentary over the weekend I decided skewers were cool and decided to add a variant of them to my story.

So, canonically, the entirety of Silen (the continent Lindsen is located on) was created by Komi(me), and humans were later introduced. Thus, the animals that live there have quite different anatomies from what we're used to. These include the massive flying organisms known as 1/1/17/4. Now this family is quite diverse, and actually consists of two major lineages, 1/1/17/4/1 and its derivatives, as well as 1/1/17/4/2.

1/1/17/4/1 is the older of the two. Organisms of this group have two large jet pods on their backs, while their bodies are torpedo-shaped, with a large mouth that can expand to swallow prey. Teeth are present inside the throat, to aid in crushing it. Juices are digested in the stomach. Most waste is immediately expelled to reduce weight, while nutrients enter the blood. Several large blood vessels flow past the jet pods to cool off, also heating the air inside slightly.

In two organs beneath the jet pods, glucose and fat are metabolized into methane. Upon entering the jet pods, air first goes through several tightly compacted swirls to increase pressure, then into a combustion chamber which expanding muscles can compress. Methane is added here, and electrical pulses from ignition nerves ignite the mixture. A sphincter opens shortly following a compression to allow the heated air to release.

Most members of the 1/1/17/4/1 family have not lost their hind fins. They have instead evolved into two triangular fins that sit directly behind the jet pods, possible directing the flow of air. A single large tail that resembles a boat's rudder is located at the end of the organism and has colorful patterns that may aid it in finding mates. The two wings resemble elongated triangles. The eyes sit close to the lower jaw, and transparent eyelids can cover them when prey is being attacked.

While superficially similar, 1/1/17/4/2 is quite a different family. For one, its jet pods are located at the base of the wings. It lacks stabilizers, as its fins have migrated to where its lower jaw once was to form a sharp, flexible organ resembling a limb crossed with a jaw that can impale prey. It is smaller and faster than its cousins in 1/1/17/4/1, as its smaller size (though it's still very big, it has a wingspan of 6 meters and a length of roughly 3) ensures it can have a faster metabolism.

These two species have been regarded as pests due to their hunting of herds of livestock. In the past, little could be done about them due to the lacking of any weapons that would be effective against their speed. However, developments in firearms have caused a considerable decline in their numbers. If the living jets are to remain in Silen's skies, action must be taken to protect them.

Although, frankly, given all the shit that's going on in Silen, I wouldn't blame them if preserving these species are pretty low on their list of priorities.

Unlike Lindsen, the southern Menora kingdoms were never whole. Wedged between the southern coast and the Raimat river, they have historically been separate, albeit sharing cultures. However, an Orenland state has established a Commission in its southeast peninsula, and although it expands less aggressively than the analogous Lindsen Commission, it is still a threat to the unity of the nation.

In the eastern area between the two forks of the Raimat river is eastern Menora, which has modernized in part due to influence from the Menora Commission, with beret hats becoming a staple of the local industrialist leaders, be they populist or centralist. To the west, more traditional rulers guard their kingdoms from dangerous and radical schools of thought that may bring upheaval to their feudal orders.

In the southwest, Emilio Colella rules in the Sidenian Kingdom, occupying roughly a third of western Menora. His coastal kingdom holds significant economical influence as well as having access to plentiful resources.

Rocco Pignatoro is slightly further north, with his Subaldena bordering Lindsen's Aldenland, being only a river apart. A rather traditional though large kingdom slightly smaller than the Sidenian Kingdom. It is more technologically backwards due to being essentially locked from the outside world. But will the turmoil in the continent force it to embrace change?

Matteo Landolfi rules the Dosenti State in the eastern portion of Menora, in the middle of the section with a small port. It borders the Menora Commission directly and as a result has greatly benefited from the technology leaking from the advanced Commission. But will Melinda Whitfield tolerate this one-sided flow of precious Orenland advantage?

Salvatore Scanga is in even more dire straights, with most of his republic close to the Commission border. He clings on for now, intensifying construction of fortifications he hopes will delay the inevitable onslaught, but is he only erecting dirt walls in the unstoppable path of fate?

Melinda Whitfield controls the Merona Commission, where lighter policy has resulted in significantly less unrest than her Lindsen counterparts. But this has resulted in less progress towards true matriarchy than her superiors would desire, and as the years drag on they may lose their patience entirely.

Finally, the industrial populist state of the Vensorian Council, a small and often overlooked country in the north of eastern Menora, is ruled precariously by Belani Insoro, with power split between the two main industrial populist parties, the VRC and the VRGP. But the industrial centralist VNPA lurks in the shadows as promised reforms fail to bring about substantial improvements in life, even as various proletarian populist movements hinder various projects. Most disturbing of all, the establishment of Albert Stahler's Worker's State in the northern border has resulted in a diffusion of proletarian centralist thought. Who knows what the future will entail...

All of these countries may have never been a part of something greater, yet advances in communication and nationalism has created something new in the people. And perhaps someday, their dream will be fulfilled, and all of Menora will be one.

If you asked any soldier or student in any warlord state in Lindsen what the cause of the Orenland invasion, you would get different answers. From a citizen of the state of Aldenburg, that they come to upend Lindsen's traditions and impose unnatural matriarchy upon its citizens. From the Worker's State, that they are capitalists seeking resources to exploit, no longer satisfied with what they can find on their own soil. From a businessman in Gorsenya, they are here to rob Lindsen of economic activity.. All these answers are true to an extent.

Due to sea monsters, the two continents only connected very recently, when an Orenland steamship fitted with a reinforced hull reached the eastern coast of the southern Lohne strip, belonging to Lindsen at the time. From the point of view of the invaders, this was an excellent opportunity to expand its raw resource base, as well as to relieve social tensions. At home, despite numerous attempts at suppression, strikes and other such disloyal behaviors were rising, while others complained that even in industrialized times men were still legally property, and even going to suggest that industrial populism was not very populist after all.

The invasion was over in months. Superior artillery as well as tanks and aircraft, which were nonexistent in the backwards states of Lindsen, Burgune, and the fragmented southern kingdoms, easily destroyed their armies. Peace was made with Burgune, while an uneasy stalemate was achieved with the southern Menora kingdoms. No such luck in Lindsen, which was defeated thoroughly and turned into a puppet. For a year or so, things were looking up, with a large region to extract resources and more jobs to soothe unruly elements at home.

Unfortunately, the people of Lindsen did not make things easy for the invaders. In two years the Commission's territory was history and it only retained a fertile but small section of the Lohne strip. Masses were angry as austerity measures had come down to nothing, with none of the promised riches from war going into the pockets of working women. Industrialists were similarly angered by the lack of promised profit.

With this background as well as the spread of proletarianism, both centralist and populist, across all the nations of Orenland, several massive civil wars broke out in which various smaller states were seized by proletarian forces around eight years after initial invasion. The governments of several larger states, including Orenland proper, hastily mobilized to combat the red menace. While they were successful in containing the proletarian revolutions, it left them militarily and economically hollowed, and allowed for the Lindsen states to develop without fragmentation intervention. While the two federations were defeated two years later, it was a half-measure at best and little measures were imposed to contain them.

Thirteen years after the initial invasion, the situation had stabilized somewhat, with the propaganda machine working to indoctrinate a new generation against dangerous proletarian sentiments that would snuff out, it was hoped, the revolutionary flame once and for all. But Albert Stahler of the South Lindsen Worker's State and his growing country seem to think otherwise, and the time may come again where a second conflict with Lindsen will leave Orenland too weakened to fight, even against threats within its own borders. The fate of a continent and the entire matriarchy painstakingly built in the Commission, as well as its Menora section, lies on the actions of these warlords with their own dreams for their nation.

May the One save Orenland, for no one else can.

So while I've done some detailed worldbuilding for Lindsen and its surrounding nations, I haven't even drawn a map for the Orenland yet, and all I know is that it's slightly more advanced and it's supposed to be matriarchal. But how might it have become so even with agriculture being developed?

I contemplated having the entire continent or at least the part where humans originated be rainforest with plentiful fruits to make gathering more viable, while dangerous animals meant men were needed for defense and therefore more expendable. However, this is immensely stupid for obvious reasons. Does anybody have better ideas I can steal?