Hippopotamusarchy in Action (AMW)

[Depkazia]

Ulugh Beg Palace, Registan, Samarqand

"...ninety-eight million four hundred and ninteen thousand one hundred and four, ninety-eight million four hundred and nineteen thousand one hundred and five, n... Chorpan! Chorpan! There's no more hair! How do I know how many people rely on me if there isn't any more hair? Chorpan!"

Removing a rubber strap from his upper left arm and carefully -if hurriedly- returning several silver items and a hypodermic needle to a small jade box that he would then slip into his otherwise needlesly elaborate sleeve, Chingiz's Grand Vizier proceeded gingerly to his master's chambers, murmuring as he went. "There is no more hair because you have counted it all, my Lord. That is the total you sought."

The Caliph yelped in frustration, hurling a glass jar full of hair across the cavernous room and causing it to smash against a half life-sized marble statue of Dean Martin. "But I demanded one hundred and twenty two million strands! You know who I told you to contact, Chorpan! Get him here! Or get me there!"

Disappointed by the initial lack of response to his Caliphal-ordered approaches, Chorpan drafted a second communiqué requesting a meeting between premiers Depkazi and Kievan. Were they still holding on to that whole violent war of secession grudge? Rip the guts out of an empire and kill a few thousand of its core people, and suddenly its rulers don't want to talk to you? With any luck the issue was simply one of collapsing Depkazi communications infrastructure, and the Tsar wasn't just laughing as it all went wrong for his wayward former subjects.

Outside, while Samarqand's troublesome southern neighbours thrust themselves into the limelight and everyone ignored the ridiculously prohibitive risk of investing a significant sum in their economy, Chingiz ranted on.

"Aah! In the Prophet's name would you stop bothering me with your endemic shortage of this and your frequent outbreaks of that, Chorpan! Depkazis don't need electricity because they go to bed when it gets dark and stay there until it gets light! They don't need libraries to teach them about the history of oil extraction in the Caspian, they just need a fellow worker to show them how to manage a pumping station! And as for cholera, it's best to get it out of the way!

"We COULD invest in developmental infrastructure, but while we're doing that, what are our enemies doing, Chorpan? They're doing the same! They're making alliances! They're building stable societies and indoctrinating their populations! They're assembling the economic strength to refurbish their armed forces in the long-term! Then how will we dislodge them? Riddle me that, my font of advice!

"So, we're going to spend all of OUR money on short-term projects... the sort of things you're telling me not to buy! We've got to smash them now, Chorpan! Now! And then we'll have all the time in the world for capital investment"

Chingiz pursed his lips and threw a silk handkerchief to the floor in a gesture intended to mock his Chief Vizier's lack of mettle.

"While people still remember their government refusing to allow them even to recognise religious scholars or attend a proper prayer service, and before any clear signs of economic betterment can be established, we must have our forces ready to rip the Zygarin heathens out of Kabul and tear their guts out, too. Let them talk of 'opening-up', and we'll show them what we mean by the same term!

"I can see you have your doubts, Chorpan, don't wince at me! There's only one way to turn. I'm sending Abadanev to the Mikhailhof. We've got to increase petrochemical exports, and the Volga-Don is the easiest way to achieve that without inadvertantly recognising any damn Chinaman's claims in greater Turkmenia. Fools will never see it coming, Chorpan. They never see Chingiz coming!"

Foreign Minister Gurbanguly Abadanev was soon on his way across the forbidden frontier, heading from Sunni Muslim Depkazia to Orthodox Christian Kyiv. Indeed, given their decade long war of secession, who would suspect that the Depkazis of the Turkic People's Republic could look to, of all people, the Slavs?

"And another thing, Chorpan! Feed that typist to the hippo!"

[Kyr Shorn]

Presidential Palace, Jakarta, the Commonwealth

"Remind me again why I'm supposed to give a shit about that cesspool and it's insane ruler?" Delem Brahma asked, his voice reeking of irritation, an early warning sign that his explosive temper was about to hit the roof.

"Because Your Excellency," the current Middle East expert consulting with his President replied, "The Caliph of Depkazia is in a position to throw the Zygarin Commonwealth into chaos at this most delicate time when they enter the world stage once more." And the Commonwealth tries to set up shop there was the unfinished part of that sentence.

"I'd rather deal with Bantu, that old goat might be a corrupt despot but at least he is SANE!" Delem said, half-yelling the last as he went into his desk for his new stress ball. After the failed coup by those Hinduvata nuts, Delem had busted the last one.

"I agree Your Excellency but sadly the world isn't a place where all of it's leaders are as wise as yourself." the aide said, the amount of ass-kissing was damm near sickening.

"I don't need to have my praises sung." Delem said as the veins in his neck popped out, he was putting that stress ball through it's paces.

"Now can you explain to me in plain language what the fuck is up with that Depkazian nut and his fucking hippo? Is it a joke? A sex thing? Some religious thing? Or some twisted combination?" Delem asked a few minutes later once he was done with the stress ball.

For the moment.

But when the aide explained what they knew about the Caliph and his hippo, Delem had a very rare laugh. People across the world assumed that the temperamental "Tyrant of Asia" had no sense of humor. While it was true that his anger issues often got in the way of it, Delem was human and he did have a funny bone.

It was just hard to get too.

[Depkazia]

Background

During the mid to late 1800s, the frustratingly disunited Depkazi people of Mid Asia were caught in a vice made of expanding Christian empires. To the north, Russia, to the southwest Byzantium, and to the southeast Britain and Walmington. Petty Emirates, Khanates, and Republics rose and fell more quickly than Europeans could chronicle, and rival imperial powers pitted one against the other, leaving none able to effectively resist the Russian invasion when it finally came. Resistance would last for a generation until the last great Depkazi warlord ended his fight and the Depkazi Guberniya was established over this vast territory, making Russia's one of the world's truly great empires.

The locals' fighting spirit had clearly not been extinguished, however, for in the chaotic days of the failed Bolshevik Revolution they would rise up in arms once again. Unfortunately their newfound unity proved illusory as nationalists seeking to create an independent Depkazi state came up against local Bolsheviks looking to bring an end to all states. As two generations earlier, the Depkazi infighting would prove their undoing as a victorious White Army under newly-crowned Tsar Mikhail turned south and put-down the nationalists and the Communists alike, establishing Kievan rule that would last more than half a century.

The Second World War saw some Kievan industry evacuated to the relative safety of Depkazia, and large numbers of Depkazis under arms with the White Army fighting German and Geletian forces in Europe, where they proved themselves tough and effective shock troops. After 1945 peace of a sort endured until 1979, when low-level insurgency and banditry turned to full-scale revolt under the charismatic leadership of a young Mujahid known as Chingiz, whose small warband achieved numerous dashing successes against local imperial garrisons, prompting the deployment of a whole Kievan army and the outbreak of full-scale civil war as a legend grew up around the man now being called Chingiz Khagan, the great khan of khans.

By 1989, ten years of internal war and the leadership of the infamously weak Yevgeny saw the Kievan Empire on the brink of collapse. The recent Geletian revolutions and the break away that year of the Baltic Federation were significant distractions, and the new Tsar Anton ordered major combat forces withdrawn from Depkazia as Kyiv tried to wash its hands of the increasingly bloody, expensive, and unpopular quagmire before the revolutionary trend could catch on closer to home. A new Depkazi Republic was created and a puppet government established in Almaty, expected to fight on with the support of Kievan advisors and military hardware without the risk of more Christian bodies being sent back to Kyiv. But when General Rashid Dostum defected to Chingiz's banner along with the Kievan-trained and equipped soldiers under his command it became clear that this arrangement would be short-lived. In 1992, shortly after Dostum's defection -for which Chingiz awarded him the name and style Tumen Radu Khan-, Mujahideen marched into Almaty and what remained of the pro-Tsarist government fled or was over-run.

Styling himself Conqueror of the Russian Empire, Chingiz closed his northern borders, all though he also disappointed his former backers by swinging the bulk of his victorious forces south and east to face Zygarin and the Liaoists, and demanding universal recognition from all Muslims of his role as Caliph. In pursuit of this requirement Chingiz raised a Jihadi army against the Islamic Republic of North Pashtunistan, which until recently had been the Walmingtonian Dominion of Pathanstan, and achieved an alarmingly swift victory, marching virtually unopposed into Peshawar to complete a near bloodless annexation.

Since then, Samarkand as directed its hostility and expressed its obvious ambitions chiefly towards Zygarin. Now, as Chingiz's vizirs warn that his large stocks of Kievan equipment are increasingly short on spare parts and his Tsarist-trained and battle-hardened officers and men increasingly passed into retirement to be replaced by green recruits, a lack of foreign trade partners -both to supply his vast military and purchase his bountiful natural resources and cash crops- appears to be threatening his all-conquering Khaganate with disaster. Chingiz has few choices but to seek rapprochement with Depkazia's former colonial masters.


Today

Foreign Minister Gurbanguly Abadanev wasn't the most impressive man to emerge in Depkazia, certainly not so imposing as Chingiz nor even so crafty and educated as Chorpan, but he excelled at doing as he was told to do, and was if nothing else a skilled survivor, even taking in his stride the Caliph's demand that he should change his family name before going to Kyiv. "Something the Slavs can pronounce!"

Foreign Minister Gurbanguly Abadanev

On his historic visit, the first to Kievan Rus to be made by a statesman from the Turkic People's Republic, Gurbanguly had been obliged by his Caliph to take along samples of Depkazi produce, and so his diplomatic retinue bore a bushell of cotton, a fine hand-woven carpet, a barrel of petroleum and one of liquefied gas, a bar of gold, a sack of tobacco and a carton of cigarettes, a goat, a bactrian camel, a sack of coal, several pairs of new shoes, a jar of mercury, a bottle of vegetable oil, a sheet of aluminium, a bag of mixed fruit, and a sack of mineral fertiliser.

Along with the Minister and his staff it made for a most unusual cargo as a barely functional Il-76 in Caliphal markings entered Kievan airspace and made for the capital. The camel could reasonably be called disgruntled by the whole experience.

[Depkazia]

I wonder if the silence means that, contrary to indications, the mission has failed? Pretty sure I included the link in more than one telegram, don't want to send another just yet. Fortunately, Chingiz is famed for his patience and not being prone to sudden changes of heart...

[Depkazia]

To kill some time while we wait to see whether the Tsar wants a future...

Registan, Samarqand, Audience Day

Almost six hundred years since its construction began, splendid Registan was steeped in the history of empires and tyrants, heroes and tragedies, and soaked in the blood of them all. Now only one of its grand madrasahs continued to serve its intended function, educating the clergy of the great Depkazi Caliphate, while the others were refurbished as palatial residences, one for the Caliph and one for his hippopotamus.

Today the great square between the three majestic structures, on the site where Tamerlane was said to have addressed his people and displayed the heads of his enemies, a large tent of silk was erected to shade the Caliph Chingiz Khagan Depkazi as he sat for a string of audiences with one complainant after another.

"...If the man is so deaf that he can not hear his customers, and complains that the doctor in Osh can not help him, then let him go to Aqmola, where he does not speak the dialect and he will be equal with his customers."

A hundred and forty decisions in less than two hours, and all so simple! It truly was divinely fortuitous that Chingiz had been sent to lead the Depkazis, for they hadn't a solution between them without the Khagan! By the time Chingiz had finished his thought the deaf grain merchant had been jostled from the tent with orders to make at once for the distant city of Aqmola, and replaced by a much younger man who approached in the humble robes of a student at Registan's remaining educational institution.

"This man claims to have been promised his sister's release from the Caliphal hareem upon his completion of several philosophical and clerical challenges, and protests that it has not been made so in the year since his graduation."

"And so I accuse you, a liar and a mortal, great one!"

Chorpan's eyes widened in his narrow, boney face as the student cried out and pushed the Grand Vizir aside, producing as he did so a decades-old Walmingtonian service revolver from his sleeve and thrusting it spitefully in the direction of Chingiz, who remained seated some dozen paces ahead.

A shot rang out and the Caliph was struck in his considerable middle by a 200 grain lead alloy bullet. The world froze for a terrible moment as the incredible Chingiz appeared to exercise some paranormal control over time, leaving neither guards nor gunman able to dislodge themselves. And then like a thunderclap that carried further than the report of a .38-200 cartridge, the Khagan bellowed and rose from his seat, a brass throne cast in the shape of a hippo's jaws agape at right angles.

"Assassiiiiin!"

Chingiz's dramatic basso profondo register declared in company with an accusatory extension of arm and index finger.

"Assassiiiiin!"

Shaking, the gunman fired twice more, the first round sailing wide of the target, broad as it may have been, to strike the left tusk of that unique throne, while the second landed square on the Caliph's hip. It seemed to worry him no more than the original shot, however, and Chingiz deftly advanced his great bulk down the wooden steps of the platform that had been erected for Audience Day and across the flat stone of the square over which the royal tent was pitched, the hard soles of his heeled boots sounding sharply as he went.

"A liar am I? Then why can't I die?"

By now the would-be killer had dropped his apparently useless weapon and was tripping over his robes in a confused and terrified retreat from the nearing hulk. But Chingiz was upon him, thick hands backed with coarse black hair drawing the cleric towards a mouth that hung open like the beak of some titanic squid as its inescapable arms pulled an adventurer to his death.

The gunman shrieked -like a toad, Chingiz would later report- as the Khagan's teeth sunk into his cheek and let blood flow. In a moment it was over, the beast of Garagum tossing his whimpering opponent to the floor, where he would be gathered up by the Caliphal bodyguard that only now felt free to interfere.

"Let the mark scar, then I'll have his hands, that he may do no more harm, and I'll have his tongue that he may speak no more lies. What remains may go."

Chingiz returned to his throne and went on with his next audience, a widow not seventeen years old with a child unwanted by her late husband's family, who had to put her case for pity over the squeals of the attacker as he was disfigured in the square while those waiting to see the Caliph looked on.

"Since your husband was the eldest son, and his child by you is a boy, I declare the child head of your late husband's family. You may go.

"Oh, Chorpan, while I remember, there's a girl in the hareem who doesn't exist. Do something about it. Do I have to give you a tongue-lashing?" And the Khagan brandished a bloody bit of something and shook it threateningly, much to his own amusement.

The evening news lead with reports of a successful Audience Day, in which 711 of Chingiz's subjects from across the Khaganate were able to meet personally with their premier and have their problems resolved. A secondary story told that a madman had shot the Caliph several times after accusing him of a misdeed, but had been unable to cause harm since Chingiz can not be injured by mortal weapons unless he is caught in a lie. Incidentally, this meant that the would-be assassin had no sister at the royal court, and his parents owed the state for the cost of a midwife sent to birth an imaginary child in 1992, and for the milk they had later received to make certain of her good health and development.