MotF 83: Atop a Throne of Skulls

The POD (or one of them) is Polynesians landing on and successfully colonizing of the OTL Queensland coast in the 12th or 13th century. Some centuries later, the Danish Empire rules the waves. They too colonized the coast, and this leads to some tension with the natives. A minor incident involving three pigs and a flowerbed escalated and provoked the rather unstable Governor, Cristoffer Schluter, to attack and destroy several major native settlements. The resulting war was won by the Danes, but the natives proved to be surprisingly good fighters, especially when they could get their hands on the Danish rifles. Enraged by the surprisingly high Danish casualties and the destruction of the Danish settlement of Augustaborg, Schluter created his (First) Removal Program, which involved a lot of rounding up and killing. He was stopped by the Danish government, but the Second Removal Program wasn't so great either. It involved a lot of rounding up and forced-marching into the interior grasslands, which could not support the sweet potato agriculture that was the natives' staple food source. Starvation and internal strife ensued until the natives managed to adopt a new lifestyle (partially based on pig farming, which had been the food source of the natives' western settlements before), though eventually they were forced out again.

This is a map from a book about Danish atrocities in Australia printed in England, a country with strong historical animosity toward the Danes ITTL due to some major disputes around the North Atlantic.

Excerpt from Spherical History: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1868-2026 by Kaito Waterman:

"One [major infrastructure] project embarked upon by the Japanese during the decades following the Second World War was the Krabi Canal in southern Thailand. By linking the Pacific and Indian Oceans via the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea, the Canal would allow quicker and easier access to India, Burma and Japanese Ceylon from and to the rest of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. While presented as being intended primarily for use by commercial sea traffic, the Canal was designed to accommodate IJN [Imperial Japanese Navy] ships and was certainly intended for military use. [...] As well as the Canal, the project also demanded the construction of a new town and port at Chonkhram east of Surat Thani, the upgrading of existing facilities at Krabi and building of new rail links.

"Construction work on the Krabi Canal Project commenced in 1954 and lasted the greater part of six years. The majority of the work was carried out by a labour force comprised of American, British, Australian and Dutch former-POWs whose detention had continued even after the formal cessation of hostilities in 1948, along with political prisoners and dissenters as well as regular convicts and civilians from across the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Labourers were housed in one of three labour camps located at Surat Thani, Chonkhram and Krabi, all of which were built by the labourers themselves. [...] Conditions in the camps, once built, were dire with up to 100 men housed in a single dormitory and one set of sanitary facilities for every five dormitories. Meals were provided twice a day at dawn and dusk and consisted of boiled rice and water with scraps of vegetables or offal. [...] Labourers would be expected to work continuously for up to 18 hours a day.

"Estimates of the number of labourers who died during the six year project vary from 25,000 to over 100,000 however most historians agree on a figure in the range of 35,000 to 50,000 people. Some of those thousands who perished died as a result of overwork and malnutrition, from beatings and other punishments by Japanese and Thai overseers, and from taking their own lives. However, by far the biggest single killer though was disease as the unsanitary and overcrowded conditions allowed the virtually unimpeded spread of malaria, dengue fever, cholera and typhoid through the population. There is no evidence of any preventive measures being taken."

WWII (very brief timeline):

1939:
September-Germany and the Soviet Union invade Poland.
October-Germany and the Soviet Union divide and annex Poland.
November-Soviet Union invades Finland

1940:
April-Germany invades Denmark. Denmark surrenders and is annexed by Germany. Germany invades the Netherlands, Belgium and France. The Netherlands and Belgium surrender.
May-France surrenders and is divided in two zones. Italy invades Greece.
July-Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia join the Axis.
August-The Axis jointly invade Yugoslavia and aid Italy in Greece.
November-Yugoslavia is split. Italy annexes Greece.

1941
April-Finland join the Axis. Germany, Finland and Romania invade the Soviet Union.
October-Stalin flees Moscow. Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad fall.
December-The Soviet Union formally surrenders to Germany, and its borders are rolled back behind the Ural-Urals line. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and the USA declares war on the Axis.

1942
January-Germany begins the organization of Western Russia as Lebensraum. German forces reinforce French and Italian positions in North Africa.
April-Germany begins a campaign of intense bombing of southern England, called the Battle of Britain.
May-The Battle of Britain is deemed a costly failure, and the Nazis instate the Fortress Europa doctrine, by planning a coherent coastal defense on the whole continent.
June-Germany takes Gibraltar and Malta. The Japanese offensive on the Pacific comes to a grinding halt, and the allies take the initiative.
August-The British defeat the Axis in North Africa and temporarily take over Libya.
November-The allies attempt to invade Morocco and Algeria in an operation named Torch.
December-The allies lose all the ground gained and the beachheads. Torch is considered failed.

1943
April-The allies attempt to invade Portugal, in an operation called Husky. They are quickly defeated, but manage to save most of their equipment. It is at this moment that the Allies decide that the only realistic option to invade Axis territory is from the United Kingdom, through the French or Belgian coastline.

1944
May-The allies have retaken all the lost territory to Japan. Japan now only controls the home islands and the Chinese mainland. The allies launch operation Overlord: an amphibious assault on a weak point of the Atlantic Wall. They manage to establish solid beachheads, until the nearby German divisions arrive. It becomes a very costly failure.

1945
August-The Soviet Union re-enters the conflict declaring war against Japan. Japan requests German aid but is denied, as the Nazis believe themselves safe.
November-The Soviet Union annexes Manchuria.
December-Having lost all the Chinese Mainland, and with threat of invasion of the home islands by the USSR and the USA, Japan surrenders to the Americans.

1946
May-The allies launch operation Morningstar, an amphibious assault on the surroundings of Calais, preceded by nuclear bombing of the most dangerous coastal artillery batteries and the known locations of Nazi reserves and Panzerdivisionen.
July-The allied offensive stalls after retaking Paris and the NW of France. The allies drop nuclear bombs on Bonn and Frankfurt. The planned bombings of Berlin, Dresden, Vienna and Bremen fail due to the Luftwaffen. Hitler is assassinated by a military conspiracy. Germany falls in Civil War between the Nazi loyalists, who advocate to fight to the last man, and the "True Germans", who advocate concessions to the allies, to obtain a peace treaty. The allies relaunch their offensive against a deeply diminished enemy.

1947
January-Having won the civil war, the True Germans formally surrender to the Allies.

God's Own Country

In spite of the various accidents which occurred to the great powers leaping into the interstellar age, India's attempt to shoot for the heavens was going full-speed ahead. The spark that would ignite the E-V infestations was not struck in the depths of interstellar space, nor on a distant planet, but around our own blue orb. The ISRO Orbital Vehicle apparently came into contact with something in space. After an emergency crash-landing near the Lakshadweep Islands, it appeared the crew was experiencing lung collapsing and bone loss on a faster scale than would normally occur. Scientists debated over whether to cremate the Vyomanauts, and decided to see whether other non-pathogenic source caused the ailment. Inspecting the lungs of the unlucky vyomanauts, they found a foreign organic structure which appeared to be growing from their lungs.

Pneumatiform pulmonary Infection, aka Suresh Disease and PFPI/Pefpi was determined to be an organism of extraterrestrial origin. Although it acted like a fungus, closer inspection revealed more in common with protozoan life. It created large structures of bone-like material to house itself, destroying the tissues of the organism and consuming the cells for raw material. Upon discovering the lethal impact of the organism. The scientists attempted to destroy the organism, but it was too late.

In a moment of hesitation, the organism broke quarantine, and began spreading it's seeds on the wind. by the time authorities were alerted as to the epidemic, PFPI was busy adapting to the high oxygen levels of Earth, and converting organic material into a skeletal structure. Everything coated in it's spores eventually was eaten away and subsummed into the large structures of the PFPI. Disturbingly tall structures, called Elampukal-Vattam climbing up several stories high began appearing. However, this was only the above-ground action, as the roots of the PFPI sought more material to harness to grow. Everything from palm trees to buried humans was utilized, in an effort to reach the upper atmosphere to access the best wind currents for spreading seedlings. Eventually some made the jump to Sri Lanka, where they wreaked havoc upon the country's shoddy defense systems.

The Indian government hastily established Three Exclusion zones, each with it's own procedure regarding civilians and extermination. Exclusion Zones 2 and Sri Lanka were to be careful managed. Refugees were allowed, but any showing signs of illness were to be summarily executed on the spot and cremated. Exclusion Zone 1 was 'abandoned'; Anything coming from that area was to be incinerated via flamethrower.

Nuclear weaponry had been utilized until the realization radiation had little long term impact on the growth of the Structures. In any case, it was justified by saying 'it denied the Thing the sustenance (in the form of living beings) it needed to grow', proven false as Adisheesha began growing into the irradiated Zones feeding off the ashes. Carpet bombing and deleterious chemicals are used to cull the growing tendrils. Civilians in Exclusion Zones often try to halt the advance by hacking it up, when all it does is spread the structure and create new infectees. In some instances, the Elampukal-Vattam would excrete poisonous chemicals of it's own to kill would be attackers.

Though sheer statistical numbers throw the fight in India's favour, it is obvious from the huge bio-mass of the Elampukal-Vettam that it will be a long, arduous process to liberate Southern India from the Thing.
This was the last straw in a series of unfortunate occurrences which halted the Space programs of Earth until safer technologies and procedures could be created. These include the USSR's (accidental) venture into 'hyperspace', The American's (accidental) destruction of Pluto, China's outbreak of 'Andromeda disease', the Argentina 1 rebellion, and the infamous North Sea Accident.

The Cuban Missile crisis erupted into a full blown war after the Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 fires a nuclear torpedo at the USS Beale after being attacked by depth charges (the incident occured IOTL, obviously without a nuclear weapon being used). Although the escalation to a full blown war took several days, and a coup against Krushchev (who was aware of the American nuclear superiority and tried to arrange an unconditional withdrawal of the missiles from Cuba) but when the war came the consequences were devastating: Although most of the fighting was over after five days more people died than in all other wars combined. Due to the nature of the weapons used even more would die in the months and years after it be it from fallout, most of it not from the nuclear bombs themselves but from hit nuclear powerplants (imagine how Chernobyl would have turned out if no one was there to put the fire out), from the nuclear winter, the famine it brought or of the various conflicts among the survivors over food an shelter.

Approximatly 800 million people or a fourth of mankind perished in the decade after the war. Only a fifth of the deaths were due to the immediate effects of the nuclear explosion (equivalent to 2500 Megatons). Especially in Europe and the USSR where the medical infrastructure was completly destroyed by the war almost half as many people would succumb later to the burns and injuries caused by the weapons, in North America where fewer nuclear weapons exploded many of the injured survived. The fallout of the bombs and destroyed nuclear facilites would condem many people to a slow death even in areas not touched by the war itself, especially in northwestern China and northern Africa.
The deaths caused by conventional and chemical weapons was insignificant compared to the devastation caused by WWIII but nonetheless surpassed the death toll of the second world war.
The soot and dust from the burning cities and forest, caused the temperatures in the winter 62/63 to be the coldest since the year without summer (1816) with temperatures 10 °C below the average over much of the northern hemisphere. In the following years the Monsoon failed causing widspread famine in much of Asia.

The former USSR suffered the most virtually all of its inhabitants perished in years after the war. The survivors are reduced to a hunter and gatherer lifestyle. Europe suffered extreme devastation leading to the collaps of every state in Central Europe but with "only" two thirds of the population dieing and some aid arriving from Australia and South America civilisation survived (if in many places at 19. century level).
The Middle east or rather the various US bases in this region was also heavily hit, but most of the victims were due fallout contaminating the sources of Euphrat and Tigris and the resulting famines and war over clean water.
Of all theatres of WWIII North America fared best. The USSR had only a few dozends ICBM and although many cities from San Francisco in the West to New York in the east were destroyed enough infrastructure survived to prevent both massive famine and diseases.

Mao did his best to prevent the war coming to China (he even withdrew the troops from India and offered to negotiate a peacful settlement) and so Asia was (outside of Korea and Japan) spared the horrors of WWIII. The radioactivity however didn't stop at the borders and from the Tarim basin over the Hindukush to the Indus valey many died from radiation sickness. Worse was however the weather: After a horrible winter the soot prevented Central Asia to warm during the summer which reduced the Monsoon to about 10% of its normal strength.

Africa was also spared from the direct effects of WWIII but the collapse of the world economy and the weather changes proved devastating for the former colonies which had almost no time to change their economy from producing cash crops and extracting raw materials to tending their own needs.

Only South America and Oceania came through the war more or less unscathed.

Getting this in by the skin of my teeth.

Long ago, when the peoples of Earth were still gawping at the wheel, Mars was home to a vibrant civilisation, of dozens of competing nations and empires. They had conquered their moons, and were on the verge of becoming an interplanetary species. But the Totalists brought that crashing down. Greed and hate festered in an alliance of none-spacefaring empires, and together they brought the dreams of Mars crashing down. They built a New World Order that in time turned innovation into dogma and culture into entropy. A single, bland world-encompassing empire, fuelled by igorance and oppression, populated by lobotomised, surgically altered drones. For millennia, the Martian civilisation isolated itself, and engineered an atmospheric system that dried out the planet, in an attempt to keep Martians in the canal-cities where they could be watched.

But as the 19th came to an end on Earth, it had been a long time since any Martian actually knew how their machines worked. They simply operated them according to habit and a form of mechanical religion. The planet continued to dry out, and the Totalist High Command committed the ultimate crime of imagination, and decided to conquer Earth. The verdant planet must be theirs if Total Harmony was to be maintained.

The war of course was unsuccessful. The Totalists in the early days of the dominance had destroyed the relics and culture of Old Mars in an attempt to stamp out any memory of when Mars was free. And most tragically they destroyed Mars' ecosystem, reducing it to algaes, and the Brittlemen whose blood they drank. Most crucially they eliminated microbial life in an attempt to do away with disease. And on Earth, their long atrophied and vestigial immune systems were ravaged. The blood of men was a cocktail of disease. The air itself was a living plague. The invasion was an abject failure.

On Earth, panic took hold and scientists desperately reverse-engineered Martian technologies. The skies were watched for another invasion, an invasion that never came. And out of fear grew rage and hate. While the invasion had been abortive, millions of civilians in the primary invasion zone of Southern England had been slaughtered and consumed. The three Premier Powers of Britain, America and Germany marshalled space armies and launched their own cylinders towards Mars. They came with heat rays, nerve gases, germ warheads, gatling guns and land-ships. Plague turned the cities of Mars into charnel houses, and the rivers ran thick with blackened mucus and rotted flesh. Humanity hardened their souls to the carnage and continued their march, razing the cities, forcing Martian civilians into the plains and bringing the Empire of Eight Thousand Years to an end.

Mars' population was reduced to a few mere tens of thousands. The Martians have slowly returned to a pre-Totalist era body plan as surgical alteration ceased. Archaeological evidence from the abandoned colonies of Phobos and Deimos have been used to resurrect Old Mars, and slowly but surely moisture returns to Mars.

But while attitudes to Martians softened after the War of the Worlds, Martian civilisation has had to restart from the ground up. With scientific knowledge decayed, conditions returned to a pre-Industrial state, and the most advanced groups are the sedentary complexes either on the coasts or the deep interior.

My MotF entry:

A classic Nazi Victory scenario.

The year is 1979: the most Slavs and Balts are death and the survivors are slaves of the Reich.

The map shows the Gaue of Greater Germany without the Reichskommissariate and the protectorates (State of the Netherlands, State of the North).

Also shown are the capitals of the Gaue and the Deutsche Fernbahn (German long distance railway).

Click here for full image.



The Nazis killed or caused the death of circa 100million people between 1933 and 1979.

Air République Flight 29
Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s tensions continued to rise between the US and the CS. Not since the years leading up to the Great European War between the Entente and the Alliance, had two adversaries played a game brinkmanship so completely. Each side brought ever-higher stakes to test the other country’s resolve, with neither country willing to show weakness or to back down. Even the terminology for this brinkmanship was in dispute in the two countries: in the CS, this heightening of tensions was called the Silent Crescendo; in the US, it was called the Bold Auction.

During the first week of November 1963, newspapers in both countries talked of “the highest bid” and “the loudest note” in reference to the ever-spiraling tensions. Throughout the previous month, the US had flown dozens of sorties along the Virginia and North Carolina coasts, skirting CS territorial airspace. CS President Macintyre accused US President Carlson of spying on military bases in Norfolk, New Bern, and Jacksonville. Carlson countered by arresting five Confederate American tourists in New York City and 12 more on the expressways in Kansas on suspicion of espionage. In retaliation, Macintyre closed shipping in Chesapeake Bay and had surface-to-air missiles installed along the beaches of the Tidewater and the Outer Banks.

It should be noted that although both countries had fought alongside their respective allies in the 1950s in the Great European War – the US with Germany, United Scandinavia, and Hungary, the CS with France, Great Britain, and Russia – no part of the war was ever fought on North American soil. In addition, although the Treaty of Bruges did much to solve many of the long-standing issues over European national borders, ethnic enclaves, and colonial territorial disputes, it did nothing to address issues between the two powers in central North America, such as shipping rights on both the Mississippi and Chesapeake, fishing rights in the Gulf of California, Native American claims of dual US/CS citizenship in Arizona and Sonora, and the ongoing disputed status of the US state of West Virginia and CS state of South Missouri.

The pinnacle of the heightened tensions between the governments in Philadelphia and Opelika took place on the night of Saturday, November 16, 1963. That evening, three US Lynx aircraft took off from Salisbury AFB in Maryland for a standard coast-hugging mission. The reconnaissance jets were to fly down the Delmarva coastline, past the air defenses of the Princess Anne County beachhead, and continue down the North Carolina Coast to Cape Hatteras before turning around. The three planes were instructed to hug the coastline as close as possible without entering CS airspace.

Air République Flight 29 was en-route non-stop from Le Bourget Airport in Paris to Fulton County International Airport in Atlanta. The Chambord 295 wide-body jet carried 332 passengers and 15 crew members. Typically, the aircraft’s Great Circle flight path would have been further to the north, crossing the coastline over New England; however, a strong nor’easter off the coast of Maine and the Canadian Maritimes forced flights bound for the CS southward.

Unfortunately, the four aircraft all reached Coastal Virginia within minutes of each other. The US reconnaissance jets passed less than one mile east of the passenger jet as the passenger jet crossed into CS airspace. It is still unknown how the airliner was mistaken for a US reconnaissance jet, nor is it known whether the pilots of the airliner ever received warning from the CS air defenses, whether they ignored the warnings thinking they were intended for the US jets, or whether they were somehow unable to reply. Ultimately, however, four surface-to-air missile were launched from the Princess Anne Defenses at 11:32 p.m., striking the Air République Flight 29 shortly afterward, and killing all on board. The three US jets escaped unharmed and returned to Salisbury AFB in Maryland.

The death toll of 347 from Air République Flight 29 would remain the highest death toll from an airline disaster for nearly 30 years. Ironically, the immense loss of life may have helped avert a larger conflict on the North American continent. Included among the victims were 152 French citizens. The French president, furious at the both the CS and US government for their “childlike behavior,” demanded talks to “find solutions to the unresolved issues on the North American continent before war ravages their continent as it did ours not so long ago.” Both Philadelphia and Opelika balked until every one of the major European powers – allies of both the US and CS – joined in the demands. Great Britain agreed to host multilateral talks on the island of Bermuda, and discussions were held throughout the winter and spring of 1963-64. These addressed concerns of not only the US and CS, but Canada and Mexico as well. The Treaty of Bermuda was signed by all four countries on May 30, 1964.

The map below is from the CS's national radar system archive, showing the true locations of all four aircraft. This composite was not available to CS military at the time of the incident; it was compiled well afterward from both civilian and military sources.

The Turkestan Civil War had a variety of causes, and it is impossible to attribute the war to any one of them. The Democratic Unity Coalition (DUC) - a group of secular, pro-West, centrist parties - had dominated Turkestani politics since its unification, and the political stagnation was just the beginning. Independence movements had emerged all over the country, with different states having their own reasons to want out of the union. Azerbaijan had joined a matter of months before Turkestan experienced a recession in 2005, and quickly began to reconsider their decision. Uzbeks claimed they were better off alone, as their prosperous economy was weakened by by the poverty of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The DUC's pro-Turkic rhetoric excluded Tajiks - who were Iranian - and Kyrgyz people felt they were excluded regardless, and that most of the decisions were made by Kazakhs and Uzbeks.

At first these movements were disunited, and were no threat to the incumbent DUC in the upcoming 2007 elections, but events would ensure that this would not remain the case. In 2006 an international argument waged throughout the Islamic world over the issue of LGBT rights. Moderate states like Afghanistan and the Arab Federation insisted that the Organisation of the Islamic Conference change its policy on homosexuality to be neutral. When their requests were returned with insults, they withdrew from the OIC, prompting a number of other Muslim states to do the same - with Turkestan among them.

Traditionalist Muslims in Turkestan were outraged, and protestors quickly swamped the streets. The DUC ignored them, meeting their outrage with calm defiance and riot police. The rhetoric of the Islamists and the Independence movements merged - "The federal government has gone against the will of Allah and the Uzbek people!", "This would never happen in an independent Kyrgyzstan!" - and a coalition was soon formed.

The Coalition for Justice in Turkestan (CJT) was set up purely to offer the DUC real opposition in the 2007 elections. In all previous elections the DUC had gotten over 85% of the vote for both the federal legislature and the presidency - this time it would be different. This time, they only got over 65% of the votes for the legislature - more than enough to control it - and over 70% of the votes for the presidency. The CJT was displeased, to say the least. Accusations of vote rigging were quickly and frequently made in the next few weeks - many of which were corroborated by international observers, who noted a lot of procedural misconduct and voter fraud in areas where separatist and Islamist sentiment was high.

Once again protests broke out in the streets - protests that quickly became riots. Riots that quickly became battles. Battles that quickly became war.

At first the DUC government held the upper hand; the army was under their control, and quickly wiped out whatever conventional forces the CJT had and occupied the rebellious regions of the country. But the Islamists and Nationalists were not going to give up so easily. For two years they harassed the government troops - attacking military bases, ambushing convoys, destroying infrastructure.

The DUC was at a loss - they could no longer fight a conventional war, and the West and their Islamic allies were looking to them to do something to end the fighting. But negotiation would mean the end of Turkestan, so the DUC got increasing desperate. In 2010, as the war entered its third year, the DUC adopted a new tactic.

Helicopters and airplanes were unleashed en mass - targeting the remote valleys in the south-east of the country where the rebels held out. Their aim was not to find and destroy the rebels, though, but to destroy their support. Vital irragation systems were bombed, farmland was strewn was anti-personnel mines, and hundreds of villages wiped off the map as the DUC disregarded their morality in favour of victory

For months an extended democidal campaign was waged in Turkestan, until word leaked. The world had been worried when the war broke out, but had become disinterested as it went on and on. Now all eyes turned to Turkestan and saw exactly what was happening. International condemnation came swiftly. Formerly only radical Islamic states - like the Islamic State of the Caucasus, Iran, and Saudi Arabia - had supported the rebels, but now funding and arms were flown in from all over the world.

Though the rebels were formerly united as a political organisation, they fought their war as separate, diverse units with no single command structure. With no single organisational head to speak to, the world had to rely on Iran and Afghanistan to relay their funds and supplies to the rebels - a right both states jealously guarded. Though both countries rerouted supplies to a variety of different rebel groups; Iran's Islamist government made sure Mujahideen groups got the lion's share of their supplies, whilst Afghanistan made sure the more moderate groups were more than well-supplied.

Along with munitions, supplies, and equipment, people too swarmed into Turkestan. Muslims from all over the world flocked to fight in the Turkestani Mujahideen. Turkmen and Azerbaijanis from Iran had been trickling in since the start of the war, but with the recent developments they began to flow. Uzbeks and Tajiks from Afghanistan had formerly been prevented from aiding their brothers, but when the Afghanistani government decided to favour the rebels, they were at last unleashed.

Politically isolated and unwilling to compromise, the DUC elected to hold on - to relentlessly attack the rebels as they had already been doing in hopes that they could not outlast them. The rebels had grown wise to their tactics, however, and with advanced anti-aircraft weaponry were now more than able to threaten the government's airpower.

A mutiny of over half of the government troops in Azerbaijan signalled the beginning of the end. They quickly joined forces with the Mujahideen and forced out the government's remaining troops. In Uzbekistan - where the fighting was fiercest - the rebels elsewhere began to push back the government's forces, capturing important cities like Bukhara and Samarkand. The number of attacks per month on government troops doubled, as did casualties, and for the first time the rebels believed that not only could they outlast the government, but that they could defeat them.

It would not come to that, however, as the Turkestani army soon turned against their DUC leaders. The tides of war were now flowing against them, thousands of troops had defected or been captured since the reality of the war came to light, and there was no way Turkestan was going to stay united through anything other than force of arms. The army was unwilling to be the puppet of an unreasonable, dictatorial government - so if they wouldn't end the war, they would.

Army generals attempted a coup in late 2011 - most DUC leaders were able to flee into exile, but whatever remained of the government was taken apart, and a military junta put in place. The war was over.

The story of Turkestan does not end there, though, and in some places the Civil War was merely the prelude to a new, bloody chapter in human history.