Azure Watester Federation

The Empire of Kyavan is a dying man which modern machinery has forcibly kept alive.

The words of her History professor came to mind as Emma returned from another day of teaching at the British-sponsored high school. The armed peacekeepers near the entrance continued to remind her: she was working to save a country which should have died three decades ago.

Emma's thoughts floated back to the day she had met that government recruiter. As a fresh graduate of the acclaimed University of London, she was looking for two things: a job and decent pay. The recruiter offered both in exchange for a bit of "flexible relocation" in the job package. She overlooked that--sometimes, she wished she hadn't.

It had turned out, she had signed up to be placed as an education worker with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in something called "Resolute Shield". The specifics were never clear to her, mainly because they hadn't told her much. What she understood was that the aid mission to Kyavan had been wanting to recruit more teachers to staff the schools it was opening, and the recruiters happened to pick her.

Emma didn't consider herself too much of a political person. She had her reservations about the state of London even in her relatively nicer University accommodations, but like most of her peers, she didn't feel as though it was her place to speak out on it. After a few days spent in Galatia, where the school and the part of the British mission she was attached with was based in, even those reservations had faded.

The city was only a little above a smoking ruin, even after thirty years of nominal peace. A British officer told her that they had only chased out the warlord occupying the area and restored government control three months ago. Before that, the city had changed hands between rival factions--some extremists, some nationalists, and others just wanting to carve out a fiefdom in the dying state. It was only natural--Britannia's economic collapse in the postwar era had directly created this state of affairs, leaving their half of Kyavan without so much as a functional government or a roadmap towards one. When central authority became nonexistent and the fledgling Kyavani Transitionary Council went insolvent, abandoned by its backers, the countryside--and soon the cities--descended into violence and looting. Despite its defeat in the final Golden Throne War, the Golden Throne's former Core Pillar still held vast reserves of equipment which never reached the front lines. In the last days of the war, Russian bombers had locked down all major roads and railways in and out of the cities, leaving the Kyavani armies starved of supplies, but also preserving them for the governments the victors installed.

Following the treaty which officially ended the war, Kyavan was nearly dismantled, reduced to the Anatolian Peninsula--the only major landmass it controlled by the end of the war--and forced to demilitarize. Harsh sanctions were placed on its military; the Kyavani Navy had been scuttled near the end of the war to prevent capture by enemy forces, and now an air force was nearly prohibited and the army cut to a fraction of its prewar size. Expulsion from the International Cooperative Organization would only deprive the rapidly failing state of any possibility of aid funding, and the newly christened Kyavani Self-Defense Forces were nowhere near sufficiently manned to prevent the looting, the raiding, or the anarchy that would come. It was this anarchy that would tear apart a generation of Kyavani men and women: they would be born into a warzone, and the ones which survived would never again reconcile with the old Kyavan, or with the powers which struck it down from its glory.

Now, Kyavan was a failed state, still rife with looters, raiders, and militants, arming themselves with the thousands of small arms stolen from government caches or bought from abroad. The recovering government forces, even as a mechanized, modern force, could not hold back the country from eating itself alive, not when it was near-universally hated for being corrupt, incompetent, and irresponsible. Despite their claim to what remained of the Empire of Kyavan, the Supreme Military Council would only be regent to a King of Ankyra, its nationwide influence shattered and cast to the winds. Perhaps in another ten, twenty years, Kyavan could save itself. But a foreign power offered a faster way out: the British, through Operation Resolute Shield. Aiming to clean up the countryside, rebuild destroyed infrastructure, restore basic services--not for free, of course, but financed through generous low-interest loans handed out by the National Bank of Britannia. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs hoped they could bind Kyavan to London, permanently securing itself a state which was dependent on Britannia for its very survival.

But before that, it had cities to fix and a new generation to turn away from militancy. Galatia was a city on the border between British and Government-controlled Kyavan and the Anarchy: as a former economic hub, it became a major target of bombardment during the war and looting following it. Emma's first few days in Kyavan were spent memorizing a map issued by the military liaison office: it marked out safe areas, roads cleared of unexploded ordinance, and where to find the British Peacekeeping Forces if needed. The map, she was told, would be absolutely essential to her continued survival.

That turned out to be an understatement. Even now, one year into her stay, Emma still remembered the fourth day of her arrival, the first day she had began teaching at the high school. Two men, clearly under the influence and clutching knives, were roaming the school's parking lot. Only the school's principal, a balding Kyavani man Emma had only ever seen in his office, had a car, so the lot was nearly empty except for one spot near the front door. Emma's classroom was positioned exactly in the right spot to see the conflict unfold: a peacekeeper ordered the two to leave, and one man, in an intoxicated stupor, raised his knife in the air.

The peacekeeper swung his rifle into his hands and opened fire without so much as a second thought. His target crumpled to the ground, in full view of Emma and her class, as his companion ran off into the distance. The peacekeeper turned a corner and disappeared from her view, and Emma turned her attention back to her class--having witnessed a murder of their fellow countrymen, they were becoming just as she was now: numb, apathetic, indifferent. It dawned on Emma that even the youngest members of her senior class would've been born at the height of the Kyavani anarchy, a time which bred exactly this kind of apathy.

After all, Emma was an urbanite--too far removed from the slums to have it be any more of an urban legend. Like any other Londoner, she had heard the stories, and seen the occasional homeless man turn up on campus every so often. Like her friends back in Britannia, she thought nothing of it, not paying enough attention to her class as she turned on the old pre-War projector to start her class for the day. As one of the few buildings in the region where stable electricity had been restored, the school, running on 2010s technology, was a long shot from the fancy screens and high technology of Emma's alma mater. But it was enough to catch the attention of her students--and today, they'd start the chapter on the history of Ancient Kyavan.

----------

Marcus always felt that the British were a bit hypocritical. Sure, he shouldn't say that about the people giving him an education, but receiving it from one of the nations that caused his homeland to be in the situation it was felt like rubbing salt in the wound.

He had been named after the last true Emperor of Kyavan, if you didn't count the puppet sitting on the throne now: Emperor Marcus, the one who led Kyavan during that decade of glory. The Golden Throne managed to hold out against the world for ten long years, a fact which always brought Marcus pride--sure, we lost in the end, but everyone had to pay for it. It was the kind of thinking that ran counter to all the values of "peace" and "cooperation" meant to define the post-war era--never mind that the country promoting these values had just overran the forces of a part of the United States in an act of blatant imperialism.

Though, Marcus never considered himself an anti-imperialist. Of course he recognized, like any other good Kyavani, that the British aid mission was imperialism under wraps, but his only problem with that was that it wasn't him doing the imperializing. As his Leader had told him, this was Kyavan's destiny: to rise from the decrepit state it was in, to conquer, to create a new Empire from London to Kastel, from Althior to Moscow, one that would span the globe and endure for millennia. Of course, every dream must be realized by work and toil, and this was Marcus's role, and the role of the hundreds who had joined his Leader's side. They were to follow exactly the Leader's words, to carry out his every command. The New Kyavan did not need independent thinkers, but servants: those who would serve the State by serving the Leader.

Marcus still remembered the day when he had met his Leader clearly, though a year had came and gone. As a child, he had held a deep admiration for the Ancient Kyavan he read of on school literature, and that admiration had turned into a resentment of the present regime which had bent the knee to the Russian, the Droidenean, and the British. Growing up, those feelings of resentment made him peculiar friends, and it was a mutual friend that had first introduced Marcus to the elusive man: he was the Leader, and he led. Before Marcus could prove himself, this was all he needed to know.

It wasn't long before Marcus was told how he could prove his worth. The same mutual friend that had introduced Marcus had a "job" to do, to steal a few documents about the school that the British were trying to renovate. There was enough chaos in the early days of the British arrival that nobody would notice a copy of the floor plans going missing--unsecured documents were, as a general rule, liable to disappear.

Their plan worked almost perfectly. Marcus snuck into the Principal's office, a reinforced room being used as the center point and logistics hub of the construction going on, at night. There was no way he could make it past the soldiers guarding the site normally, but one of a few maintenance tunnels that hadn't collapsed helped Marcus get past the foreign security. After pulling himself through a shaft door, he was in the office, rummaging through drawers until he found the plans laying on a desk next to pallets of bricks and large bags of mortar. It was too dark to take pictures, so he folded the page into a small square and prepared to run.

But then Marcus heard shouts, and saw flashlights being turned on in the distance. Something must've gone wrong, he knew, and he decided to run. Not far from here was a small forest which had plenty of hiding spots--it was the autumn, and the floor was covered in leaves.

So Marcus ran, putting every last drop of energy he could squeeze from his body into his sprint. The British hadn't been in the city for too long, but there were already rumors and stories of what they'd do to people who stepped out of line. Marcus wasn't ready to put those rumors to the test, so he ran for the forest, maneuvering around piles of rubble which had yet to be cleaned up. He leapt into the forest, away from the main trail and into a naturally-formed hole. He could hear search parties enter, boots striking the ground amidst radio chatter. A few minutes later, they left, but Marcus still waited in his spot until he saw the guards leave for their quarters. Then he ran again, slower, more paced, out of the forest and towards the rundown shelter that his mother and a dozen other parents and children collectively called home.

Only the next morning did he find out what had happened: Marcus's contact had been spotted by a security officer, and according to the Leader, who Marcus had been instructed to meet, had "given his life for the Nation". Still, Marcus had proven himself worthy, and he received his prize: a cheap pistol, somewhat ironically of British make, from a company called Kalisto Defense. Marcus was to keep it in as secure a spot as possible, and he did--his family had been fortunate enough to have a few belongings still, and one of them was a lock to use on the shelter's lockers. He stashed it behind some old clothes and empty cans, and there it had sat, collecting dust while orders from the Leader came and went.

Today seemed to be another one of those days. After class--one on the Ancient Kyavan Marcus was so fascinated by, no less--Marcus felt a tap on his shoulder. Wordlessly, he nodded and ducked into an isolated corner. Usually firm, but for some reason trembling hands pressed a paper slip into his hands.

Get your weapon. Sneak it into the basement by any means necessary. Big plans tomorrow.

Tsar Alexei III of House Romanov leaned over the table in the smoky palace back room. His cue slapped against the cue ball, breaking the rack with a sharp crack.
​"You know, Davor, this isn't just a social call," the Tsar explained. "You fought in the Throne War, right? What did you think of Kyavan?"
​Volkov had not previously opened up much about his time in the war. He had been only thirteen when he enlisted—two years before he was legally eligible—and had fought his entire early life against the Golden Throne.
​"I didn't get much of a look at the country," Volkov replied. "It was battle after battle; grueling trench warfare, as I'm sure you're aware."
​The Tsar narrowed his eyes as he shot again. The five ball dropped into a pocket. "Solids," he muttered. He straightened up to chalk his cue. "What happened to them after the war, I mean—what do you think of it?"
​Volkov remained silent for a moment, thinking. He could tell the Tsar was asking for a reason. The state of Kyavan was a mess of warlords and poverty, the imperial government's power limited primarily by British interests.
​"They fought well and took my arm from me," Volkov said, glancing at his prosthetic. "But I guess I got this metal one in return, so it isn't all bad." He grabbed his own cue and took a shot, knocking a striped ball against the rail but missing the mark. "I guess they got what was coming to them. Trying to conquer the world tends to backfire."
​The Tsar's brow furrowed. He quickly leaned over the table again, preparing another shot. "You know what I think? My father joined that war to secure a future for Russia. He sided with our eternal enemies because he was so afraid of the Throne. But if he knew what would happen to them as a result of the war, he would have fought for the other side."
​Alexei struck. The cue ball knocked into the fifteen, which flew forward, striking the one and the three in opposite directions. The three went down while the one sat perched on the edge of another hole.
​Volkov's eyes lit up in curiosity. "You think? And why are you contemplating what happened thirty years ago? It's in the British sphere; there's nothing we can do about it."
​Volkov watched Alexei strike again, sinking the one ball. The Tsar stared at him, smiling. "Why not? We have the money. My family runs kingdoms across the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia. Supreme Ataman Lyadov could crush the warlords in his sleep, and our companies can afford to operate at a loss to uplift the Kyavani."
​Volkov frowned. "My Tsar, you have been urging me to prepare for war with the Althior Accords. You think we can spare the soldiers to go to war in Kyavan as well? And what of global relations? Do we want to upset the British or our western allies in the Stalpakt? The Golden Throne and Alpeans destroyed Germany for ages before the Throne War. We just can't do it."
​The Tsar let out a hyperbolic yawn. "Volkov, the Cossack military police will not be required for the war and we only need a small number. We can land in Pontus tomorrow. And to your second point: if I wanted to be told what degenerate liberals thought of my policy, I would have called Alexander Jughashvili and the SSD to my court. Even he is a man of God and may take my side on this."
​The Tsar missed his next shot, handing over the table to Volkov.
​"Your Imperial Majesty, you insult me," Volkov remarked with a smirk. You can't compare me to that Rabochivik, he thought, and I am no godless man. I am just pragmatic. Volkov shot. His cue ball struck the nine, sinking it. "The industrialists are trying to focus on preparing the economy for a world war. They can't take a hit right now." He fired another hit; the cue ball broke two balls in opposite directions, sinking both the fourteen and the eleven. He lined up his next shot, his metal arm leaning on the table for stability. "It's just not practical or necessary, Your Majesty."
​Volkov hit the ball, knocking it to the side and lining up the six for the Tsar. Alexei took his turn, sinking the six immediately.
​"You know, Volkov, not everything needs to be 'necessary' for us to do it. We are the foremost power in the Orthodox world. We have an obligation to look out for our brothers." He lined up another shot, sinking the four. "And are we not somewhat responsible for their current position? We dealt with them, then spent twenty years fighting in China making barely any attempt to rebuild what we had abetted in the destruction of. Yes, I know we weren't in the position then, but right now we are at peace. If not now, when?"
​He hit the seven ball into the two. The two sank as the seven ricocheted and dropped as well.
​"Regardless of what you think, I’ve been exchanging letters with Emperor Justinian. He wants to accept my aid. It’s already been promised to him, and you’re going to do it. He has also requested a marriage between his heir, Basil, and my niece Anastasia. I find it appropriate; I have spoken to her and she has accepted already."
​With just one ball left, Tsar Alexei shot, sinking the eight and ending the game.
​"And besides," the Tsar added, "I was just confessing to Patriarch Plato. After all this gambling here with Minister Dom, I need some good work under my belt to even the odds with St. Peter."
​Volkov laughed despite himself. He had his orders. He might not agree, but the Tsar's mind was made up.

​The docks of Trebizond groaned under the weight of an imperial homecoming. Supreme Ataman Maykl Lyadov was the first to step onto the stone piers, his boots clicking with a finality that seemed to echo across the Black Sea. Behind him came his brothers, Iosif and Vladimir, a triumvirate of martial prowess. They did not come alone. They brought with them the steel and spirit of the Zaporizhian Cossacks—nine divisions of military police, fifty thousand strong, veterans of the jagged frontiers where regular armies withered.
​The air was thick with the scent of sea salt and horseflesh as the Zaporizhians disembarked. Unlike the rigid, drill-heavy British regulars already stationed in the region, the Cossacks moved with a fluid, predatory grace. They were masters of "rough terrain occupation," a polite term for the brutal business of hunting men through mountains and marshes. Their supply lines were not long chains of vulnerable trucks, but the land itself and the hardy steppe ponies they rode.
​In the command tents, the Lyadovs met with the British high command. The maps spread before them were a mess of shifting warlord territories and "black zones" where no tax collector had dared tread in decades. A plan was devised: a triple-pronged spear. Iosif Lyadov and his divisions took the southern route, pushing into the scorched plains, while Vladimir pivoted northeast, using the Russian-aligned Kingdom of Pontus as a fortified anvil. Maykl, the Supreme Ataman, held the center.
​The rules of engagement issued by the Tsar were crystalline: "Surgical strikes. Minimal civilian interference. Kill the masters, spare the peasants." It was a war of shadows and speed.
​For three weeks, the countryside became a blur of midnight rides and sudden, violent skirmishes. While the Cossacks acted as the hammer in the hills, the Okhrana—the Tsar’s secret police—acted as the scalpel in the cities. They slipped into the tea houses and bazaars of Trebizond and Sinope, extracting intel with a mixture of gold and steel. Eventually, the prize was found. Deep in the interior, near the geological wonder known as the Valley of the Fair Chimneys, the warlords were gathering. They knew they could not win a war of attrition against the Tsar’s limitless purse, so they planned a singular, desperate counter-offensive.
​The battle for the valley began at dawn. The "chimneys"—towering rock formations that rose like frozen ghosts from the earth—provided lethal cover for the Kyavani insurgents. But the Cossacks were not typical soldiers. They bypassed the choke points, their horses scaling slopes that seemed vertical, raining fire from the ridges.
​As the fighting reached a fever pitch, the ground itself seemed to scream. The warlords had made a fatal error in their choice of headquarters. They had bunkered down in an old Throne War depot, a cavernous space packed with hundreds of tons of faulty, abandoned black phosphorus. Whether by a stray Cossack shell or a desperate Kyavani fuse, the depot ignited.
​A pillar of sickly, incandescent flame erupted from the heart of the valley. The explosions were not mere bangs; they were atmospheric shifts that flattened the surrounding scrubland. The phosphorus, volatile and ancient, burned with a heat that melted the very rock. A thick, choking white smoke filled the basin—a chemical fog that blinded both Cossack and rebel alike.
​Maykl Lyadov, his face masked against the stinging fumes, ordered the final charge through the haze. The Zaporizhians rode into the inferno. By the time the sun set over what was now being called the "Valley of the Burning Forge," the warlord coalition had ceased to exist. Most were vaporized in the initial blast; the survivors were ridden down by the Lyadov brothers in the glowing twilight.
​The aftermath was a grim harvest. The Cossacks seized what remained of the black phosphorus caches, ensuring the unstable "Throne-tech" would never again be used to hold the region hostage. But the work was far from over.
​For the next six months, the Zaporizhian presence became the new law of the land. Alongside the British, the Cossacks transitioned from hunters to teachers. They patrolled the borders and stood guard as the new Kyavani Defence Force was raised, trained, and armed with Russian steel. The Tsar’s shadow grew long over the territory; every village square soon bore posters with the faces of fleeing terrorists, each with a bounty in gold rubles that promised a quick betrayal. The warlords were gone, replaced by the silent, watchful eyes of the Okhrana and the rhythmic beat of Cossack hooves on the ancient Anatolian soil.

​With the warlords scattered like ash and the fires of rebellion dampened by the presence of the Lyadov brothers, a fragile peace settled over Kyavan. In the ancient, salt-aired halls of Constantinople, the air of tension began to give way to the scent of celebration. Tsar Alexei III watched from the balconies as his niece, Princess Anastasia, walked the palace gardens with Prince Basil. Seeing the young couple—one a Romanov, the other the hope of the Kyavani—brought a rare, genuine smile to the Tsar’s weathered face. He felt, for the first time in decades, that he was truly fulfilling his duty as a protector of the faith.
​Behind the scenes, the mechanics of empire were grinding into motion. The Tsar’s security manager, Pyotr Beringov, moved through the court like a shadow, his light probes and quiet interrogations ensuring that the palace was scrubbed of any lingering warlord sympathizers. Meanwhile, the Tsar’s economic advisors were busy reshaping the nation’s future.
​An assortment of unprecedented business deals was finalized. Vladimir Dom, the enigmatic Russian industrialist, agreed to a series of concessions that stunned his peers: he promised not to automate the new factories, ensuring thousands of jobs for Kyavani citizens, and pledged wages that far exceeded the local average. For Dom, this was a matter of principle; he was known for treating his staff with a paternalistic care that bordered on the religious.
​The other Russian oligarchs were less idealistic and required the full weight of the Tsar’s will to fall in line. To secure their cooperation, Alexei granted them exclusive rights to the massive reconstruction projects across the country. The centerpiece of this economic engine was the creation of two state-owned giants under the guidance of Russia’s rail magnates.
​The Aelrich-Romanovsky Line was the crown jewel: a massive rail network stretching from the Romanov-run kingdoms of the Caucasus through the heart of Anatolia, connecting every major Kyavani city to Constantinople. A second, more ambitious project—the Yugoslav Line—was planned for the European side of the city, though it remained a dream for now, contingent on Russia seizing the necessary lands in the looming war with the Althior Accords.
​In a final act of goodwill, the Romanovs agreed to cede the Kingdom of Pontus directly to Kyavan. To solidify this union, it was decreed that Basil and Anastasia’s marriage would found a new, distinct dynasty: the House of Aelrich-Romanovsky.
​The day of the Tsar’s departure arrived. A massive stage had been erected in a grand plaza in Constantinople. A third of the Cossack host stood in gleaming formation under Supreme Ataman Lyadov, while Iosif and Vladimir remained stationed in the provinces to ensure the imperial transition remained smooth.
​Security was suffocating. Pyotr Beringov’s men watched the rooftops with hawk-like intensity as Alexei stepped to the podium. He looked every bit the Caesar, but his voice was humble.
​“I am happy to have received such a warm welcome by the people of Kyavan,” Alexei began, his voice amplified across the square. “Especially the imperial family and the clergy, who have welcomed me into their home and now joined our families through my niece, Anastasia.” He let out a soft, paternal laugh. “It seems she has fallen head over heels for your Prince Basil.”
​The crowd cheered, but the Tsar’s expression grew somber. “I stand here to confess. Russia has allowed its brothers in Kyavan to suffer for too long. We tiptoed around international fallout, distracted by the wars in China. For ten years of peace, we remained slow to act. For that, I ask your forgiveness.”
​He leaned into the microphone, his voice booming. “As an act of goodwill, I will be personally assuming the entire national debt of Kyavan. Russia will foot the bill for your industrial rebirth. This is our moral debt repaid. We will restore Kyav—”
​A rock whistled through the air, slamming into the Tsar’s side. Alexei didn't flinch; he stood straight, the heavy fabric of his uniform absorbing the blow. A small minority of nationalist agitators in the back of the crowd began to roar, their voices clashing with the majority who cheered for the Tsar.
​Beringov moved to intervene, but the Tsar waved him back, determined to finish his sentence. Then, a second object—heavier and metallic—flew from the crowd. It struck Alexei squarely in the eye, the force of the impact snapping his head back. Before he could even register the pain, the object bounced off his face and hit the stage floor.
​The grenade detonated.
​The blast was a deafening roar that swallowed the plaza. The Tsar’s body was thrown backward like a ragdoll, shrapnel tearing deep into his legs and torso.
​“Circle the crowd! Nobody leaves!” Beringov screamed, his voice cutting through the ringing ears of the guards. The Cossacks moved with lethal precision, drawing their sabers and forming a ring of steel around the plaza. One nationalist rioter attempted to sprint through a gap in the line, but he was tackled by the Okhrana before he could reach the alleyways.
​In the frantic days that followed, the assassin was taken to the deepest cells of the Okhrana. They worked on him with the clinical cruelty for which they were famous. Yet, just as the man was on the verge of breaking—just as he was about to reveal his masters—he bit down on a hidden cyanide pill. He died with a convulsing smirk.
​When Tsar Alexei III finally opened his eyes in a hospital bed, his face was a map of bandages and his legs were braced in iron. His first words were not of vengeance.
​“Tell the Lyadovs... tell the court,” he wheezed, grabbing Beringov’s sleeve. “This changes nothing. The support for Kyavan continues. We will not let a single murderer dictate the policy of the Romanovs.”

Patriarch Plato III of Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarch Basil IV stood over the short man as Plato spoke up.

“Hieromonk Sergei of Syviato, you have been called to serve the Church beyond what you have done now.”

The monk gulped, not certain of what was to come next for him.

“This will not be easy for you, Sergei. You will be in a desolate place, and you will oversee so much work set out for you, but you will be honored in the name of God.”

Sergei looked up. He had realized exactly what they wanted from him.

Over a month later, as his ship landed on the coast, his thick coat, specially made for his smaller frame, blocked him from the thick blasts of snow, but it did not help him from falling to the ground over and over before he had even gotten off the ship. But soon he would, through sheer force of will, take himself back below the deck before forcing his way out of the ship onto the shore.

He slipped immediately on the ice as his beard began to freeze, and he walked with only a stick and a backpack filled with his new robes. He had insisted on walking ahead of his staff with only a large husky to guide him to where he had to go, calling it his task to bear as he assumed his new role.

He saw the structures begin to appear around him as he walked. They looked to be mostly abandoned. He knew the colony was thriving, and so he had assumed they were abandoned due to the blizzard. As he pushed on, he would finally reach the elevator shaft, only after being blown back by the force of the winds and snow a few dozen more times.

As he stepped on top of the platform, he prepared himself to see an entirely new world. As the shaft began to descend, it took hours as he read the signs on the way down: 100 feet, 200 feet, 300 feet, 400 feet, 500 feet, 600 feet, 700 feet, 800 feet.

Finally, the door opened.

Up in front of him was a massive hallway of ice, yet at this depth, with his thick coat on, he couldn't help but sweat and feel hot, and so he removed his coat, feeling more comfortable now. He walked through the frozen hall, and when he made it to the end, he opened it up to see a beautiful series of floors and caverns, people walking around peacefully as if they were not buried under 800 feet of ice in the most inhospitable place on Earth.

“Ah, Bishop, welcome to Alexeiovsk,” a voice came from behind him.

“I am the governor of the Giperboreya Territory. I was told you were set to arrive today. Should I take you to your quarters? Or would you prefer to tour some of our facilities and see where we intend to begin construction on the cathedral for you?”

The bishop sat and thought for a moment.

“I'll take the tour tomorrow. It took me hours to get down here. I have to rest. Thank you.”

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America

Philip Raymond Ferrante, Jr. was not the smartest of men: he did not graduate at the top of his class from some posh Ivy League law school, he did not spend the early, golden, and twilight years of his life serving in Congress, and he did not lead divisions of men as an exemplary officer in the Throne War. He was a man of business first and foremost, burned his draft card, so to speak, when the Cheneys started picking up high schoolers to ship off to Kyavan back in the 2010s, and spent the world’s bloodiest war paying some sap of lesser means to convince Uncle Sam that he was fighting in it. In fact, the real Phil Ferrante was swindling suckers into buying overpriced used cars at absurd interest rates and using his commission bonuses to put himself through business school, where he used his same charismatic talent for convincing people of things to sway his professors into passing him by any means necessary. Once the War came to an end, Ferrante found himself a man with official educational qualifications, a great ability to make others do what he wanted, and money from both his time selling cars and his father's pockets. With this collection of means, he managed to talk his way into landing a position at VantaCorp, a firm eager to bid for government contracts to rebuild Western Europe from Seph Biden’s State Department and the Germs across the pond in Berlin. Ferrante scored himself a spot on the bidding team and managed to scoop up billion-dollar deals for Vanta through his negotiations with both Washington and Berlin. In 2033, after eleven years of collecting cash at VantaCorp and spending nine of those living in D.C. and ingratiating himself with the political scene there, Ferrante left the company to found FerranTech, where Phil would dip his toes into the tech industry; with the rapid pace of technological growth following the Throne War, it only seemed reasonable. FerranTech managed to tie itself to the early development of practical robotics and the refinement of artificial intelligence systems in the American economy, and when John Ternus’s Plus Party was elected to the Presidency in 2036, Ferrante gave Ternus help in dealing with the establishment in exchange for priority on lucrative contracts for automation and prosthetic research. Throughout his rise in the American business world, Ferrante made no small effort to stay in the public consciousness; he eagerly appeared on podcasts for interviews, maintained an active social media presence, and even made a cameo in one of the highest-grossing movies of the 2040s.

Ferrante’s family had almost always voted along the Federalist line, a tradition that hasn’t led to much success for their preferred candidates in the fight for the presidency. The only Federalist in nearly thirty years to make it to the second round, Brandon Gill in 2040, got defeated by incumbent President Ternus by a fair margin: Ferrante never told the President exactly who he voted for that year. Not to mention the thrashing that Lance Gooden got in 2044, when the Federalists clocked last place behind Jimmy Donaldson and the ProgCons, that one was embarrassing. That showing forced the Feds to take the bottom half of a ticket with Reform in ‘48, which at least got them back in third, which could be classed as an improvement of sorts. The 2048 election also saw the election of President Nick Fuentes from the America First Party, a product of Donaldson’s unpopular and controversial administration combined with Liberal candidate Matthew Patrick being the second man in the second round, with Fuentes barely edging out a victory. Fuentes’ administration would itself turn out controversial and polarizing, and with the Federalist Party running in circles for years looking for a new identity, Ferrante smelled yet another opportunity.

Ferrante crashed into a field of candidates that was simultaneously crowded but empty, with very few candidates of substance standing for the nomination, probably preferring to keep whatever office they already had, since that way they’d probably win. Instead, the people contending for the Federalist nomination were mostly senators of lesser notability who weren’t in an election year, or politicians of yesteryear who weren’t even in active office, mostly ex-Governors from various states. Despite the ostensibly weak competition, Ferrante still had to contend with the fact that he had never so much as looked into running for office before, and was all new to the process. However, being so green was also an asset for him; it was clear to see that the American people had become disinterested in the political establishment, especially the Federalist one. Every President who’s been elected since 2036 has made their careers outside the halls of government: Ternus was CEO of Apple, Donaldson was CEO of his Beast Industries, and Fuentes was a celebrity pundit who mainly kept to his show and running the AFP rather than focusing on running for office. To that end, Ferrante matched the clear trend of outsiders being prime candidates for the presidency. However, Ferrante still had the uphill battle of winning the nomination of his own party, which hadn’t nominated a true political outsider since Fred Trump won in 1956.

Political analysts throughout Ferrante’s campaign noted his lack of clear commitments on policy issues, especially those related to the core issues surrounding the Fuentes Administration, such as immigration, American demographics, homosexuality, AI rights, or isolationism. Instead, Ferrante primarily based his campaign on contrasting himself with Fuentes’ aggressive and controversially rude approach to political conversation, whereas Ferrante was, although not particularly respectful to opponents either, significantly more humorous and lighthearted in his attacks than Fuentes. Ferrante was able to effectively weaponize his charisma to attack his opponents in comedic and charming ways, rather than being too respectful where it was boring or overly harsh where it turned off viewers of debates or rallies or interviews. It was rather apparent that Ferrante intended to vibe his way to the presidency, or at least through the Federalist primary, choosing to differentiate himself based on his conduct rather than his policy in a political environment where each individual party only had so much variation in ideas among members. Despite being significantly underestimated by a number of mainstream political pundits, who estimated that the history and ethos of the Federalist Party was not conducive to an outsider candidate like Ferrante, he managed to come in second in the Iowa caucuses, before winning New Hampshire and Nevada. The momentum Ferrante gained from his generally unexpected successes in the early primaries as well as the dropping out of the weaker candidates helped him to cruise to several additional victories on Super Tuesday, all but securing the nomination. For his running mate, Ferrante tapped Barron Trump, president of the Trump Organization business conglomerate and son of former President Donald Trump, who was one of only two Federalist presidents this century, from 1997 until 2005. Despite Barron lacking significant personal political experience, being born after his father’s presidency and focusing primarily on his business career, his belonging to a political dynasty that began with his grandfather and has seen both of his brothers on multiple Federalist tickets in recent decades made his selection still very popular among traditional Federalists.

Traditional wisdom in presidential elections dictated that Ferrante would need to take a more aggressive and policy-focused approach toward the campaign once making it to the general election: each of America’s parties possess distinct platforms and priorities, which Ferrante ostensibly ought to show off to attract voters. In terms of political experience, Ferrante was, perhaps obviously, by far the most lacking. Besides himself, four other candidates were competing for the presidency with the backing of various parties. Naturally, President Fuentes was renominated by his America First Party, with coalition backing from the Patriot Party and Libertarian Party, and he had in 2048. Former Vice President Douglas Wreden, who was the Veep under the Donaldson Administration, had managed to rebuild the traditional leftist coalition headed by his Social Democratic Party. Michigan’s junior senator, Cameron DeLong, had gotten the nominations of both his Progressive Conservative Party, as well as extracting a coalition with the Manifest Destiny Party. Finally, the famous android senator from Delaware, known as S3PH B1D3N Mk2, was chosen for the Liberal Party’s nomination, as well as the Plus and Forward parties. Despite Ferrante’s celebrity status and the strong public presences of both Wreden and Fuentes, the majority of media coverage in the 2052 cycle found itself dominated by fierce debate over whether B1D3N was eligible to run. As a robotic recreation of the late former President Seph Biden, based on a digital archive of Biden’s consciousness, B1D3N and his staff claim the full legal status of the former president, including his natural-born citizenship and his eligibility for the Presidency. However, with AI personhood still a highly contentious issue in the States, obscurity regarding the legality of the android being legally considered as Seph Biden, and a variety of other issues surrounding potential risks of a robotic President, the news couldn’t help but overwhelmingly cover the B1D3N campaign. With that being the case, Ferrante and his campaign opted to ensure his presence in the public eye without engaging with the minefield of controversy that was the ‘droid’s eligibility, instead sending Ferrante on a grand tour of popular podcasts across the web, as well as hosting large-scale rallies with high-profile celebrity appearances.

The Supreme Court refused to rule on the robotic Biden’s presidential eligibility until after the election, presumably in order to avoid the potential backlash of such a ruling if it were to be made in the middle of campaign season, where it could drastically affect voter intentions. However, the Wreden and DeLong campaigns both got involved in the controversy by announcing official positions from their candidates, with Wreden in favor of eligibility and DeLong against. Unfortunately for both, with their own bases split on the issues, especially with the Greens being largely opposed to artificial intelligence in Wreden’s case, taking open positions appeared to end up hurting them rather than helping, according to several analysts. President Fuentes had also vehemently opposed B1D3N’s claims of being eligible to run for the presidency, and lambasted the Supreme Court for their wishy-washy attitude regarding making a ruling, but the already-radical state of Fuentes’ base helped insulate him from backlash from such a harsh stance, as the strong majority of the AFP and Patriots held a similar view. By refusing to comment on the issue of Biden’s eligibility, and by extension AI personhood, Ferrante was able to dodge most of the backlash from either side.

When Election Day finally arrived, Ferrante had managed to win second place behind President Fuentes in the first round of voting, qualifying him for the runoff round in January. However, despite not officially winning the election yet, the Ferrante campaign began their celebrations early, and for good reason. Even though the President had gotten more votes than Ferrante in the first round, he had far less room to grow his vote share when in competition with another right-wing party in the Federalists. Unlike in 2048, where Fuentes went up against the center-left Liberals, and was able to consolidate nearly all of the right-wing vote to come out narrowly ahead, here Fuentes’ radical right campaign was going up against a less radical, also right, campaign. Between Fuentes and Ferrante, the left wing of the country would certainly break overwhelmingly for Ferrante, and they did, with Ferrante getting nearly an 18 point victory in the popular vote in January.

Now, Ferrante was at the culmination of his life’s work, his charisma, knowledge, and abilities have been put to their ultimate use, and he sits at the helm of one of the strongest nations on the face of the Earth.

There was much to do.