#Følslava

[once-and-future-alaskan]

I just got reminded of the existence of Nuclear Sail designs for spacecraft and oomfies, we may have just had a breakthrough in Følslavas Spaceship design.

[alaskanexile]

Occasionally day dream about the idea of running a homebrew TTRPG in Følslava but always have to reality check myself with the facts that

A) The players could not play as the absolute coolest shit in the setting without breaking the entire game over their knees instantly. like no, I'm sorry, I know being an android girl is like your entire gender identity but you cannot play a Combat Amary because unfortunately that'd mean you're playing DMC/Ultrakill while everyone else is still playing callerdoody. No, i will not nerf them to make them playable. Them being insanely overpowered Is the point.

2) It'd be impossible to surprise anyone with the whackier shit in the setting as a mystery since I've already shared what exists in universe with the people who would theoretically play it. I can't make a mystery that reveals [REDACTED] because everyone in my friend group is aware of [DATA EXPUNGED] already.

[once-and-future-alaskan]

Because, alas, the robots of the future will be built by tech bros and every single IT thought leader is basing every decision on sci-fi they've consumed and nothing else, so if they think they can make cognizant ai by GOD they'll try.

i always kinda hate the "why would anyone build a humanoid robot"/"why does the robot have boobs" argument, like even aside from the REALLY obvious reason.

as a human who lacked boobs, i sought to acquire boobs. the human form being popular among beings that experience most of their existence around humans is inevitable. the real question is why anyone would build a cognizant robot.

[once-and-future-alaskan]

Blood spatters and seeps into my shirt from the gaping chest wound of the woman on the rough stone of the alley. More smears my arm as her grip on it loosens and slips. I stare at her a moment, studying the soon to be corpse. The frozen look of terror is becoming stiff, her eyes are dimming, and her body grows colder.

"They collect fast." Mutters my partner from the entrance at the street.

I look to him to see he's pointing upwards, I follow the direction to see a single raven perched on the loose stonework. The scavenger bird looming over me and staring into my very soul.

"Do not judge me, ye ascended." I call up too it. "Did your kings spear not once run red with the blood of his own mother?" I ask.

A long silence, and then.

"Much grew from the blood of Sheolna. Yfirdrail itself became strong and fruitful by the crimson water in her veins." A ringing voice in the mind, pausing only briefly. "What will come of this slaughter? What will grow from yours?"

I cannot answer before the raven takes flight. I turn to see the girls soul has been taken. I turn and take my leave.

[once-and-future-alaskan]

We are up to three (3) pieces of Følslava lore being created in my dreams now.

[alaskanexile]

New stupid lore: Weed by the "present" in Følslava is simultaneously the most hyper potent it has ever been ever, and yet by this point there isn't really much of a culture around it.

This is shit you do not just do casually. You do not do this when you have any plans or responsibilities to deal with. It is exclusively a weekend substance at this point. This is Ur Weed, the primordial THC made manifest, the stuff people who have no idea how drugs work imagine it's like.

But unlike irl, where there are people whose entire personality is "dude, weed" and you can consume it in every possible form, Følslava weed is just a thing you can pick up at your local smoke shop for the equivalent of like 10 bucks. You can smoke it, or you can make edibles at home if you know how, and thats it. Nobody gives a fuck.

And like, why would you? There is an entire universe of new and fascinating substances you can put in your body nowadays! Who would give a fuck about pot?

[alaskanexile]

Stelyuzia is best known of it's army, and rightfully so, while nowhere near undefeated in the way it's propaganda portrays, the Stelyuzian Ground Forces have long been rightfully feared by any peer adversary. This is primarily thanks too an extremely effective combined arms doctrine that places heavy emphasis on overwhelming fire superiority, working in tandem with a cohesive and well organized military structure.

Stelyuzian offensive campaigns typically work in stages, but in simplest terms air forces provide support to heavy artillery barrage, followed up by armored assaults being closely followed behind by infantry. There's a great deal more complexity to it than that but historically, this has been what has won Stelyuzia the day in peer conflicts. Guerilla warfare and COIN operations are another matter, but that's not our focus today.

By comparison, Stelyuzias primary historical peers have all lacked something. The White League of Pharose, technically a military coalition of the various Pharosian national military's, has come the closest to outright trouncing the Stelyuzian military in open war. Lessons learned from the Pharosian War make up the basis of even modern Stelyuzian military theory. The White Leagues strategy was sound, their tactics excellent, and their manpower ample and committed. The difference was, unfortunately, technology and political infighting as the war dragged on. Pharose had worked hard to close the technological gap after opening it's borders and entering the interstellar stage, but was still lacking in even things as basic as modern small arms.

The Grand Armée of the Republique of Tov is a competent fighting force that more than matches, and often surpasses, Stelyuzian technology! But it is hampered by it's haphazard and disorganized structure that breeds infighting among leadership and disorder on the field and creates total chaos in the logistics system with incompatible parts and munitions between it's constituent organizations. That's without touching chronically poor morale among enlisted troops and conscripts and the rampant corruption among senior ranks.

The Enduran Independence Coalition had uncontested technological superiority in it's day. By it's height, it even fielded fully sealed combat helmets with Heads Up Displays alongside basic exosuits to even it's most basic infantry! But it was never able to match the sheer manpower or material resources of Stelyuzia, leading too an over reliance on it's special forces that simply could not make up the difference. That's without going into the high cost and over-engineered nature of it's vehicles and gear making repairs costly and downtime lengthy.

I lay all this out, because it makes an interesting contrast to the Stelyuzian Navy. While the Ground Forces adapted and learned from the Pharosian War, the Navy has managed to maintain such a strict adherence to tradition that it is effectively unchanged from it's initial formation.

Stelyuzian Naval Doctrine is fundamentally that the Navy's sole function is to support the Ground War. Everything it does is in support of this, all it's offensive tools and defenses exist only too allow it to continue providing supplies and reinforcements to the ground side. This has lead to an extremely static and long range battle order, with a heavy over reliance on Battleships and Siegeships. Every other variant of ship in a fleet is either purely logistics or only exists to protect the battleships and Siegeships. Even Carriers, the heart of basically every other navy, are small and only launch their Void fighters to intercept hostile fighters moving in range of the fleet.

It is not to say that the Stelyuzian Navy is in anyway useless, far from it, but historically even it's proudest victories were pyrrhic. The famed Winter Offensive that ended the Pharosian War decisively had an attrition rate of 3 Stelyuzian ships for every 1 Pharosian ship. Some particularly brave historians even suggest that the Winter Offensive only succeeded because of the direct support of the Tovi navy to make up for the Stelyuzians inflexibility.

In many ways, had the Winter Offensive failed, it's likely that both the war would have ended in a peace treaty instead of the glassing of Pharose and that the Stelyuzian Navy would have been forced to reform. Though, given the history of post war Stelyuzia under the Immortal Council, the latter may be wishful thinking.

Interestingly, the Navy of the Republique has always existed in stark contrast to the Grand Armée. Where the Army is essentially a collection of six competing paramilitaries in a trench coat, the navy is and always has been a single organization. With no battleships and only one Siegeship to a fleet, the Republique navy instead focuses on a highly mobile order of battle centered around its' massive carriers. Republique Void Fighters are critical to any engagement and most other ships utilize speed or stealth to get in range to deliver devastating missile barrages.

[alaskanexile]

A friend of mine came to me a week ago with this peculiar idea of an alt history where the Soviets cloned the M16 instead of adopting the AK-74. She acknowledges the entire premise is silly but it's for fun so who cares. Basically, she was looking for input on what changes they'd make too it.

We went back and forth a fair bit. She did take my input seriously and conceded certain points, namely there was no way the Soviets would keep the bolt release and would want to incorporate the dovetail rail on the side to make use of their preexisting scopes. That being said, there were a fair few she didn't agree with at all so i decided to say fuck it and design both her final design and then my own take.

Her rifle is the TKB-174, the Dzyubenko Proposal from the Tula Arsenal. My take is the TKB-175, the Vendal Proposal from Ishevsk.

In general i feel she was...overly optimistic about the Soviets material realities or willingness to change. I didn't color them because I didn't feel like it, but her 174 variant features full polymer furniture.

In the 70s.

Look, I'm aware of the Soviets use of polymers. i know about the green border guard AKMs, but those were limited and uncommon. If the Soviets were capable of mass production of polymer furniture for their mainline rifles in the 1970s, don't you think the AK-74 would have had it? It wasn't even some kind of trad disinterest in polymer because muh wood. They attempted a program to add as many Bakelite parts to the AK in the 50s or 60s to make it lighter, going so far as to make the dust cover plastic! This ultimately failed of course, Bakelite is fairly fragile, but It's the whole reason the AKM and 74 had Bakelite pistol grips!

So the 175 has wood furniture. The reality is it wouldn't be till the 80s till we'd start seeing mass produced polymer furniture in that lovely plum color.

She made an attempt to maintain the Soviet manual of arms, particularly for reloading, by moving the latch of the AR's T shaped charging handle to the right side. (Soviet reloading technique was to do everything with the right hand.) This feels contrived and like it wouldn't really do much, so i just made the 175 into a weird cludge of an AK into an ARs form factor.

Her lower is aluminum. I don't think the Soviets would bother with aluminum due to cost and not caring much about the weight. So my lower is stamped metal.

Basically, she's conceived a largely straight forward AR-15 clone with some Slavic flair. I've conceived a rifle that's attempting to be as cheap as possible while being an AK with extra steps.

I'm not sure if this was part of a larger project of hers or just a thought experiment, but to make this somewhat useful to me i have made these kind of canon to Følslava.

Within Følslavas lore, these were developed and proposed alongside the AK-74. Dzyubenkos 174 was rejected due to high per unit cost, being too radical a change as well as not wanting to use an American design, and concerns over the Direct impingement gas system in cold climates. Vendals 175 was rejected for just being kind of weird and ugly and not offering anything an AK couldn't do. The timeline proceeded as normal from here with the adoption of the AK-74.

the 174 and 175 were filed away in the arsenals archives and largely forgotten about for a few decades. They would eventually be brought to the publics attention in the 2040s, when a prominent firearms historian and online video maker was granted access to these archives and made a series on these strange curiosities.

[once-and-future-alaskan]

Tonight's shift has just been me getting payed to make up oc lore tbh.

I've decided Tensa canonically accidentally pioneers several new Mystikerinkommando combat tactics. Not by tactical genius or being some uniquely gifted Resonance user - she actually has lower levels of resonance in her system and worse control of its flow than the average Mystic - but because on any given combat mission she's operating on three hours sleep and has at least two 4loko's in her system. Her self-preservation instinct is playing second fiddle to the sirens call of "I can probably survive that."

[once-and-future-alaskan]

Making up gun companies for Følslava is a spectrum ranging from "Hass & Kabel is literally just Heckler and Koch. No they somehow do not produce the gun most like the G36." On one end too "Royal Arms is what would happen if Glock originally produced reproduction firearms of the British Empire, made a modern striker fired 9mm to diversify which ended up making them one of the biggest mfgs in history, and then armed a failed human supremacist coup and had all their assets siezed and leadership arrested." On the other.

[alaskanexile]

This is more just a for me post, but like it really has been revelatory finally embracing the Fiegr Uprising as the "end point" of Følslavas timeline. Finally forcing me to give it an actual conclusion instead of just ending in a crushing reassertion of the settings status quo.

The setting didn't need some grand seminal conflict to dwarf the Pharosian War! What it needed was its most interesting and important era that i like to write in to leave a lasting impact on the world.

[once-and-future-alaskan]

Dracula in Følslava, brooding in his ancient castle to his court, dictating an open letter to the various lesser vampiric lord's: We must remain in shadow. It is not our place to rule mortals and any chance we had to do so died with the first colony ships. No grand prophecy to black out the sun matters when there are hundreds more habited worlds around hundreds of other sun's to come save this one. No vampiric plague can escape modern medicine or this atmosphere. We will continue the masquerade if we wish to continue at all, any attempt to break it will be crushed immediately.

Dracula in Strangerreal, in a video call with Director Hunt of Group 931. (His thralls had to set up the computer for him): They must have amnesia, they forgot that I’m him. I’m sick in the head. I left my Margiela’s in the Benz trunk, I’ll have to stunt on them next time. I don’t give a fuck if I go blind, I don’t need to see the price tag anyways. We smoking filtered crack you stupid piece of shit, I’ll fucking kill you. Reach for my neck, you'll get turned into an example. Y'all gotta stop playing with me man. I have seen what lies under Verdom, I have seen the eye of horror. I was flipping bricks in Qutond before y'all even became a type I civilization. This shit ain't nothing to me you stupid piece of shit, step the wrong way and you will perish. You think I care about this shit? Ask me if I care about this shit, cause I don't give a shit If I had a dollar for every time they said I gave a shit, I'd be broke cause I don't give a shit. I balled so hard they thought I was a fucking nutsack. This shit ain't nothing to me man, I'll kill you, you stupid piece of shit

[once-and-future-alaskan]

To be entirely honest I think most of the issue is two fold. In a broader sense, i think it's actually really hard for most people to think in 3d space. Not literally of course but aircraft add a 3rd dimension that's much harder to envision consistently for most people. We are, regrettably, a naturally earth bound species so for most of us its harder to think about.

I struggle with it personally and it's definitely most evident in most space naval games and media, which depict fleet battles largely as a 2d plane where using the Z-Axis is exclusively used for flashy maneuvers. Hell, even most dedicated plane games struggle here since so many basically relegate ground targets to harmless cannon fodder because they dunno how to make them satisfying to deal with.

The second problem is that most science fiction media is made by people who are not actually thinking that deeply about how all their jargon and tech interacts so things end up being ww2 in space.

as a plane lady i always kinda hate that combined arms games resolve not to actually balance aircraft in the conventional sense and instead just gate them behind absurd costs to the extent that you can't really specialize in them or have a good time unless you're *also* good at everything else, and on top of that tend to actually have plenty of counters for air that it's easy to blunder into when you finally *do* get access to it to the extent that as i go down to the random chucklefuck on a rock with a MANPADS whose grid square i passed over for the 489th time in Planetside 2 i wonder if the cost/cooldown penalties are even warranted to begin with.

like being honest here, you could probably make a game that accommodates all the sections of combined arms if you're willing to delve into some sci-fi stuff. like fucking hitscans. lasers would be fucking oppressive versus aircraft, really most hypervelocity ballistics would probably be too. hell, it wouldn't even be too far fetched to give MBTs a lead indicator for anti-air plinking, M1s already have radar that can track at least low-flying helos. infantry would take more and it'd be heavily dependent on map design to prevent just head-on fights where they'd obviously lose, but if you just flat out made them move like Titanfall they'd at least be non-trivial for armor and aircraft to engage and could carry a few weapons to hit back from cover. like, boom, you've laid the foundations for them actually being competitive with each other.

[once-and-future-alaskan]

If Følslava ever became A Thing I think it'd be really funny to never expressly mention the official party of the Stelyuzian governments real name, like it'd only ever be referred too by a stupid abbreviation or the Rusutch name, in stories and stuff. This way, you could see the cope from the sorts of chud nerds who actually idolize horrible fictional space empires when some other nerd points out a lore text refers to it as The Communist Party of Stelyuzia.

[once-and-future-alaskan]

Cool Følslava Fact's: white people ceased too exist around 2140.

[once-and-future-alaskan]

The problem with wanting to introduce more independent/unaligned/minor states and powers to Følslava is I can only skirt the nuke issue so long.

For just about any industrialized nation, making a nuke isn't really that hard. All the science and information is out there, it's just acquiring the material that prevents universal global proliferation. Both because of its relative scarcity and extensive international law.

But in the case of entire worlds of independent states and countless more resource rich but unclaimed planets, the needed material is now abundantly common and free flowing.

I can't really just...not acknowledge that, ya know?