Gerald Mosley sat on the armchair in his parlor, smoking a cigarette. His dark hair had long since receded from the top of his head. Were it not for the his well-kept uniform and the trim mustache on his lip, he might have passed for a tonsured monk. His wife Edith, a thickly-built brunette, sat on the nearby sofa. Their daughter Mary, a girl of fourteen who was beginning to look striking like her mother, sat beside her. The television was on, though Mosley hadn't been paying it much attention. It was one of the quiz shows Edith liked to watch, playing along and calling out the answers before the contestants could.
The distant sound of automatic gunfire registered faintly over the drone of the television. Edith glanced briefly at the window, and then at her husband.
“Is it close, Gerry?” there was only a trace of concern in her voice, the question asked almost automatically.
“No,” he replied, rising to his feet. “it's outside the perimeter.”
Mosley glanced briefly at his daughter, who hadn't even reacted to the sound, and frowned. She was used to it, was too young to remember living in a place where insurgents didn't attack checkpoints or gun down guardsmen on a regular basis. This was just what her life was like.
“But I should call the base, just to be sure.”
As he walked over to the telephone, he sighed. If King Alexander knew best, he would have figured out what to do with the Headchurchers.
Times were rough back in the eighties. The Anatidorian economy had collapsed. The welfare state, such as it was, simply could not handle the strain. Holy Mother Church as ever tried to pick up the pieces of a shattered society. But people inevitably slipped through the cracks. One such individual was 'Jimmy' James Robert Pole. He was a preacher and faith healer to the Protestant minority in Dismasport. He set the blind to seeing and the the lame to walking, but when donations fell away so did his miracles. He drifted for awhile in the east, ultimately settling in the sleepy mining town of Silverlode, North Lucien. The town wasn't much. But the people had fallen away from the Faith. Men got drunk, beat theirs wives and their children. Young folk went about and did all manner of unseemly things to each other. It was the sort of place crying out for a reckoning, but the local parishes didn't have the funds for outreach, and that beside the local priests had become numb to it all. But that was alright. Jimmy Pole was a good listener, and an even better speaker. The blissful surety of Heaven and the ghastly fires of Hell both dripped from his lips every Sunday. More and more congregants traded one church for another. In a few years, he had a narrow plurality of the King's subjects in all of North Lucien Province under his power.
But the Church founded by Christ and entrusted through time and space, through Apostolic succession unto the bishops of Anatidor across all ages- that is, the Church Catholic- was not terribly worried. Flash in the pan heretical movements were almost as old as Christianity itself. Jimmy Pole and the Church of the Godhead would be a faint memory soon enough, but the Ecclesia would still be there for its sundered brethren. Unfortunately, Pole and his peculiar theology would prove quite difficult to unseat.
At first, Pole taught an unorthodox, but recognizable Unitarian, Sola Scriptura theology. It could be formidably persuasive against a poorly-catechized Catholic. But by the mid-nineties some strange ideas entered his sermons, and an in time came to dominate his thought. For one thing, he began to preach about the immanence of the Apocalypse. He avoided setting an exact date, but constantly harangued his followers to be ready. Later, near the end of his life, he began to suggest that 'true believers' could usher in Christ's return by waging an armed struggle against the 'Whore of Babylon,' usually associated with either the Catholic Church or the Anatadorian government- usually both.
Jimmy Pole died in 2007 at the age of sixty-five, his third wife and his many children at his deathbed. The Church of the Godhead was now in the hands of his son and heir, 'Bobby' Robert James Pole. Matters become much worse, after that. Large swathes of North Lucien province were effectively beyond Royal control, virtually overnight. Catholic churches and government buildings were attacked by armed men. A Eucharistic procession was gunned down- priests, altar boys, nuns, and laypeople- in what history has come to call the Corpus Christi Massacre. King Graham IX, nearly eighty years old, doddered indecisively over what to do about the situation, fearful of the international backlash that might accompany sending in the army to crush the troublemakers. After more than a year of waiting, the local faithful grew impatient. Catholic militias were formed across the province, ultimately uniting their scattered strengths as the Brotherhood of Saint Anthony. The Brotherhood organized vicious reprisals, and became particularly well-known for their preference for bombings.
After King Alexander III took his grandfather's seat in the fall of 2008, the Civil Guard finally entered the picture and violently enforced a sort of stalemate. In the years since, little has changed. A Headchurch mob attacks a Catholic school, a priest quietly blesses a Brotherhood bomb bound for a Headchurch compound, and a few Guardsmen get shot every week. Everyone knew that something had to give. But nobody expected foreigners.
Diplomatic Communique of the Kingdom of AnatidorOra et Labora
From the desk of Sir Anthony Bridger, Secretary to His Royal Majesty Alexander III Biscos-Hamor of Anatidor, Dei Gratia, etc.
To: Whomever it may concern
Subject: North Lucien Crisis
Encryption: Medium
Sir/Madame/Etc.,
You are no doubt aware of the difficulties that have plagued North Lucien Province over these last several years. If you are not, then at the risk of severe oversimplification, I will say that a fringe religious movement has seized control of much of the province, and that a rival, Catholic militia has sprung up to combat them. Our brave Civil Guard is all that stands between the region and open warfare. All attempts by the Royal Government to settle the crisis have come to nought. Our noble sovereign has come to believe that our nation is unable to resolve the issue without resorting to violent military suppression. But, being a pious, peaceful man, the King has asked me to relay his desire for foreign support in laying the problem to rest. In particular His Majesty is interested in employing the services of skilled diplomats, finding our own domestic service lacking, but he would also be quite happy to welcome experts in policing hostile populations or any other aid that your nation might be willing to offer.
That said, our government will not accept any settlement which grants formal recognition to the Church of the Godhead as a political institution, and under no circumstances does this request for aid constitute any cession of Anatidorian sovereignty.
Warmest regards,
Sir Anthony Bridger,
Secretary to HRM and Acting-Minister of Foreign Affairs
Okay, thanks for your interest, if you're still reading.
Most of a province in eastern Anatidor is operating more or less as an independent state, run by a fringe religious movement called the Church of the Godhead. A Catholic resistance movement, The Brotherhood of Saint Anthony, opposes them violently. The Royal government uses the paramilitary Civil Guard to maintain some semblance of order, but is frequently accused of allowing the Brotherhood to operate unhindered. The King has decided that the situation cannot be resolved without sending in the regular army to slaughter an awful lot of people. Concerned that this will hurt Anatidor's reputation abroad, he had instead decided to enlist foreign help in deescalating the crisis.
This is where you come in. I'm not really into the idea of doing a military RP, so Anatidor won't allow any large-scale deployment of foreign troops. I might be open to doing to some small, RP-heavy police operations or something like that, as long as the focus is on maintaining order and not on a straight-up military campaign. What I'm really interested in is a more diplomatically-oriented RP, but I'd be happy to hear suggestions. Once we have some interested parties here I might get started on an IC thread.
I didn't really bother writing an application form, so if you want to join in you can just write an in-character reply to the communique and add whatever other notes or ideas you might have OOC.
