A storied city was Porthmadog, scene of Llewellyn's final defeat and escape from Geletia on the twentieth of May, 1982. Once upon a time it had been Pyrgos before the ancestral Geletians stormed into the Balkans and forced Greek culture into southerly retreat.
Since the Humiliation War of the mid twentieth century Porthmadog had been one of the nation's most important cities and one of the most productive in Eastern Europe, home to the Balkans' largest manufacturing plant and one of the world's biggest oil refinaries in addition to its two hundred and ten thousand citizens. It was the capital of the Socialist Republic of Armorica, home of the Venetii, a tribal people over four million strong with a domain four times larger than the islands of Saxemberg.
Today Porthmadog would play host to the nation's premier, Chairman of Council of State of the Beddgelert Federal Democratic Republic comrade Chivo, and to an exhibition of an increasingly formidable Geletian defence industry.
The Chairman was on hand to deliver a speech formalising Akink's historic rearmament programme, which he said would be worth over seventy billion dollars by 2020. At least that was what the Council of State had sent him to do, though in the event Chivo was taking the opportunity to threaten his enemies and reinforce his friends. He had an audience of thousands before him, and though no Orator Igo the veteran of revolution and endless political intrigue certainly had a voice and, one may suspect, some training as an actor, for he held himself well and had no difficulty with projection.
Chairman Chivo appears at Porthmadog in his iconic Blackjackets suit plus tribal colours and solidarity standard
"In the course of the past decade the League of Communists of Beddgelert has seen to the security of Geletian skies, building one of the largest and most powerful air forces in the world, capable of repulsing any assault and enhancing the work of land forces with precision strikes behind enemy lines, close air support, and rapid deployment and resupply.
"But, faced with the limitless hordes of Byzantium and Kyiv, abandoned by the revisions of Sithin, those ground forces are intolerably stretched.
"On the Second Front Acichorius faces almost four hundred thousand Byzantine stormtroopers and must bear primary responsibility for the support of the Hellenic People's Republic of Macedon against its bourgeois rivals in Athens and the Byzantine's running dogs in the Peloponnese, and he must do so with barely more than one hundred thousand regular forces. On the First Front the situation is even more terrifying, as Front Commander Cailtain has just one hundred and fifty thousand regular soldiers against the might of Kyiv... Geletian soldiers there are out-numbered five to one by personnel of the Tsar's European Military District, to say nothing of the Western District's four-hundred thousand, and these men we expect to push our case for the liberation of occupied Regnia? I have not even begun to discuss the ambitions of Tsalland, the Papists, or the Mediterranean-mastery of the British Empire.
"Therefore, the first element of our nation's Ten Year Defence Modernisation Plan shall be the rapid and resolute tackling of the manpower shortage that has endangered our liberty, our ancient culture, and expected too much of our finest, those who have volunteered to serve.
"The second major element must address our weakness on the high seas. As a puppet to the Tsar, Llewellyn had no concerns in the world at large. As partner to the weak-willed Strainists we were no more prepared to stand up for our allies abroad. But today, comrades, I say have we not rediscovered our courage? Are we not Celts? Will not our enemies be made to remember that a Geletian fears nought but that the sky itself may fall on his head?"
The reaction of the crowd suggested that Chivo had struck a chord, all be it one that just about everybody knew how to play.
"If we do not stand up for our interests in the world, we are doomed to repeat the ignominy of subjugation. You know better than most the importance to our economy of Sab'yn's oil" and again the crowd's reaction was significant, for the refinaries at Porthmadog -and related infrastructure in the port- employed a great many amongst the throng, "and we can not forget the trade done with Eelam and the fragility of that courageous outpost of Socialist defiance to imperialism. Yet our ability to project power is dismissed out of hand by the likes of London, which even today shares with Byzantium great capability to disrupt our commercial, political, and military interests.
"Several generations of our people lived under foreign thumbs, and yet we are Geletians! History's greatest warriors! Scourge of Rome! We have defeated Popes, Tsars, Emperors, and Princes, and we shall defeat them all again! We are the last of Europe's people in touch with our history and at one with our universe, but we are not the last great and good people on earth. Thessaloniki, Trincomalee, Ma'rib, this is our apology for weakness now passed, and our pledge to a shared future... Geletia will defend the arteries of Socialist trade, Geletia will arm the legions of liberty, and our time of shrinking from duty is over. A new Igovian century is ten years old, and it is time to accept it and celebrate!
"Calan Gaeaf hapus, Geletia!"
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