"What Madness Is This?" Volume III: The Pinnacle Future

Reader mode

Egregorian Chant

A Russian once said to an American, "Here in Russia, we are all equals; I can go to the Kremlin, pound on the Equal Citizen's desk, and tell him, 'Mr Maximovich, I don't like the way you're running this country."
The American said, "Well, I can do that too."
"You can?", asked the Russian.
"Yep, I can walk into the presidential manor in Philadelphia, pound on President Oswald's desk, and tell him, 'Mr. President, I don't like the way Equal Citizen Maximovich is running his country'."
- Common joke in the IPRR
 
Last edited:
Napoleon53

Napoleon53



52422787613_9c9283fa81_o.png
 
EQUAL ABOVE ALL: THE EARLY YEARS OF VADIM MAXIMOVICH
  • Index
    • Napoleon53

    Napoleon53

    EQUAL ABOVE ALL:
    THE EARLY YEARS OF VADIM MAXIMOVICH
    52425018553_7e8c0522b3.jpg



    FAMILY ORIGINS​

    The story of the Equal Citizen begins as all good stories do, when his grandmother Henrietta Prescott fled England during the fall of the House of Hanover in 1842. As Princess Victoria made her escape to the arms of her husband, the future Czar Alexander II, she had taken her ladies in waiting with her, including the 17 year-old Henrietta. In 1846, Henrietta married Vadim Christov Stepanovich, a captain of the elite Preobrazhensky Life Guards regiment, a legendary unit formed by Peter the Great. Stepanovich would be appointed Commander the same year as the birth of their daughter, Viktoria, in 1853. Two years later, in 1855, Alexander II would rise to the throne.

    Viktoria lived a joyous and party-filled childhood and young adult life, mixing with the elite circles with her parents in St. Petersburg and Moscow, visiting many different nations and taking a keen interest in the goings-on around her. When she came of age, she was introduced by her parents to a sergeant in the Life Guards named Aleksei Konstantin Maximovich. While it was technically indeed an arranged marriage, the two were very much in love by the time they tied the knot in 1873. They immediately had twins, Antipin and Anakinov, neither of whom would survive childhood, passing of cholera during an especially bad outbreak in the winter of 1880. Devastated but determined to continue building a family, they would bear two more children together: Alexander (nicknamed Alex) in 1882 and Tania in 1884. Alex would go to several prestigious military academies and set his sight on following in his father's footsteps as a Life Guard. Tania would, once again for the Maximovich family, pass far too young in 1894 after falling off her horse during a routine riding session and instantly internally decapitating herself.

    When Alex turned 16 in 1898, he joined the Imperial Army's 24th Regiment of Foot and began his military career. That same year, the Maximovich family would welcome one last child, with Viktoria giving birth to Vadim Maximovich, future Equal Citizen, at the staggering age of 45. Dubbing him a "miracle child," Vadim was secretly a sort of insurance against the "Maximovich Curse," with Viktoria and Aleksei fearing Alex would somehow wind up dead in his military service. They would not be wrong. During the Great World War and the reign of Princess Victoria's insane son Czar Viktor, Alex would find himself slain at the siege of Budapest. While history was taking little note at the time of Adolf von Braunau, the future New Holy Roman Emperor, it was he who squeezed the trigger and left the Maximovich Curse with one last dead child. This fact is certain since Von Braunau attempted to collect tags off every Russian he killed, and these tags were later displayed in the Imperial War Museum in Vienna.


    A YOUNG CONSCRIPT
    52424958030_805e69f326.jpg

    Military identification photo of young Maximovich during his stint in Mad Czar Viktor's Imperial Army​

    This left the grief-stricken Maximovich family with only Vadim, who they swore to protect at all costs. A career as teacher was decided on, a job far from harm, although the young boy expressed much more interest of his own in the military and following in the footsteps of his hero brother. In the waning hours of the Romanov Era, as the Empire began to fracture, Vadim was called upon as a conscript when General Alexander Kerensky declared martial law in Moscow. Ulyanov Motors of Moscow (UMM) had been taken over by Illuminist strikers led by Nikodim Maksimov, and what started as a labor dispute became full-on open revolt. After securing weapons by raiding a police station and raising a homemade Owl Flag over the factory, bloodshed was certain. In September, 1914, Illuminati Grand Master Otto Werner had led the first Illuminist Revolution in Poland, setting up a revolutionary government in Warsaw. The sickly-sweet stench of revolt and blood were in the air over Eastern Europe.

    "Today, Poland. Tomorrow, the world! Every man a god!"
    - Otto Werner    ​

    On All-Hallows Eve, 1914, a teenage conscript named Vadim would see action for the first time as the Mad Czar ordered General Kerensky to end the uprising at any cost. The future Equal Citizen of the Illuminist People's Republic of Russia stared Illuminists down the barrel of his Mosin-Nagant and took the life of another human for the first time, eliminating a "grizzled striker with a long gray beard," according to his diary, with a shaky but true shot right between the eyes.

    "He looked like a grandfather. A husband. A kind man. And I snuffed out his light like a candle after decades of life. I prayed to the God I scarcely believed in for forgiveness, but that feeling of guilt would always gnaw at me, until at last I knew I shouldn't blame myself, but the orders of Imperialist pigs who ordered me to murder my fellow patriots. My dreams of military glory ended that day with that man's life, as did my innocence. All around me was an orgy of violence, the soldiers skewering the workers like pieces of meat. We hung their pale corpses from the gaslights that night, to 'establish dominance.' All it did was make everyone hate us even more."​

    When the true revolution broke out in January of 1915, Kerensky was captured by the mobs and executed in the street. His men fell into a panicked route and disarray, desperately trying to secure food and supplies for themselves.

    "It was an apocalypse. I worried for my mother and father, but when we marched by their estate, it was abandoned and overtaken by Illuminists. Every day was a fight for survival, with our comrades dying off or disappearing one by one to go out on their own or join the rebels. We fought a pitched battle over five chickens at a farm on the outskirts of the city. We killed ten men for those five skinny chickens. After we inspected the corpses, as we looted the bodies of our kills for anything of use, such as boots, medicine, vodka, etc, we realized that they were deserters from our own unit. One of them I had considered my friend. This wasn't a civil war, it was a total collapse of society and civilization to us. I ate a scrawny leg of chicken that night after we buried the bodies of the deserters."​

    On March 15, following the flight of the Czar from St. Petersburg, Admiral Alexander Kolchak became the Prince-Regent of the Russian Empire, attempting to hold the Illuminist hordes off by rallying conservative Orthodox Christians and anyone who hated Illuminism to his side. Vadim's parents were staunch Kolchak supporters but also firm monarchists, and when Kolchak announced the creation of Russian Federation and an arrest warrant was issued for the Czar, they joined him in exile in China. They paid soldiers of fortune to try and locate their son Vadim, but it was near impossible to find anyone in the current situation.

    Broken and alone by now, his unit disintegrated, young Vadim hear the news in 1917 that the Czar had been captured and hanged. The old ways were truly gone. His belief in God was also wiped away, something he knew his Orthodox parents would despise. As the Russian Civil War continued, and republics and city-states rose and fell, Vadim saw himself pressed or hired into the service of several units of anti-Illuminist warlords, but his heart was never in it. In fact, many of these warlords were old-blood aristocrats who treated their men like cattle and peasants, and one even had Vadim whipped for stealing an extra potato ration when he was nearly starving to death. Vadim saw the Illuminists continued to become better-equipped and had meat on their bones, having seized canneries and crops to feed their war machine. Indeed, many early Illuminists flocked to the cause not out of some deep understanding of the writings of Knigge, Nietzsche, or Werner, but out desperation to acquire food at any cost. The Czar was dead, and there was no use in throwing away their lives to save the last shreds of a failed and broken system that was already out of step with the times for two hundred years at least.

    In 1920, Kolchak was slain and the Chancellery burned to the ground. Oleg Volkov, the "Protector of the People," declared an Illuminist People's Republic of Russia and announced the Civil War was over. Seeing which side his bread was buttered on, and now a staunch atheist himself, Vadim slipped away from his unit one night, ditched his tattered uniform, and offered his services to an Illuminist regiment that was utilizing armored autocarriages to support Nadia Holub's Ukrainian Revolution in the South. For the first time in years, rations were regular and nutritious, morale was high, and Vadim felt some of his misery and misfortune wash away. It was the dawn of a new era.


    THE FIRST TRIP TO UKRAINE AND THE FOURTH STIGMATA
    52424787254_c11c75e5c0.jpg

    "When I first arrived in the Ukraine, I came as a liberator. I never knew I would return one day as a conqueror."​

    Vadim saw action against anti-Illuminist forces and Western volunteers in the Donbass region, which had rejected the call of Werner's acolyte, Holub, to form an Illuminist state based in Kiev. The armored cars of Vadim's unit, known as the People's Volunteer Mechanized Gunnery Unit, were a terror of the battlefields, routing many enemy units and capturing several key towns on behalf of Holub. Holub herself arrived in 1921 with the bulk of the Ukrainian Army and, with the Russian volunteers in Dobass to the east, formed a vice that squeezed the remaining rebels to death. 1922 would see the last pitched battles in Ukraine before Holub officially formed her government and celebrated victory.

    At the tender age of 25, Vadim had become a war-weary veteran and revolutionary who simply desired time to read and study, above all else. He viewed Illuminism as a logical step forward and progression for a humanity which had outlived the usefulness of religious faith. Indeed, according to the tenants of Illuminism, religion was in itself to blame not only for its own demise but also for all major wars in human history. If the people could unite as one and fight a final struggle to free the world of the grasp of God, then they could welcome in a paradise, when scientific and social progress would make "every man a god." Unlike some of the more radical and fringe elements of the time, Vadim did not see this mantra in a genuine spiritual sense at this point in life, but rather akin to the idea of modern technological advancements being sorcery compared to just a few decades and centuries before. While studying for free at the state-run Illuminist University of Moscow, Vadim began to pen his own manifesto, which he titled The Fourth Stigmata.

    "If religions can be destroyed, if faith in invisible spirits can be eliminated, if the old ways can be forgotten in the dustbin of our collective social consciousness, then so too can war itself be relegated to the past, and mankind can focus on making even more leaps and bounds together, united as one front against the un-entity known as "God." God, as a concept, must be destroyed at its very foundation. We have no need for a deity when reason and logic have given us all we need. Prayer is as meaningless as the ritual dances our heathen forefathers performed around pyres and totems, and in the future it will be regarded with the same laughter and disdain. Indeed, in the keen and sharp minds of our Illuminist brethren, it already has been. Let us join together and drive a stake into the heart of God, a fourth stigmata."​

    In the fall of 1923, he published The Fourth Stigmata to great success and adulation from critics. Even Grandmaster Otto Werner took notice and personally sent a letter commending the young man's work and words. He also drew the attention of Protector of the People Volkov's Khraniteli Zakona i Poryadka (KZP), "Protectors of Law and Order," a secret police force dedicated to drawing out and suppressing religious holdouts, religious and "anti-scientific texts," and those "dedicated to the disruption of the common good." Female KZP Chief Administrator Averina Feldman, a right-hand to Volkov, offered Vadim the position of Regional Commandant of Moscow. Blown away by this offer, Vadim accepted, donning the gray trenchcoat and peaked cap of the secret police while continuing his studies and writings at the University of Moscow.

    "SAUL OF THE TARTARS"
    52425018563_c7701bd3da.jpg
    ​

    Within just a few years, Vadim had gone from homeless veteran to a respected and high-ranking official within the Illuminist halls of power. He took to his new career with aplomb. He supposedly burned the "Last Bible in Moscow" in the winter of 1924, although that statement is easily doubtful. Some underground faithful had taken to becoming "living Bibles," having memorized the Good Book as a way to spread the Good News without carrying contraband. These were deemed by Vadim to be targets of the utmost import. His vigor in persecuting and imprisoning those expressing religious faith was legendary, comparable to Saul of Tarsus. His role of Regional Commandant meant he not only ruled the ZPD forces in Moscow proper, but in the entire oblast and surrounding area. He used his experience with the armored car units to
    make his ZPD officers capable of lightning-fast deployment and phasing out horses for anything except crowd control.

    All the while, as the Illuminist order formed itself into a cohesive government structure, one step forward meant two backward. Rationing returned as blights killed the crops in the 1926 harvest season. Ukraine offered a little assistance in appreciation from Holub for Russia's sacrifice on their behalf, but it was barely putting a dent in the problem. This rationing combined with inflation and led to the collapse of the Russian economy in the winter of that same year. The fragile, newborn Illuminist economic system, stretching from Poland to Siberia, began to crumble. The Illuminist Depression had arrived, and heads would roll.

    Volkov was quick to blame anyone but his own economic policies. Instead, he blamed the failure of the crops on the religious, "those who worship in the shadows," and called for a "national purification" and "immolation of all faith." Not only had the Illuminist Depression arrived, but so too had the Great Anti-God Pogrom. Anyone and everyone were targets of the government's wrath. Those who had been good friends and allies of Volkov were not immune, such as State Treasurer Anton Popov, who found himself accused of "sabotage in order to bring down the economy of the people, and thus a return to religious despotism." ZPD Regional Commandant Vadim Maximovich was given orders to make the arrest. Surrounded by Vadim's men outside his Moscow home, Popov took his own life with a pistol after taking the lives of his family of six.

    As Volkov's position grew more and more unsteady, Vadim was sent to the farms in the countryside to "inspect for signs of anti-revolutionary sabotage." After discovering several hand-written Bibles, likely produced by "living Bible" bards, Vadim ordered the arrests of dozens of farmers and confiscated their property in the name of the state. To him, not only were they enemies of the state, they were enemies of peace, their shadowy beliefs a threat to the uneasy "tranquility" of the modern atheist state. Volkov appointed hardliner Karp Smirnov as State Agriculture Chairman. Smirnov, a half-Pole who had fought in the Battle for Warsaw under Grandmaster Werner, was determined to bring about what he called "a program of civic agriculture," which became known informally as "The Program." Under Smirnov, all farms across Russia were seized by the state. Protests were brutally crushed.

    In Warsaw, Grandmaster Werner condemned the new "barbaric" treatment of simple farmers, "the backbone of the movement," and was joined in his disapproval by the ever-vocal Holub of Ukraine. Volkov responded, quite rationally, by accusing them of anti-Revolutionary behavior. The fearful, increasingly disturbed leader of Russia had called two absolute heroes of Illuminism, including the Grandmaster himself, anti-Revolutionary. Cracks became schisms in November, 1927, when a group of Ukrainian trucks with food and supplies to donate to hungry Russians were turned away, as Volkov had become convinced Ukraine was behind the failed crops and that Holub was a mastermind attempting to undermine his government. Holub had also released a host of political and religious prisoners, forbidding those who professed religious faith from holding office or running for election but allowing them freedom to come and go and do business as anyone else. To Volkov, nothing could be a clearer sign that Holub was a closeted religious traitor. When Ukrainian drivers argued with Russian border patrol that they were un-Illuminist by letting their compatriots starve, a scuffle and broke out. Volkov, quite rationally again, declared war on Ukraine.


    THE PAN-ILLUMINIST WAR
    EbRRcy1XkAAeFU_.jpg
    ​
    I.P.R.R. Cavalry

    Volkov's administration was coming apart at the seams and being mended and stitched back together with the blood and guts of the innocent. Hysterical party chiefs saw religious traitors in every corner, more rational members of society secretly worked to depose the Protector of the People, who had now suspended elections "in the face of national emergency." The war began just as his second term was coming to and end, much to no one's surprise, so he was clearly desperate to use any means at his disposal to keep himself at the top of the Illuminist totem pole. Indeed, he started to tell his cabinet that he planned on eventually taking Warsaw and appointing himself Grandmaster of the Order and "Protector of Reason." Poland, in response to this blatant act of aggression against its ally, had declared war on Russia on December 20th.

    Volkov's plans were to immediately overrun Ukraine to knock it out of the war, seize its grain, and then, with its troops fed and resupplied, turn west to take Poland. Despite secretly loathing the war and increasingly becoming wary of Volkov's mental state, Vadim accepted an offer of commanding a large formation of troops in the new war. Even though he viewed the entire affair as a blunder, he was determined to do his duty.

    "I did not seek military glory or conquest. This was a failure of the Volkov government, plain and simple, that had spiraled out of control. Nevertheless, my sense of duty to the country which I had already sacrificed so much was overwhelming of all my inner doubts, and I once again took the field of battle for the Motherland."

    The invasion of Ukraine was a nightmare. Despite initial success, progress had ground to a halt outside Kiev. In the countryside, the Russian Army devolved into looting, rape, and theft, as starving men saw the bountiful supplies of food, wine, and women and let their base instincts take over. Vadim desperately tried to keep the order among his own, leading some of the finest Russian attacks of the war. Kiev stood tall, nonetheless, and refused to cave to newly-appointed and untrained Russian commanders who had replaced more qualified ones thanks to the Anti-God Pogrom. Day after day, Kiev held out, a concrete dam against a tidal wave of starving Russian troops.

    Finally, in the summer of 1928, after a year and a half of warfare, Volkov appointed Vadim, at the age of barely 30, Supreme Commandant of the Armed Forces. Volkov ordered him to utilize the newly-created I.P.R.R. Air Force to bomb Kiev and other Ukrainian holdouts to oblivion. East Germania had joined the war in the early spring, breaking the stalemate on the Polish border. The Polish Army had been defending their territory for the duration of the war, but now could press east, with a goal of Moscow by winter. With the overall state of affairs increasingly negative and the outlook for the future bleak, Vadim betrayed Volkov and refused to order the bombardment of Kiev, which he knew would result in thousands of civilian deaths. Instead, he met with Holub under a flag of truce and proposed a coalition, where he and his men who would follow him would join the Tripartite Coalition of Poland, East Germania, and Ukraine, oust Volkov from power together, and hold new democratic elections in Russia.


    AFTER THE WAR
    52255361311_d34f83c3c7_o.jpg

    Vadim Maximovich's helmet as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces    ​

    When news arrived in Moscow that his new Supreme Commandant had deserted him, Volkov flew into a fit of rage. His men began conducting massacres of political opponents and protestors in the streets and announced anyone who would not take up arms against the foreign invaders was a "useless, deity-loving, anti-Revolutionary eater." His personal guards, most of whom were his close friends, promptly murdered him on the steps of the People's Parliament in broad daylight with ceremonial swords, spilling his guts and sending his severed head rolling down the marble steps in front of a shocked crowd. When Vadim and the Tripartite troops arrived, they were welcomed as liberators. Those who had held out with Volkov excused themselves of responsibility, insisting that they were too afraid to do anything to stop the man. While many of them would be pardoned by the new incoming government and released from military prisons, Vadim was held up as a national hero who had done what others were too afraid to. He told crowds in Moscow:

    "International Illuminism will never triumph if petty regional and national conflicts occur between sister countries that have supposedly been cleansed by the light of reason and godlessness. I have served this country with my blood and sweat my entire life, giving all for Mother Russia, but I have come to realize that the strength of Russia isn't on the road of solitude, us against the world, but rather it is to be found on the path of international solidarity and kinship. The entirety of this Pan-Illuminist War was a black eye on the face of our glorious movement. Let the spirit of International Illuminism be a fount of friendship, camaraderie, and staunch alliance. Volkov tried to set himself up as a god and to blame others for failings of his own. God is not only a fictional spiritual entity, but also can be a living human with irrational delusions and a will to lord his supposed greatness and glory over others. 'Every man a god' is a motto of our movement, but we mean that in the sense that we shall build a paradise with no religion, where every man knows absolute truth and lives in peace and harmony. Let the Illuminist Bloc only ever take up arms in the spirit of mutual defense. Let this mindless bloodshed come to an end."​

    As the newly-elected Protector of the People Alyosha Vorobev took office and ended the pogroms and paid Ukraine and Poland a series of generously-light war indemnities, some began to call for Vadim to run the next time, which he adamantly refused. Not out of a sense of humility, but because he was sick of war and politics and deep into a research of New Age Illuminist thought, especially East German scholar Gerhard Poettker's concept of the "Universal Aura," an idea that a sort of mystical energy field surrounded all living things and could be channeled with certain special gems, stones, and crystals to heal, enlighten, and even imbue things with a sort of power. He also was regularly heavily investing himself into the theories and works of Polish author and extraterrestrial enthusiast Waldemar Wawro, who claimed that humanity was created not by a god or deity of some sort, but by an ancient race of advanced alien creatures that he dubbed the "Prometheans." In his 1933 book Chariots of the Precursors, Wawro actually dedicated the work to Vadim Maximovich:

    "To my Enlightened Compatriot Supreme Commander of the I.P.R.R. Armed Forces Vadim Maximovich. We have shared many wonderful conversations and discussions in our quest for ultimate knowledge of the universe, and I find in him a kindred spirit, fated in the stars. Every man a god."​

    By the mid-1930s, Maximovich had become one of the leading experts and spokesman for what he dubbed "Ancient Cosmonaut Theory." In a letter to Wawro dated 1935, he said, tellingly of his motives:

    "Compatriot Waldemar, it is my firm and rational belief that in the void of god, something will always, always take its place in the minds of the masses. We saw it most recently in our Bloc when Volkov took us on his damn-fool crusade of idiocy, just as Viktor before him, and we see it in America with their President far more a god in their everyday life than any so-called 'Jev.' Man is a superstitious creature, seemingly evolved that way over billions of years. I believe this need to pin existence on one source is a basic human need. While I am satisfied that god is a farce, I cannot believe, looking at how far we have come since the primordial muck, that we weren't designed, at least to a degree, by entities beyond our understanding. Just as today's technologies of the autocar and radio would elicit cries of 'witchcraft' in the times of our grandfathers, so too could be this race of what you have deemed 'Prometheans' to us. They might be a race of people who have made 'every man a god' a very real possibility. I would say that these creatures are by no means worthy of worship, but of emulation. Through further dedication to reason and logic, math and science, we can become as them and take to the stars, a true version of what the idiot Yankee bastards would call 'Pinnacle Men.' I call this future, this glorious future version of Man, the Modern Prometheus. By giving our people something to aspire too, regardless of our total understanding of these likely ancient cosmonauts, we opiate them. Every man needs something to which to aspire, else we breed stagnancy and laziness. I look forward to our next meeting, because I think that, together, we could change the face of the entire Illuminist movement.

    Your Russian Compatriot in Light,
    Supreme Commander Vadim Maximovich"    ​
     
    Last edited:
  • Index
    • Napoleon53

    Napoleon53

    I have a REALLY positive view of that chapter. I think you guys will go nuts. I will do further proof reading tomorrow, but for now, I'm going the hell to sleep. I leave you with the perfect Loomie anthems:


     
    Worffan101

    Worffan101

    Maximovich may be a crazy murderer high on PTSD and ancient aliens fantasies, but at least he has some level of regard for human life.

    Low bar but I think we found the most noblebright leader in Madness.
     

    John Spangler

    Maximovich seems quite sane and well meaning, compared to Oswald or Steele. However, I'm sure that, sooner or later, he'll do something absolutely crazy.
     
    Last edited:
    Napoleon53

    Napoleon53

    Volkov is the edgelord atheist with no regard human life, but I did try to get across that Vadim doesn't want to see mindless bloodshed in pursuit of glory and is much more concerned with some form of actual "progress," however twisted. This meshes great with the Alyeska chapter, where Russia is willing to give up Alyeska in return for what they deem a "fair deal." But he also has no problem going full demon mode and brutally persecuting innocent people for not conforming to Loomie ways. I think he's going to be a very, very interesting character, and a fan favorite.

    Also, I think the Ai portraits REALLY contributed to the vibe of this chapter.
     
    Last edited:

    Gar48

    So the Illuminists are going to start the Space Race just to find our alien ancestors? Sounds good to me.

    Also between the whole "International Illuminism" and the fact Adolf von Braunau killed Vadim's brothers, I can't wait to see Russia joining the war against the new Holy Empire.
    Worffan101 said:
    Low bar but I think we found the most noblebright leader in Madness.
    Click to expand...
    Still hoping that in a twist the Sister of Jesus in China will end up being the most tollerant and reasonable leader in the WMIT universe
     
    Mooze17

    Mooze17

    @Napoleon53 How democratic would you say Illuminist elections actually are? Obviously things like secret police forces aren’t very democratic, but there does seem to be a degree of real debate in Illuminism, and the line about Holub releasing a host of political and religious prisoners and letting them have freedom to come and go like anyone else even if they can’t hold office or run for elections being one of the causes of the Pan-Illuminist War would seem to suggest the outright persecution lightening up to an extent is possible even if the religious are still systemically disenfranchised. Since Ukraine, Poland and East Germania won the war and it’s been blamed on Volkov being a tyrant and a madman, I imagine the IPRR would now want to invest less absolute power in the position of the Protector of the People to prevent another Volkov, and might implement similar liberalization to Ukraine under Holib as part of the effort to distance itself from the era of the Anti-God Pogrom and Pan-Illuminist War. Obviously elections would only be of Illuminist approved candidates (or at least they’d be the only ones not actively being sabatoged), but I can see different factions in the Illuminist Party with real differences between candidates still having the choices of the (Atheist and not counterrevolutionary) Russian People in elections actually matter. This also further mirrors the IPRR and NUSA in the similar local and state elections being able to matter but only MDP candidates being able to run thing, but on a national level and more actually open.

    Another thought is that even though Maximovich seems to be much more sane and value human life a lot more than Volkov, he also as you said is willing to go full demon mode in persecuting people who don’t fall in line with Illuminism and can and has done so especially as head of the secret police in Moscow. I think he’d still 100% be seeking to wipe out religion in Russia even if the terror of the anti-god pogrom is behind them now and he can’t just drag thousands of people out of there homes into the streets and have them disappear forever in unmarked government vans. Whatever the circumstances in which he takes power will be, I think he’ll be a lot more cunning and less violent about it than Volkov: both for pragmatic reasons of avoiding comparisons to Volkov and ensuring people are willing to go along with and for legitimate humanitarian reasons of not wanting to see more mindless bloodshed. This is where stuff like the Ministry of Enlightenment in the EU thread could come in: the old and set in their ways (like Maximovich’s parent’s) aren’t going to change their beliefs no matter how many get tortured or killed, and doing that like in the Volkov years will just fuel martyrdom and make them double down more. But if you can indoctrinate educate their children to reject the beliefs of their parents and embrace the belief in Progress, Atheism, the Human Spirit, and of course the Ancient Prometheans which are so important to Russian Illuminism, there will be no new crop of believers and religion will die off with the pre-revolution generation. Of course, doing this requires massive totalitarian intrusion into the citizens lives through mass media and control of education-but having free and fair (for Illuminist candidates) elections doesn’t mean the Illuminists aren’t still totalitarian creeps. Well-meaning paternal tyranny is still tyranny, and this is utterly insane no matter how “peaceful” it is-which perfectly fits the Madnessverse. After all, the majority of Insanity doesn’t take the form of violent outbursts at other people. I see the IPRR being every bit as insane as NUSA-but in a even more insidious way which puts on a friendly face that is completely sincere even well it distracts you from the actual affects of what they are doing.
     
    Last edited:
    Reader mode
    You must log in or register to reply here.
    Top
    Top