AACHEN
------
Population:
414,200 (2110 est.)
Government:
Representative democracy; elected council with rotating mayorship
Current
Leader: Bürgermeister Manfred von Fass
Suffrage:
Universal
Human
Rights: 4 (few restrictions on behavior, but few legal recourses for
crime
victims)
Travel:
4 (fairly open borders)
Media
Freedom: 5 (no restrictions)
Taxation
Level: 3 (high business taxes; no personal taxation)
Health
Care: 3 (average level of care; availability based on ability to pay)
Economy:
5 (unregulated)
Industries:
Tourism (48%); services (34%); manufacturing (10%); other (8%).
Military:
2 (voluntary police force; defense pact with PPK)
Relations:
Close ties to PPK; diplomatic relations with almost all nations
Conflicts:
None
***************************************************************
SAARLAND
-------
Population:
684,400 ‘citizens’ (2115 est.); perhaps 1/3rd number of
‘non-citizens’
(no census data available)
Government:
Constitutional monarchy, appointed advisory bodies
Current
leader: Crown Prince Gustav von Preiss
Suffrage:
None; dictatorship
Human
Rights: 3 (all citizens eligible for trial, crimes against non-citizens
often unpunished if even reported)
Travel:
2 (borders tightly guarded, no immigration)
Media
Freedom: 5 (no restrictions)
Taxation
Level: 2 (no personal ownership, all citizens make a stipend of their
current earnings back from the crown)
Health
Care: 4 (efficient state-subsidized health care available to citizens)
Economy:
1 (completely state-governed)
Industries:
Services (40%); industry (50%); agriculture (5%); other (5%)
Military:
4 (2 years mandatory service in the border guard, well-maintained
town militia)
Relations:
Deals with other nations only for tightly regulated trade
Conflicts:
None
Responding
quickly to the threat of a tidal wave of French refugees swarming over into the
German province of Saarland, the mayor of Saarbrucken, Gustav Preiss, son of
the previous mayor, called out local militia and had the borders into France manned
and reinforced within days of the newsfeeds of the Esperanza disaster. Rumors persist to this day that until the
barricades were constructed, and later reinforced, that the local militia
actually drove away French refugees at gunpoint, in some cases, even firing
into crowds to disperse these unwelcome immigrants. Mayor Preiss managed to save his city and province from the sort
of fate that befell Freiburg and his people were so grateful that when Germany
splintered into a dozen fragmentary nation-states, the locals drafted a
constitution and elected the mayor their new ruler in perpetuity, sealing their
borders now against their former countrymen as zealously as they had against
the French.
‘Prince’
von Preiss has since confiscated all lands and businesses within the province as
exclusive property of the crown and his administrative body (mostly his cronies
and family) regulates all aspects of commerce and finance within the territory
tightly. ‘Taxes’ now consist of rent on
properties once held and percentages of profits garnered from ‘crown’-owned
businesses and through scrupulous financial controls, the Prince and his
advisors have maintained the nation at well above subsistence level, making the
citizenry, while initially dubious of his programs (and the rights that they
had signed away) fiercely proud. The
Prince generously allows broadcasts from all over Europe to be shown in
Saarland, knowing that while they depict people with freedoms and luxuries he
cannot allow, they also depict surrounding nations in the grip of crushing
poverty and near-total societal collapse or dubious ‘experimental’
governments. The burden of taxation is
high, in fact the state confiscates ALL moneys and runs a complex bureaucracy
to see to it that each citizen ends up getting a livable percentage back,
re-investing much of this money into the nation itself, in effect creating a
‘bubble economy’ situation and a nation that ‘feels’ much better off
financially than it is on paper.
The
mayor has ridden a wave of anti-French rhetoric since his election as mayor
years before, but now has found himself pulled along by public opinion into making
the small percentage of current French citizens into ‘non-citizens.’ They can do work for pay for any true
Saarlander or rent from such a person, but they cannot dwell on crown property directly
or hold work in a royal business (ie, live anywhere without paying a Saarlander
or work anywhere full-time legally). Essentially,
former French resident are an underclass in Saarbrucken proper and are virtual
slaves. Many local business will not
serve or cater to French, unless they are accompanied by a Saarlander or carry
a note stating that they are shopping for one.
In the outlying towns the situation is more fluid, with some communities
being more open towards French expats and others being open only in their hostility. There
has actually been a brisk legal softening of the borders in the last
year as the residents of Saarland have begun to thrive at the expense of cheap
French labor and their virtual serfdom, and so they clamor for the admission of
more French refugees to perform more and more of the nations menial or service
tasks, while their Saar ‘patrons’ get paid for ‘taking them in.’
While
not specifically racist, the rare non-white families native to the area being
as much Saarlanders as any other, the Saarlanders as a whole hold much of the
rest of the world in contempt, although none so much as the French or their
fellow Germans. This attitude goes far
to explain the dearth of tourism in this otherwise scenic and well-maintained
area. About the only thing that the
Saar like about the French (other than their service) is the destruction of
their fabled vineyards, as the Saar vintners on the border with France took
advantage of the moment to ‘take in’ any refugee carrying cuttings from a
fallen winery or with good general experience at winemaking. It is said that the only good French wine
these days comes from Saarland, and since it is being squeezed by French hands
from French grapes and bottled by French vintners, nothing but the label on the
bottle is truly changed. That and the
profits from the highly tariffed and deliberately undersold (to keep demand,
and prices, high) wine, which go into the coffers of the Prince, who then
trickles some down to his vintners, who may in turn trickle a few pennies to
their French help.
***************************************************************
WEISBADEN-MAINZ
------
Population:
890,000 (2115 est.)
Government:
Participatory democracy
Current
Leader: ‘First citizen-elect’ Hauptmann Brandt Schriter
Suffrage:
Universal (all votes tabulated electronically, all national issues voted
upon weekly)
Human
Rights: 2 (restrictions primarily on behaviors threatening others)
Travel:
4 (fairly open borders)
Media
Freedom: 5 (no restrictions)
Taxation
Level: 4 (high to moderate taxation at all levels)
Health
Care: 3 (average level of care; state-subsidized)
Economy:
5 (unregulated)
Industries:
Services (40%); manufacturing (40%); agriculture (1%); other /
military (19%)
Military:
4 (all citizens must serve 2 years in miltary and are expected to remain
reserve militia for the remainder of their
lives)
Relations:
Deliberate neutrality and goodwill with both neighbors
Conflicts:
None
The
people of Weisbaden had never been heavy into matters of obscure social theory
or political philosophy, so when the resolution reached their town on whether
or not to join with the grand experiment of the DDSR, several argued persuasively
against it, most prominently the mayor, a retired officer.
The
referendum failed and the mayor continued on as the mayor of an independent nation
state, during which the only selfish act he passed appears to have been the pushing
through of a law that allowed him to return to military service and retain his
rank while serving in public office (as he has been earlier forced to retire to
run for mayor). It was 10 months later
that the city of Mainz, which had been until then a part of the PPK, broke
free, established an ‘electronic town hall’ system of participatory democracy
and asked for an alliance with Weisbaden (and its much stronger military). After a tense few months of troops from
Mainz and Weisbaden facing down PPK troops, the PPK apparently abandoned the
effort with nary a shot fired. Today,
only a few years later, the PPK trades with Weisbaden-Mainz as if no incident
occurred and the city of Mainz had never seceded.
Meanwhile,
Weisbaden saw the workings of the electronic town hall system of democracy and
adopted it, expanding it to a weekly forum on ones computer with the ‘questions
of the week.’ Each citizen is expected
to read through the question, with arguments for and against neatly laid out
and all of which must be read before the actual ‘voting booth’ area can be
accessed, sometimes even with a quiz question to make sure that the voter has
actually read the arguments and particulars and is making an informed
choice. In this way each major article
of
law is passed by referendum on a weekly basis, taking a few hours out of everyones
week, but otherwise involving every citizen in the legislative process.
The
two cities have expanded to the banks of the Rhein, but still retain their own
individual characteristics, Weisbaden being the more open and free-wheeling of
the two, while Mainz is more down to earth and could be described as
‘sleepy.’ Generally tourists are
encouraged to visit Weisbaden and skip Mainz, by the Mainz residents as much as
anyone else. Mainz has become the
‘bedroom’ community and also a bit of an industrial center, leaving Weisbaden
no less suited for housing or manufacturing, but also more of an open city for
tourism and international banking, casinos and arts centers. Weisbaden is clearly the showcase city of
the pair.
Weisbaden
also has a Legion outpost, and the city is pushing to convince the Legions to
establish a permanent presence in the city, over the less than enthusiastic
opinions of the neighboring DDSR. For
their part, the Legions are overcoming the reservations of the more
conservative Mainz residents by an active program of public works, each
Legionnaire having been ordered to use his or her Gifts publicly for the common
good, answering emergency calls for everything from the fire brigade to air
evacuation to cats stuck in trees.
Despite the somewhat humiliating nature of a pair of combat-trained Psions
being ordered to use Temperature Control to clear the streets of snow at a
major intersection, the increased visibility has worked remarkably and even the
most recalcitrant citizens are beginning to get used to the idea of having
Psions around, so long as they are so helpful…
***************************************************************
BAMBERG
------
Population:
195,000 (2120 est.)
Government:
militocracy
Current
Leader: Generalmajor Konrad Winter
Suffrage:
‘Democracy’ with military personnel only getting votes based on grade
of service, allowing the Generalmajor
himself 25 votes
Human
Rights: 4 (all trials and laws are militarily governed)
Travel:
2 (immigration or emigration is ‘discouraged,’ as is tourism)
Media
Freedom: 2 (only state-sponsored programs are broadcast, and even they
are often censored in part)
Taxation
Level: 4 (high to moderate taxation at all levels)
Health
Care: 4 (excellent health care available only to military and their families;
non-soldiers receive only free
clinic-style outpatient care)
Economy:
2 (strongly regulated)
Industries:
services (35%); manufacturing (30%); agriculture (5%); other / military
(30%).
Military:
4 (all citizens must serve 2 years in military minimum and most try to remain
career; women find a glass ceiling
quickly)
Relations:
Openly hostile and suspicious of outsiders
Conflicts:
Open conflict with bandits out of Bayreuth
Bamberg
was fractured by the fall of the Republic and slow to react. They were still arguing about it when a
large foray out of the Bayreuth area, comprised of desperate workers, skinheads
and a few persuasive demagogues, swept into the city and began looting the
supermarkets and shopping centers. From
the local military base a force swept in and repelled the marauders at heavy
cost (more to the bandits than themselves), but after this failure on the part
of their elected officials, the army took it upon itself to declare martial
law. Within the year most of the
members of the former town council had been imprisoned for trying to stir up
unrest and foment dissension among the townspeople over the heavy-handed tactics
of the military leaders. A few were
even guilty of this…
Still,
for a small area, Bayreuth has made a wonderful scapegoat, being used by the
military to justify all sorts of regulations and requirements that would be considered
wholly unreasonable at any other time.
In truth the gangs sweeping that region would have to be wholly insane
to come anywhere near the fortified army town of Bamberg, with almost 30% of
the citizenry on active duty and armed at any given time!
The
Generalmajor has even taken to having troops sweep out to engage the gangs
marauding anywhere near Bamberg, not out of any sort of sympathy for the
outlying citizenry, but simply to remind his people that they are still out there
and that his martial law decrees are still justified. Some of these farms and smaller communities are warmly receptive
to these patrols, but in some areas the patrols are no better than the thugs
and bandits they repel, looting the spoils as they see fit, not recognizing the
importance of anyone not native to Bamberg or in its military. Only one reported case resulted in
disciplinary action, in this case execution, and in this case the civilizian
witnesses had photographic evidence to back up their testimony. Otherwise in a case of their word versus
that of citizens and soldiers, they would have lost the case summarily.
Before
the coup, a small Legion outpost was present in the city, but since the
declaration of martial law the Legions were curtly thanked for all their help and
asked to leave promptly.
***************************************************************
NEU
WESTFALEN
------
Population:
2,100,100; almost 700,000 of them in the capital of Münster (2111 est.)
Government:
Constitutional monarchy
Current
Leader: Queen Adelinde Moeller
Suffrage:
Largest land-owners and wealthiest persons elected to lords council, all
others get no vote
Human
Rights: 3 (average)
Travel:
3 (again, average)
Media
Freedom: 4 (certain programming deemed ‘innapropriate’)
Taxation
Level: 4 (high to moderate taxation, administered by lords council)
Health
Care: 3 (average level of care; based on ability to pay)
Economy:
3 (moderately regulated, tends to maintain the status quo)
Industries:
Services (70%); manufacturing (25%); agriculture (5%)
Military:
2 (draft, but only 10% of eligible persons are selected)
Relations:
gets along poorly with the PPK;allied with New Weimar and
the remnants of the Netherlands; studied
neutrality with the DDSR
Conflicts:
None
The
Moellers had been prominent land-holders and industrialists in the region for quite
some time, and, along with a half-dozen other prominent families, owned large percentages
of the surrounding province. When the
Federal Republic of Germany began to splinter, Emmerich Moeller, father of the
current Queen, reacted quickly and called together his 5 greatest rivals and
outlined the future of the province. By
and large, they agreed to his vision and saw to it that their employees and
their families (comprising a good 58% of the local population between them!)
‘voted’ in a constitutional monarchy with Moeller as ‘King’ and themselves as
his court of advisors or ‘lords council.’
The monarchy has not been without hiccoughs, such as the assassination
of King Emmerich and the ascension to the throne of his teen-aged daughter
Analinde, but so far the industrialists and land-holders, are all even wealthier
and more powerful than they were under a republic and their workers haven’t yet
seen things get bad enough to warrant a rebellion.
About
the only thing keeping it tolerable for the 2.1 million people who aren’t lords
or members of their immediate families is that it is considered a sign of
prestige to maintain the help above their rivals and manage their territories
better than the rest, resulting in each lord being quite extravagant and
generous to his workers and ‘vassals,’ at least when anyone is looking. Areas not as open to public scrutiny or particularly
productive are generally ignored altogether, making for some shocking contrasts
between the land-holdings of one lord from place to place. Queen Analinde cleverly maintains the lords
against one another by showing up from time to time at the oddest
out-of-the-way places to videotape the squalor in such a ‘forgotten’ place and
distribute some largess to the populace (which only endears her to them in a
way that her father never was). She
then returns to court and shows the films she made on her latest foray to the
lords council and wonders aloud which of them might administer this particular
blight on the nation? “What sort of
sloppy administrator with such a poor head for business could be overseeing
this little eyesore?” Status comes and
goes at her little soirees and the lords council have come to the conclusion that
she really has to go…
The
borders of the lords territories have no set zones, each lord having holdings scattered
about the territory, with the 60% of land that none of them owned before the
establishment of the monarchy being divided between them more or less equally. The original plan of King Emmerich was
merely to maintain his own industrial and territorial holdings in the face of
the imminent collapse of the German republic, and more importantly to him, its
economy. His daughter has entirely
different goals and the lords had no intention for her to remain alive a second
longer than her father, but the assassins sent to ‘deal with’ her ended up not
being seen again alive, leading the lords to wonder who or what is protecting the
woman-child from their agents. In fact
she actually seems blissfully unware of their machinations, yet no less
protected from them…
***************************************************************
DER
MITTELLANDKANAL
------
This
region does not qualify as a country or nation-state, yet warrants mention. The Mittellandkanel Region, stretching from
Berlin at the far end of New Weimar to Duisburg at the northern edge of then
PPK, is an autonomous region. The
kanalers are a fiercely independent mixture of the traditional nomadic Romany
and refugees from greater Germany, France, the Netherlands and diverse other
European nations. They have plied these
waters for generations, being born and living and dying on their barges. They are not the sort of people who would
stop their way of life just because Germany disintegrated into a dozen splinter
states!
The
nations through which the Mittellandkanal passes recognize the autonomy of the
river rats since each of these nations recognize the importance of trade
between themselves and the occasional smaller nation served by the kanal. Each nation has its own boats and barges
which make use of the kanal, but they stop at the local borders, only the
kanalers being waved through the borders (not without an occasional search as
they are not averse to smuggling…). In
the PPK, the Rhein has been in use for generations in much the same way, but
the workers along this river are not autonomous and the PPK keeps the division
clear. The DDSR tried briefly at its
inception to prevent the kanals autonomous status from being accepted in its
borders and blockaded the extranationals from its borders, but New Weimar, the
PPK and even tiny Neu Westfalen simply refused to trade with the new state,
making clear the scope of the situation.
The
kanalers are an odd polyglot folk, and despite a century of the former EC’s
bickering over a single language, either english, french, german or swiss as
‘national’ language for the entire EC, these speakers of Romany, German,
French, Dutch, etc have had to cobble together a strange hybrid tongue
comprising words and concepts from all of these languages (and a few more local
ones such as Danish, Polish and Swiss) to communicate amongst each other. Members of the Ministry Office of Semiotics
have been seen in Weisbaden-Mainz speaking with kanalers. The most optimistic interpretation is that their
conversation was about this new language and not about covert matters…
Generally,
despite dealing amicably with the citizens of all of the nations the kanal services,
the kanalers themselves have little or no interest in the laws of ‘the
shore.’ There is a small trade in
smuggling information, goods and even people from nation to nation and the
authorities in any of the areas (save the DDSR, which is pretty good about such
matters), usually will not even have an individual kanalers identity on file,
hindering any sort of check to see if a person is in actuality a member of this
floating society or not. More rarely
serious crimes might well occur when kanalers are in the area and they will
become accused (rightly or wrongly) of being involved, helping to insure that
kanalers will move on fairly quickly and keep to their nomadic roots. The DDSR in particular is quite good at
assigning blame to kanalers rather than actually investigate a situation. Unfortunately, in many cases, these
assumptions are warranted…
In
keeping with its Romany roots, a single travelling circus plies these waters,
appearing as a motley assemblage of barges and ships that put ashore and perform
for the locals, usually sticking to New Weimar, where such fare is better
received. Since gambling is legal only
on their boats in some areas, a few have attempted a ‘floating casino’ concept,
but the kanalers are not possessed of the sorts of resources that go into a new
venue in Oman, resulting in a rather seedy looking converted barge (often
hastily cleaned and smelling of whatever trade goods it carried yesterday)
attracting a much lower form of gambling crowd than would be found at a grand
casino.
***************************************************************
NEUHAFEN
------
Another
point of interest that is not a country in its own right, the city of Neuhafen
in the northen PPK was swamped and all but destroyed by the flooding that
destroyed the Netherlands. The Kommune
elected to rebuild the city as a seaport and, towards that end, has appointed
teams of construction workers and civil engineers to rebuild the town from the
foundation up. The town is an example
of all that is good about the PPK as squads of fulfilled happy citizens design,
plan and construct a magnificent seaport from the ground up near the original
site of the town of Neuhafen, and it is also an example of all that is askew in
the nation as civil planners and architects outnumber the physical builders two
to one and to maintain their elaborate timetables and schedules, the engineers have
been forced to hire outside help from the Netherlands and even Denmark, giving the
town a far more cosmopolitan feel than the designers had intended, especially
at this stage. The city is a surreal
site, over 4,500 engineers and architects and urban planners haunting the site
day and night, while only a few thousand native laborers are supplemented by
equal numbers of Netherlanders and smaller numbers of Danes. Some areas, with no apparent rhyme or
reason, are completely finished, while the heart of the downtown marina
district is still being defined and has yet to even have ground broken, creating
an almost movie-set quality where one entire section of mall will exist with parking
and no roads or utilities will yet service the area, while in other areas poles
and lines will be strung or roads laid, but to no apparent purposes as no
buildings will be present, only empty fields…
Finally, the off-duty workers, both native and Netherlander, tend to
spend their free time experimenting with the latest in drugs, and a thriving
market has already been set up in this area as shipments arrive from the
Netherland isles to keep the laborers happy in their work.
***************************************************************
BREMERHAVEN
/ WILHELMSHAVEN
---------
Another
region along the flooded northern coastal lowlands, the city of Bremerhaven in
the DDSR is still intact and in use, despite the water having risen pretty much
permanently a full meter, rendering the first floor of most buildings pretty
much unusable and a bewildering array of new walkways between buildings exist
on the third floor of most buildings to facilitate travel from building to
building. The city has become a new
Venice of sorts, with waterways now replacing streets and the lower levels of
buildings having been sealed off or, in some rare cases, kept watertight and
still in use. Despite the fact that
water surrounds them and power-boats replace cars, the city functions pretty
much as normal, some residents of outlying highlands either commuting or owning
amphibious vehicles capable of getting around in town or traveling on the roads
around their homes in the drier south.
Despite the potential picturesqueness of the flooded city, the citizens
of Bremerhaven are busy with banking and industrial concerns, not at all
interested in catering to the fantasies of Europeans who are thinking of
singing gondoliers and romance. As a
result, the city is relatively clean and orderly (and the civic workers are
quite accustomed to using Scuba gear in the performance of their jobs, as
almost everything created before the flooding was ‘buried’) and is most
definitely not a remarkable tourist haven.
For
the tourists there is Wilhelmshaven, a city which did not fare so well. Inhabited by only a sparse twelve thousand
residents now, mostly working in industries to serves the tourism trade with
bed-and-breakfasts, restaurants and tours, the city of Wilhelmshaven suffered
from a strong series of winter storms that drove the waters into the city, but
also collapsed several buildings in the downtown area, resulting in the
necessary abandonment of the downtown area.
This area, looking like some sort of post-apocalyptic flooded warzone,
is now a popular
site
of tourism as people from all over the world take a somber sort of pleasure
travelling by skiff or raft through the winding streets and seeing the
collapsing buildings all around them. At
various points along the tour a second story on some building will contain a
functional restaurant or hostel or memento shop selling items bearing the citys
name or crest scavenged from the ruins.
(Or, more likely, pressed out in some workshop by the sellers.)
***************************************************************
SLESVIG
------
Population:
472,000 (2120 est.)
Government:
Federal Republic
Current
Leader: Chancellor Adolf Ebert
Suffrage:
All adult citizens are allowed a vote.
Human
Rights: 3/4 (system is ‘less fair’ to immigrants not of Danish descent)
Travel:
3 (standard)
Media
Freedom: 4 (no actual censorship occurs, but a ‘preference’ for NC and Danish
programming prevails)
Taxation
Level: 4 (high to moderate income and property taxation, no sales tax)
Health
Care: 4 (excellent health care available to citizens and tourists)
Economy:
3 (regulations tend to encourage seatrade)
Industries:
services (25%); manufacturing (20%); agriculture (45%); other / military
(10%)
Military:
3 (all citizens must serve 2 years in military)
Relations:
Hostile to former Equality Federation, strained with DDSR, secretly
allied to Poland, open alliance with
Danmark, good relations with the NC
Conflicts:
Battle over sealanes with the EF has ended with the Polish conquest
of that nation, border tensions with the
DDSR remain
The
region of Slesvig (sometimes called South Slesvig by Danes) has always been a
heavily Danish settled region, sometimes being considered more Danish than
German. The people ratified a new
constitution upon the collapse of the rest of Germany and fought off an attempt
by the DDSR to assimilate them with a brief spate of border conflict, losing
much ground (their original charter went all the way to Lubeck) to the far
superior forces of the larger nation.
They then proceeded to dominate sea trade and aquaculture in the area
with enormous sea farms all along their coastal waters (and the DDSR’s, a
source of renewed tension) and merging seamlessly with similar efforts by the
Danes, although a referendum to join more intimately with Denmark was narrowly
voted down, and the nation retains its own independence.
A
brief spate of sea conflict with the Equality Federation, another heavy user of
oceanic resources, ended recently with the conquest of that nation by Poland, with
Slessian aid, unknown to most. Polish
troops were shuttled to the western-most points of the Federation by Slessian
ships, bypassing EF and other vessels with no suspicions. The troops then landed in the Mecklenburger
Bucht just outside of Wismar and timed their landing to come at the same time
as the push into the eastern Federation, creating a pincer movement that took
the entire well- armed nation (save for New Weimar-fortified Rostok) in only a
week. The DDSR and New Weimarian forces
are not aware of Slesvigs role in this action, although the New Weimarians are
somewhat dubious about how the Poles got troops past their presence in Rostok
or how convenient it was that Slesvig now dominates the entire northern coastal
waters of the former Equality Federation with no apparent complaint from
Poland.
The
current plan is for Poland to take New Weimar while a combined force from
Slesvig and Denmark proper move down into the DDSR. Poland claims that it will be satisfied there, having designs on
properties in other directions and needing to consolidate, and the people of
Slesvig appear to be believing them for now…
***************************************************************
FREIBURG
------
This
region is not truly a nation in any sense of the word, having been overrun by
French refugees and serving now as a desperate refugee camp / resettlement zone
for the expats.
***************************************************************