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Penrose Propaganda Poster from Signalis

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Map of the Solar System from Signalis

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ARA is Making Progress! - Signalis Propaganda Poster

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Map of the Occcident [Paranoika]

This world building project, called the Paranoika, is an exercise in portraying the nuances of cold war geopolitics and storytelling under fictional contexts. Much of the worldbuilding done draws from the real world, including city and nation names, geography, and the general progress of history.

The Occident is a diverse and historically rich continent located entirely in the north-western hemisphere. |The Occident is home to over 1.5 billion people across 34 nations, some of which are the largest and wealthiest in the world. The continent has played a crucial role in shaping world history, from the birth of ancient civilizations in Vitrogny and Graad, the formation of the Sacrosanct religion, and the industrial revolution. These forces would propel Occidental civilization into becoming a dominant presence on the world stage. Influencing the world, first through an era of expansive colonialism, and now through the cold war of the contemporary age. 

The Occident today is locked into a period of geopolitical tension colloquially known as the Paranoika. fought between the secular, leftist nations of the Communauté and liberal democracies of the Solantic League. The roots of the Paranoika can be traced back to the diplomatic tensions preceding the Volhynian Deluge of 1328, a conflict that saw the sole surviving colonial empire in the Occident collapse into civil war. The signing of the Centennial Armistice Treaty in 1300 saw the formal end to over 20 years of revolution and war throughout the Occident. Leading to disagreements from the victorious nations as to the future of the Occident. In the immediate aftermath of the Volhynian Deluge, the debate for the future of the Occident became central as the former Volhynian empire was carved up. The first major confrontation came a year later, in 1229, when the Communauté attempted to restrict access to the Voz canal, the sole link between the Solantic Sea and the world at large. This marked a turning point, shifting the Paranoika from diplomatic tensions to the brink of armed conflict. By 1330, the Paranoika was firmly in place as the conflict spread around the world. Chiefly on the continent of Sintripoli, where communard and solantic aligned militants would struggle for dominance in the cocaine trade, sparking the first of many Magenta wars.

Elsewhere in the Occident, other powers would rise in spite of the Paranoika. In 1333, the nation of Hielkant would be partitioned after a war with Vitrogny turned disastrous. Hielaknt was divided between the communard backed Socialst Republic of Hielkant and the solantic aligned Hielian Democratic Union. The HDU would break away from solantic influence in 1339 under the direction of Dirigisme or statism, which emphasized state-run market economies. The HDU would prosper in spite of the numerous recessions of the 1340’s, culminating in the establishment of the Western Occidental Treaty Organization during the decade: which saw much of the Kanter and Walder speaking nations unify into a powerful military and economic bloc, contesting both communard and solantic power in the west. 

Years after the Volhynian Deluge, what remained of the Volhynian state stabilized under a federal democracy. Wary of future conflict, the new Volhynia would seek alliances from other surrounding nations directly in the path of solantic or communard expansion. This alliance would formalize in 1335 as the paradoxically named États Sans Alliés, or states without allies. The ESA today consists of three core members; the aforementioned Volhynina Republic, the autocratic Veszél, and the minarchist Veduvor. Numerous other nations around the world align with the ESA, with the alliance representing the interests of the global non-aligned movement.

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Penrose Propaganda Poster from Signalis

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Map of the Solar System from Signalis

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The Communauté is a regional left-wing, political, economic, and defensive union of seven autonomous nations that spans much of the Volta-do-mar and southern Occidental continent. The Communautés origins lay in the 1282 Occidental Revolution, which after 18 years of conflict, saw colonial, leftist revolutionaries and sympathetic army mutineers overthrow the Ossitan Empire in Vitrogny. The Communauté expanded beyond the confines of the former Ossitan colonial sphere by incorporating the breakaway Socialist Republic of Hielkant from it’s sister monarchy, following Hielkants defeat in a brief but costly war with Vitrogny in the 1330’s

While nominally an alliance of equals, in actuality the Republic of Vitrogny dominates the political aims of the Communauté, with half of all delegates in the International Congress being sent by Vitrogny. Vitrogny also plays a major role in contributing to the Communauté's defense budget, with the Republic being responsible for 80% of Communauté defense spending, while controlling the entirety of the Communauté's atomic arsenal, the largest in the world. A notable exception to the trend of Vitrian military dominance comes from the Communauté's anti-piracy air-brigades. Spearheaded by the nation of Caillou and extensively deployed in the Montese archipelago, these air-brigades sow the seeds of conflict between the Communauté and the Sayette Socialist Republic. Mirroring Vitrogny's own economic policy, the Communauté likewise has adopted a series of market liberalization reforms over the course of the 1340's, making the union the world's second largest economy, all the while embittering the people Curon, Caillou, and Samara, who often find themselves on the blunt end of Communauté economic policy.

The Communauté contrasts itself with its international rival, the Solantic League, through the abundance of freedoms afforded to social expressions at the expense of political ones. Indeed, despite decades of steady reform, the political process of the nations within the Communauté continue to be dominated by single party "coalitions" or by enfranchised labor unions. Only the Republic of Vitrogny maintains competitive elections, albeit with a strict party threshold criteria.

The ideological disparity between the Communauté and the Solantic League has set the stage for an era of increased global tensions dubbed the “Paranoika” by Solantic politicians.

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Map of the Solantic League

This is my personal world building project, meant to draw illusions from real world history in fictional contexts. The setting approximates our real world's 1970’s, with a particular emphasis on the geopolitical tensions during the early cold war. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Solantic League is an economic and political world superpower comprising 16, nominally autonomous free-market democracies, located primarily in the eastern Occidental and western Merkopol continents.

The League was formed from the nation-state polities who emerged in the wake of the Graad Spring revolutions of the late 1290's. Initially a pro democracy protest movement, in which, after the controversial assassination of the "living saint" Lilliana Kollanti (the leader and living god of the radical branch of the Sacrosanct religion), spiraled into an armed revolt against monarchical rule. The Solantic League stands today as a union of center-left and center-right political parties elected from across the League's territories to form the various governing and legislative bodies of the League. Unlike other trans-national unions, the governing process of the Solantic League is not entirely secular, as the majority of League citizens are followers of the radical sect of Sacrosanctity, and as a result have adapted the Leagues' political and legal systems to accommodate the reincarnation of the next living saint.

Recently, the expansion of the League into the territories of the collapsed Volhynian Empire in 26' and the intervention and occupation of territory during Vespertine civil war in 44' has drawn the ire of various other regional and international powers. As a result, an era of increasing geopolitical tensions and economic recession, dubbed the "Paranoika", has descended on the free-market democracies of the Solantic League and the secular, left wing nations of the Communauté.

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Map of the planet Jangal, from the game Starsector.

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Mpa of the Wuhu archipelago from Wii Sports Resort.

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The American south-west from Fallout

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Map of the NCR, drawn from a combination of game canon from all three west coast fallout games (and a little from the show).