The peculiar, circular nature of things had until now remained unproven to the former lords of the land now known as Kubrikon.
Seventeen months ago, Colonel Bertrand Wu was heir to the Stanleyan Kingdom, the small empire built from the remnants of Kubrik tribes by the sheer willpower of his father, King Lombardo, and the mercenary forces coerced into doing his bidding for the better half of a century.
The empire born fifty-seven years ago was twice the size of the lands Bertrand would come to rule, and natural riches were abundant in all forms. Soon after his crowning, however, Lombardo found his poorly-paid lieutenants hungry for land of their own, and within a decade the grand kingdom had splintered into seven embittered foes, locked in what seemed like a permanent stalemate. Lombardo retained the largest territory, however, and he enjoyed a relatively stable rule playing the other warlords against each other while the royal family grew richer, thanks in part to a timely discovery of platinum ore laced into the homeland's Ten Fingers mountain range. It was only once he had exhausted his supply of the precious metals and mining leases that he began to feel his power slipping. While he had grown fat and weak, raising his pampered sons to be men of elegance and pomp, a charismatic young Kubrik born at the base of Ten Fingers had united the weaker tribes into a living hurricane.
The tribals called him Li'an-Tus, or Hand Of The Mountain in their native tongue, a name he would later take on as his nickname, but Bertrand knew him better as Josiah Lourd, a former schoolmate turned rival after the slaughter of his younger sisters by King Lombardo's royal police force. It took him only seventeen months to gather followers among the rival tribes, winning the hearts of the six hungry warlords. In those seventeen months, Josiah had become the voice of the Kubrik peoples, the chosen leader for a magnificent new nation that would be born, presumably, from the ashes of the old. This meant, of course, that Lombardo and his children would have to die.
It began sometime in the summer - too long ago to recall exactly - with a demonstration just outside the palace gates. Lombardo's security detail dispatched team to collect the names of the protesters, to investigate possible family ties to the rival tribes - or so they claimed. Bertrand remembered only the sound of gunfire in the foyer as the agents blasted open the palace doors, opened the gates, and vanished into the crowd of angry rabble, who were now clearly not simply students with too much free time on their hands.
Young men and women stormed the palace with hammers and torches, meeting little resistance as the security teams seemed to disappear all together. Royal bodyguards hurried Bertrand and his brother May through the King's express tunnel to a waiting escort, but Lombardo seemed determined to face this uprising head-on. The imagined last stand of his King - his father - clutching a rifle, staring down a mob of hooded assassins as they marched into his bedroom had haunted Bertrand for weeks. He wept for his father's soul, disgraced as his body remained unburied, tossed in the royal meat locker for storage.
He cursed whenever he heard Josiah's name on the national radio, and the countless sheep that professed unabashed love for the traitorous dog. Whenever the Public Relations Minister broadcast his updates on the trials and executions of Lombardo's trusted elite, he remembered the day his brother was snatched by a night patrol while they traveled between safe houses. May was young, rebellious... he had no tact, and rumor was he spat in Lourd's face when offered a reduced sentence in exchange for information. They would have provided a yearly stipend nearly half of what he received as a Princely allowance, but would have been exiled from his homeland forever. Instead, he was marched up to Ten Fingers, back through the palace gates, and hanged in the courtyard. He, too, would adorn the royal meat locker, until President Lourd devised a proper way to "dispose of garbage".
As the weeks turned into months, Bertrand's safe houses and bodyguards dwindled, until at last he was alone, sleeping in an abandoned bomb shelter seven miles south of his former home. Buried under dry grass and sand, Bertrand survived off of expired canned goods and bottled water, using a crude periscope to check for patrols while waiting patiently by his satellite phone. Before locking himself away, he had received word from the remnants of the royal police that a final push to retake the palace was to begin today. There were rumors of outsiders assisting the royal forces, presumably acting on active warrants for Lourd's arrest following several cases of investment fraud (his primary method of fundraising for the coup), though the possibility of interference on the new Allied States' behalf was just as likely. Even if the Allied States fell, and Bertrand retained the crown, he would be indebted to the leaders of the defense forces for the rest of his rule, and perhaps be little more than a glorified puppet. All the crown prince of Kubrikon could do now was wait, and hope these new warlords would be easier to deal with than the old ones.
OOC:
Today is WEDNESDAY.
The Kubrik Royal Palace is positioned at the base of the Ten Fingers mountain range, in a temperate mid-winter climate. The average temperature range is approx. 38-45 degrees Farenheit/3-7 Celsius; there are scattered showers expected throughout the day. There is a large township of roughly 800,000 one mile to the south of the palace gates, mostly comprised of small apartment buildings, with a single twenty-story hotel in the heart of the business district.
There are approximately 8,000 members of the Allied States militia patrolling the township in white vans marked with the Kubrikon flag, and another 4,000 guarding the palace, armed with crude six-shot revolvers and repeating rifles - family heirlooms. 9,000 uniformed royal police have encircled the town with unmarked trucks and all-terrain vehicles, armed with submachine guns, one hundred mortars, and twelve school buses repurposed as personnel carriers.
Royal intelligence places the coup leader, Josiah Lourd, inside the palace, drafting a new constitution with his advisors. Crown prince Colonel Bertrand Wu, missing since the initial uprising, is believed to be in hiding just outside the Ten Fingers township, awaiting news from the head of the police force.
The Royal Police of the former Stanleyan Empire have requested aid from neighboring states to bring stability to the region by re-establishing a proper line of succession through Prince Bertrand. The newly-formed Allied States of Kubrikon, on the other hand, are appealing to the West Pacific's anti-monarchists to rally and defend the burgeoning republic from the return of the oppressive Stanleyan regime.
