Ten-Thousand Pangas (OOC, Sign-up)

[Songhia]

IC Thread


Hello and welcome to my first Aurora RP! 'Ten-Thousand Pangas,' named for the machete, is going to be a dark and gruesome RP - it is going to be about the outbreak of racial violence in Songhia, a deeply flawed and unjust country. Participants will take on the role of ordinary people, trying to make it through the tumult of the country's current events. These events, the origin of which is complicated and sordid, may one day be known to history as the Songhian Panic, or the Rise and Fall of Kouyaté, or perhaps even the End of the Junta - or they may be known, depending on what happens, as the 2013 Songhian Genocide.

In April of 2013, the simmering resentment of black farmers in south-central Songhia exploded into an orgy of rage and violence, as they took up whatever weapons they could find and attacked the white community on the banks of the Sanaga river. This is the story of the people who lived through it and died in it.

A Brief Primer on What Came Before:
Note: Most people in Songhia do not know the whole of this story, or do not realize how these events go together. Nevertheless, some understanding of how this came to pass is necessary in order to understand how it finished.

Songhia has always had problems. Since it achieved independence in 1958, the government has constantly swung back-and-forth between imperfect democracy and outright tyranny. The one constant has been that things keep getting worse for the country's backbone - the long-suffering rural black peasant, breaking his back to farm cassava and peanuts and flax. Successive governments have either appealed to the rural peasant for support and then betrayed them, or ignored and sidelined them altogether.

In 2003, a military junta led by General David Sundiata seized power and dissolved the government, establishing rule by decree and filling the pockets of the junta's leadership. Rather than appealing to one sector of society against another - unions vs. employers, city vs. countryside, ethnic groups against each other, large farmers vs. small farmers - the Sundiata junta picked out special members of each group to bless with favoritism, and employed them directly against other members. In every social class and professional field, some members were given privileges, and some were left to be resentful of them, focusing their anger away from the government and towards other members.

One group, however, received the junta's careful protection, and it was the one group that all Songhians, regardless of social class or ethnic origin, found easy to despise - the tiny group of white farmers, some 70,000 strong, living in relative splendor as the owner of relatively large private farms. As one of the few groups with foreign connections and access to foreign capital, the whites of Songhia were a golden goose that the central government was careful to protect, however much the rest of society considered them an ugly scar, the ghost of the humiliating age of foreign domination. While the junta turned every part of Songhia against itself, it courted and defended the whites, and they lived well off the state's largesse.

By the year 2012, the economy had weakened and the junta had become deeply unpopular. In order to head off mass opposition, the junta called for parliamentary elections. Its leaders had hoped that the appearance of democracy would be enough to stave off criticism, and that they could control the outcome well enough to make sure that the government would be weak and they could keep doing what they wanted. To make this obvious, Sundiata chose to remain President and not stand for elections. Elections were held on January 1st, 2013 - and the results shocked everyone. The far-right Songhian National Front swept the elections, winning 32 out of 120 seats and creating William Kouyaté as Prime Minister. It joined in a coalition with the ruling junta and a few other traditional center-right parties.

When he took office, William Kouyaté had big plans for Songhia - he was going to give the Songhian people a dream they could work towards, and a vision of a better, more prosperous, more honorable future. Unfortunately, he found his plans quickly frustrated. All the important parts of government had been apportioned-off between the old junta - now called the CNR and styling itself as a legitimate political party - and the other members of the ruling coalition. All that was left for his people were useless sinecures and figurehead positions, not least of which was his own status as Prime Minister. This crisis came to a head when the Prime Minister was unable to arrange for a military inspection to honor his personal foreign guest. When the army chiefs hemmed and hawed and said that they had best ask the President, Kouyaté realized that the most vital parts of the government were not under his civilian control, and he realized that he had to do something about it.

There are any number of decisions that Kouyaté could have made, any number of plans on how to truly restore civilian control of the government, but Kouyaté was not an introspective or cautious man, and he chose the worst possible such plan - he decided to raise his own army, one that Sundiata's armies would be unwilling to shoot, and take hostile possession of the country away from Sundiata. He chose to contact the worst members of his power-base - the teeming masses of frustrated, disenfranchised, uneducated, nationalist rural peasantry - and bring them to his side in a more active way. He chose to bind them to him by letting them settle their old grudges, and to weaken the credibility of the President by targeting the one group that everyone knew was on his side - the white farmers. And he knew that because Sundiata had no plainclothes street fighters and could only defend the white farmers with uniformed troops and helicopter gunships, and that to do that would make him a tyrant and bring down his government, Sundiata would be powerless to do anything but sit and watch.

In April of 2013, tens of thousands of angry Songhians, led by a cadre of black-hearted opportunists and red-faced hatemongers, are marching on the haciendas of the Lower Sanaga, torches ablaze, pangas in hand, and with hearts full of vengeance.

Guidelines and Parameters:

1) For this RP, I will take players from outside Aurora, but I would prefer that their characters be Songhians. If you want to play a character from your country, and you're not in Aurora, then you really have to wow me with some excellent RP samples and what you intend to do.
2) All PCs must be private characters. Your character must be be more-or-less a regular person. Your character can be the leader of a small group, but not of more than ten or twenty people, and not with a cult- or military-style discipline and regimentation - a small white militia or a group of panga-men is one thing, but a hundred-strong military unit is quite another. Speaking of which...
3) No military people. Ex-military is one thing - in a country with universal conscription, every man is ex-military - but the army has been instructed to stand down and not get involved in this. If your character is a soldier in good standing, then they can't get involved in this. Some people might defect in order to get involved, one way or the other, but that robs them of their good standing. Your character also cannot be a high government official, although regional officials - police officers, small-town mayors, and the like - are fair game.
4) Ideally, your character should be a Songhian national. Foreigners find very little to interest them in this part of the country, and all the government offices and foreign affairs agencies headquarter themselves in Sokassa, hundreds of miles away. I will have a higher tolerance for unique or puissant characters if they are Songhian nationals, white or black. But I'm not ruling out foreigners altogether.
5) There will be another RP happening on top of this one, where the players will actually represent the governments of their countries. This one will start a little bit later, once this one's built up some steam.
6) In the application, I put a box for 'ethnicity.' If you're a regular black Songhian and would rather think no more about it, then just put 'Zawaré.' White Songhians do not have sub-groups; regardless of their ethnic origin, they all regard themselves as one group. If you want to be more adventurous, though, options are certainly available.
7) You may notice that one of the categories is Girinya. Basically, this means 'the groups of which your character is a member; their affiliations.' If you want to explore it in a more technical context, you can check this post here: here. But otherwise you can just be like, 'he's a member of this group.'
8) If you're looking for a list of names, there's one in my factbook, linked to right here: http://www.nationstates.net/nation=song ... k/id=66827
9) If you have any questions about the local culture, situation, or way of doing things, please feel free to ask!

So, here's the character form!

Code: Select all

[box][b]Character Name:[/b]
[b]Other aliases:[/b]
[b]Nationality:[/b]
[b]Ethnicity:[/b]
[b]Appearance:[/b]
[b]Abilities:[/b]
[b]Origins:[/b]
[b]Personality:[/b]
[b][i]Girinya:[/i][/b]
[b]RP Sample for non-Aurorans[/b]
[/box]

Thank you and happy gaming!

[Kalumba]

Character Name: Yahya Ugoh
Other aliases: N/A
Nationality: Songhian
Ethnicity: Tekru
Appearance: A small man, with a withered left arm and deep scaring on his chest.
Abilities: Able to talk his way out of most situations, and a canny eye for buisness.
Origins: Born on the coast and raised to follow his father as a fisherman, Yahya was attacked by a crocodile as young boy and lost the use of his left arm. This prevented him ever becoming a fisherman and when his father died Yahya sold is boat and used the money to move north and open a small shop with one employee.
Personality: Despite his injury Yahya enjoys playing sport and is friendly to everyone. He is however scared of the rivers and avoids them at all costs. Yahya is always there to help his friends and happy to give a hand to any in distress.
Girinya: His only employee Jean Boni and his wife Chantal.
RP Sample for non-Aurorans

[Songhia]

Character Name: Yahya Ugoh
Other aliases: N/A
Nationality: Songhian
Ethnicity: Tekru
Appearance: A small man, with a withered left arm and deep scaring on his chest.
Abilities: Able to talk his way out of most situations, and a canny eye for buisness.
Origins: Born on the coast and raised to follow his father as a fisherman, Yahya was attacked by a crocodile as young boy and lost the use of his left arm. This prevented him ever becoming a fisherman and when his father died Yahya sold is boat and used the money to move north and open a small shop with one employee.
Personality: Despite his injury Yahya enjoys playing sport and is friendly to everyone. He is however scared of the rivers and avoids them at all costs. Yahya is always there to help his friends and happy to give a hand to any in distress.
Girinya: His only employee Jean Boni and his wife Chantal.
RP Sample for non-Aurorans

Accepted!

[Lydenburg]

Character Name: Kris Plaatjies

Other aliases: None

Nationality: Lydenburgher

Ethnicity: Coloured

Appearance:

Abilities: Superb tracker
Experienced counter-insurgency fighter

Origins: Raised an off-the-farm, old-school, Afrikaans boy, Kris pursued a career with the security forces after his parents were killed by a land mine during an insurgency to oust the minority regime. He served not without distinction in several police paramilitaries, but was very nearly expelled from the force after bayoneting an unfeeling superior who mocked his mixed heritage. Relegated to the reserves, a disgruntled Plaatjies was subsequently charged with dereliction of duty; he promptly fled Lydenburg to escape arrest. Settling comfortably in Songhia, he retired to a modest farm and has identified with the local white community.

Personality: A bit of a misanthrope, Plaatjies suffers from emotional instability probably induced by post-traumatic stress disorder from his days hunting black guerrillas in the bush. He has also inherited a typically racial Lydenburgher attitude only heightened by his fair appearance and European features, believing himself to be 'a white baas' superior to all 'kaffirs' - a people he treats as no better than cattle.

Girinya: Houseboy, gardener, cook, stable-lads, etc - all black Songhian employees. May also include the labourers and contract workers Kris employs in the fields.

RP Sample for non-Aurorans: N/A

Notes: Yes, he's from Lydenburg, but I hope you'll approve this one because that nationality is pivotal to understanding the character. Kris Plaatjies is really a frustrated individual. He lost his parents at an early age to black insurgents - so he drifted for a while before committing himself to the security forces and essentially adopting the white state as his new psychological guardian. In his eyes, though, the state has rejected him, too - manifesting itself through the apartheid bureaucracy, denying a perfectly good man deserved advancement, and a few insular racist superiors here and there who like looking down their noses at him.

Apartheid has done more than shape Plaatjies. It's created him. He identifies so much with the conservative white minority that he actually carries his racism to a far greater extreme than they do. In his eyes, the "Kaffir" is the ultimate, sub-human, enemy who must be subjected accordingly. It's clear that Plaatjies desires acceptance. He'll probably fit in better with white Songhians; members of that group are fewer in number than white Lydenburghers and probably much less obsessed about ostracising everybody who has a mulatto grandmother. At the same time, Plaatjies feels betrayed by a white society, a white country, and a white state. He doesn't really want to trust a "Boer" as far as he can throw him.

Therefore, we have a classic example of "too white to be black", "too white to be brown", "too brown to be white". We have a man trapped between two extremes - a man whose entire mindset is molded by race - a man who really has nobody left to fall back on except himself.

When the farms are threatened, it will be interesting to see how Plaatjies continues to develop. He already thinks of blacks as being his enemy, so punishing them for their insolence would be no different from yesterday, when he was likely working them in his maize. He already thinks of whites as being nominal allies at best, but secretly craving their acceptance may drive him to assume a prominent role in any common effort they mount against the onslaught.

[Altakstan]

If I joined, would I be able to play as a mercenary from my country? Being a mercenary is a traditional profession in Asar culture that's just being revived again with the modernization of the country, and a hell-hole of ethnic conflict(no-offense) would be the prime spot for one of these Mozdurha to look for work.

[Songhia]

Re: Lydenburg, I really like your character and the thought that you put into him. You are, perforce, accepted. For my peace of mind, though, I would wonder how a guy who, if I'm reading your history correctly, fled his country and walked over the mountains into Songhia scraped up the money to buy a farm.

Re: Altakastan, to what extent would your hombre be 'a mercenary?' I mean, is he a wandering tough who's trying to scrape by, or is he a member of an organized company? Songhia's gun laws are poorly enforced, but they're very strict, and good enough to intercept somebody at the airport with a duffel bag full of FN-FALs.

[Altakstan]

The former. He'd probably be wandering with whatever weapons and equipment he has, looking for some warlord to hire him.

[Songhia]

The former. He'd probably be wandering with whatever weapons and equipment he has, looking for some warlord to hire him.

Let's give it a shot; show me an application.

[Norvenia]

Songhia and I discussed both of these characters, so I have special approval to RP two Norvenians, one of whom is an intelligence agent.

Character Name: Lauren Russel

Other aliases: None

Nationality: Norvenian

Ethnicity: Old Anglo

Appearance: An attractive woman in her mid-thirties, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and the sort of unselfconsciously wholesome look that Norvenian TV personalities tend to have. She tends to wear typical "reporter in foreign lands" clothes: khaki slacks, hiking boots, a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a tan photographer's vest, a tan ball cap.

Abilities: Lauren is intrepid, a fast talker, sharp as a whip. She's an outstanding journalist, able to smell a good story a mile away, and capable of conveying the reality of a human experience to viewers on the other side of the region. She has a profound understanding of the power which she can wield as a journalist - the power to expose and shame, or to laud and praise - and she is not shy about using this power to get to the bottom of a story.

Origins: Lauren Russel was born in a small fishing town on West Trinity, in Norvenia. Her father was a fisherman, and her mother a schoolteacher. She grew up in one of the last places in Norvenia to remain largely unaltered by the influx of new immigrants and new technologies. She was a moderately successful student, but became well-known among her classmates for her ability to tell stories. This eventually led her to the University of Abacem, where she studied journalism. Various reporting assignments followed, here and there, but her big break came with the TV giant of Norvenian Central Broadcasting. Her reports from Raith Immel for NCB made national headlines in Norvenia, and made Lauren a minor television celebrity. She is in Songhia now in order to report on the country's "transition to democracy" - but her nose for a story has already alerted her to the grim reality that all is not as benign as some in Norvenia would like to think...

Personality: Lauren's a hard-charger. She sees her job in moral terms: it is her responsibility to shine a light into the dark places of the world, and to reveal what the powers that be would rather keep hidden. She tends to ignore danger, sometimes to a reckless fault. She makes plenty of friends, but she's a hard person to get close to. She is not yet hardened to the horrors of the world, and she tries to keep herself from growing emotionally calloused. But there is still a verve for adventure and far-off lands in Lauren. She is, for Songhia, another of that most familiar of Norvenian types: a white person who travels because they can never feel quite at home.

Girinya: Timothy Han, Lauren's longtime cameraman; Paul Cissé, a Songhian-Norvenian interpreter and bodyguard; Paul Samuels, Lauren's boss at NCB news back in Norvenia.

RP Sample for non-Aurorans: N/A

Character Name: Daniel (Dannie) Armstrong

Other aliases: Pete Thompson, Martin Grey

Nationality: Norvenian

Ethnicity: Mountain Anglo

Appearance: Dannie Armstrong is a tough-looking man in his early fifties; he shaved his head when his hair began to grey, but he typically sports grizzled stubble on his jaw, because who really has time to shave? The Afrosian sun has turned his once-pale skin to hard-tanned, deeply creased leather, but his eyes remain a striking pale blue. He has a hard-muscled build, with knife scars visible on the backs of his arms. He typically wears jungle boots, faded jeans, sunglasses, and a light jacket of khaki canvas over a t-shirt. He typically carries a Colt 1911 in a belt holster.

Abilities: Speaks fluent Zawaré and Tekru, and passable Siwa and Abeoké. An old Songhia hand, Dannie knows his way around the country's ethnic cultures, customs, traditions, and politics. He is competent with most weapons, and better than competent with handguns and in unarmed combat. He's reasonable effective in the jungle, with some experience at tracking and finding food. And he's spent enough time in Songhia to know which way the wind is blowing, and to sense trouble before it arrives.

Origins: Dannie Armstrong was born on the isolated and hilly island of Sanctus, off the western coast of Norvenia, the latest in a long line of clannish warrior "Mountain Anglos" who had settled the island 150 years before. Growing up, his time was divided roughly evenly between school, fighting other kids, and doing manual labor to help pay the bills; Sanctus remains Norvenia's last outpost of uneradicated true rural poverty. Like most of his family, Dannie enlisted in the army immediately out of high school; this was in Norvenia's late-twentieth-century long period of peace, and so he never saw combat, but he nevertheless succeeded in joining the prestigious elite light infantry of the Norvenian Rangers. From there, he was recruited by the National Intelligence Service, due to his unexpected facility with languages. But Dannie Armstrong did not work and play well with others, and he soon found himself dumped in the Songhia Station of the NIS and then forgotten. There he has remained for the last twenty years.

Personality: Dannie Armstrong is a decidedly difficult man. He smokes and drinks, sometimes to excess, even though both indulgences are regarded as socially unacceptable by modern Norvenians. He doesn't care much for the feelings of others - although he is capable of manipulating them with great subtlety when it suits his purposes - and delights in political incorrectness. He despises arrogance, privilege, and pretension, and prides himself on a rough-hewn individualism and appreciation for merit rather than rank. He is an iconoclast who holds hierarchies in contempt. But withal, he is also loyal, fearless, honorable, and profoundly attached to a set of principles which - despite his cynicism - are remarkably earnest and simple: help others, fight for freedom, die unafraid.

Girinya: He doesn't really have one; everyone he works with just thinks that he's a pain in the neck. He comes into contact mostly with his boss, Harry Watson, the "Deputy Cultural Attaché" at the Norvenian embassy in Sokassa. He also has a number of informants in the Sanaga river area, white and black, many of whom Dannie has cultivated for more than a decade, but none of whom know of his true identity.

RP Sample for non-Aurorans: N/A

[Lydenburg]

Re: Lydenburg, I really like your character and the thought that you put into him. You are, perforce, accepted. For my peace of mind, though, I would wonder how a guy who, if I'm reading your history correctly, fled his country and walked over the mountains into Songhia scraped up the money to buy a farm.

It didn't happen overnight, of course. We're looking at seven to eight years after he left Lydenburg with just a carpet bag and the clothes on his back. Plaatjies probably wandered around Songhia's cities for a while, doing odd jobs and "kaffir's work" (menial labour) before discovering Kalimbaté - a place where his appearance would have been advantageous in getting more prestigious employment. Being part of the white working class instantly places him at a level of affluence above most Songhians, and, in line with his independent Afrikaans culture, Plaatjies wishes to save his funds for buying a farm where he can employ himself instead of answering to anybody, black or white.

Keep in mind that Plaatjies isn't a major rancher with thousands of countless hectacres and a sprawling commercial estate. He has a modest tract bordering the Sanaga River which supports some maize and a pasture for a karakul herd. His home is actually a converted tobacco barn. And somebody in Songhia's white community doesn't have to be especially wealthy to retain a workforce of black servants.

[The Cookish States]

Character Name: Grant Wittenhammer
Other aliases: None
Nationality: Songhian
Ethnicity: White
Appearance: Old, graying hair. Decades in Songhia have aged him quickly. He wears glasses. His face is wrinkled, but his body is very rugged from years of farming and missionary work. He's been plowing fields, lifting heavy machinery, and doing hard work since he was 12 years old. His hands are very callous, and many scars run up and down his body. He's never been a soldier, the Cookish government negotiated a deal that stated missionaries (and their offspring) would not be expected to fight in Songhian wars.
Abilities: Machinery, cars, trucks, and tools are all within his domain. He knows most of the edible plants in Songhia, as well as the edible insects. He also specializes in construction.
Origins: Grant was born in Songhia, but remembers nothing of his true homeland, Cookeland. His parents, Cookish missionaries, brought him to the nation in 1974 during his infancy. The 39 year old took a month long vacation to his homeland when he was 19, but hasn't returned since. After returning with a grant from the Cookish government to purchase a small farm near that of his parents, he decided to start a family. He currently has a seventeen year old son, and twin fifteen year old daughters. Grant does not believe in violence against people, and neither do his daughters or his wife. However, it appears that they will need to drive, fight, and run to the Cookish Embassy...or die trying.
Personality: Grant is a quiet man and caring father, he wants only to keep his family safe, and refuses to give the enemies of his race a chance to destroy his family.
Girinya: White Songhian
RP Sample for non-Aurorans

Character Name: Doug Wittenhammer
Other aliases: None
Nationality: Songhian
Ethnicity: White
Appearance: Tall, lean, muscular. Black hair and blue eyes. He had a small beard which makes him look almost like a man. Looks much like Grant, in the face.
Abilities: A very good shot with his hunting rifle, knows how to build things, and is in amazing physical shape due to the fact that he's been working on the farm since before he could remember
Origins: White Songhian through and through. He doesn't even have the Cookish accent that his grandpa and father distinctly have. He doesn't even like Cookeland, fearing that it's too interventionist and power mongering. However, he will soon wish the Cookish States wanted anything to do with this dirty little genocide.
Personality: Upbeat, always optimistic, and ready for a fight. His personality will be stunted after the beginning of the RP, however, his grandparents and aunt will be killed when it begins, prompting the rest of the family to start running for the capital.
Girinya: White Songhian
RP Sample for non-Aurorans

[Songhia]

Songhia and I discussed both of these characters, so I have special approval to RP two Norvenians, one of whom is an intelligence agent.

Having two characters means I expect twice the content. Are you cool with that?

RE: Cookish, seems perfect. Since one character is meaningfully an appendage of the other, there's no problem with two characters.

RE: Lydenburg, ahh, yes, I see. Yeah, 7 years is certainly enough to bootstrap your way up if you look right.

[Norvenia]

Songhia and I discussed both of these characters, so I have special approval to RP two Norvenians, one of whom is an intelligence agent.

Having two characters means I expect twice the content. Are you cool with that?

RE: Cookish, seems perfect. Since one character is meaningfully an appendage of the other, there's no problem with two characters.

RE: Lydenburg, ahh, yes, I see. Yeah, 7 years is certainly enough to bootstrap your way up if you look right.

Absolutely. You give me stuff to do, I'll gladly keep up.

[Altakstan]

Character Name:Shaher Peseri-Aw
Other aliases: None
Nationality: Confederate
Ethnicity: Lesser Parakan
Appearance: He's around 5'11 with tanned skin and has short-cut black hair, typical of an Asar. He has a significant amount of tribal tattoos, most saliently a wave-like design over the top of his lip and a sea serpent which coils around his neck and along the side of his chin. The rest of his tattoos are various writing in a foreign script and objects/animals pertaining to water. Typically, he wears a well-worn grey camouflaged BDU and a tactical vest/backpack to carry everything he has.
Abilities: Aside from his native tongue, he speaks English and a survival amount of Zawaré. He's an experienced fighter and is at home using guerrilla warfare-type tactics. He's a skilled sailor as well.
Origins:
Personality:
Girinya: None at the moment.
RP Sample for non-Aurorans

WIP

[Songhia]

Looking good, Altak. Once you finish that up, I guess it's time to begin!

[Songhia]

Let me discuss a few relevant pieces of Songhian life and culture:

- The lifeblood of Songhia is the Sanaga River; more than 90% of its people live within 10 miles of either the river, a lake that empties into the river, or one of its many tributaries. From its starting point on Lake Lumbara, the river flows down through the mountains, greeting the cities of Gao, Sokassa, Yandé, and Wosaweyo before joining with its largest tributary, the Bechuane - which they name the Wosawa. From there, the mighty and enormous river flows down for 60 more kilometers before finally spreading into the massive Sanaga Delta, wherein is found the mighty city of Bakumba and the white-people city of Kalimbata, better-known as Burlington. The Sanaga is the country's main highway as well as its source of all irrigation. The river is constantly swarming with boats of all description. But if you drink the water down of Yandé unpurified, you're going to die.

- Chopped out all of this; behold a new post.

- Pursuant to that, the most common firearm in Songhia is the NAF-44, a carbon-copy of the real-world FN-FNC rifle. It is commonly known as a 'naff.' Despite having a very modern rifle, the only handguns Songhia manufactures are revolvers - only officers are issued handguns, and they're only expected to use them to shoot their own men. Songhians also think that they look cool, due to a series of massively-popular movies in the 70s and 80s where there was a detective who used a revolver.

- In a very real way, whites are excluded from much of broader society through their membership in the Kalimbata Provincial Grower's and Rancher's Association. This Association has had a massive quantity of special permissions, exemptions, and legal fictions built around it so as to serve as a state-within-a-state for the benefit of Songhia's white people. It purchases all their cash crops, it exempts them from military service, and it keeps them out of the way of the regular courts. It is a union of massive power and influence.

- The game takes place in Aramwaré Province, between Yandé and Wosaweyo. Aramwaré is one of Songhia's crappier provinces, because Aramwaré is pretty poor to begin with and because the white planters are a huge drain on the region's economy. (They produce a great deal of money on the national level, yes, but because their farms employ so many people, they suck the vitality, as it were, out of the region). The Aramwaré river is a lesser tributary of the Sanaga. One way or another, you are a long way from help.

If there are any further questions, please feel free to ask.

[Songhia]

Let me amend myself; after doing some research, I realized that countries like Songhia actually don't have anywhere near so strict regulations as I was proposing, so let's go with this...

- In Songhia, no 'class' of personnel is allowed to own or handle a firearm except in conjunction with their profession (ie military and police) as decreed by a competent national licensing agency. (So you can't just say 'security guards can own guns, I'm gonna start a security guard company, now I can buy guns)
- Individuals can apply for a license to own a specific firearm, which is accepted or rejected by the relevant authorities based on the merits of individual reasoning (ie paying bribes). Even then, it's limited to single-action firearms - bolt-action rifles, single-action revolvers, and the like. Semi-automatic is not single-shot; you have to pull the trigger to fire and then pull some kind of lever to re-fill the chamber.
- The NAF does indeed manufacture such weapons, though, at good quality and for relatively low prices. Every gun manufactured by the NAF - the National Armaments Foundry, the state-run gun company - uses unique ammunition, to ensure repeat customers. This means that re-supplying guns in Songhia is much cheaper or easier if they're Songhian-made.
- The importation of guns and ammunition is subject to enormous tariffs, in the hopes of getting people to stop doing it.
- Membership in the Kalimbata Provincial Growers' and Ranchers' Association generally streamlines this process a great deal. But in general, if you can afford to go through all the paperwork to buy a gun, you can afford to just buy one that fell off a truck, and in that metric, the NAF-44 floods the market, because of corruption and kick-backs. (every new recruit to the army is presented with a shiny new NAF-44, just for them; when they muster out, they give it back, and it sits, unused, in a warehouse or something - or is stolen to sell on the black market).
- Sadly, though, it is not possible to purchase ammunition for the NAF-44 legally, hence the old saw that a Songhian gun costs as much as its weight in ammunition. It has to be stolen from a depot, which happens often enough, or hand-reloaded. (The Bamabé people again show their usefulness in this regard, as they tromp about the desert unmolested by the general public, and produce very good hand-reloaded ammunition. Give 'em two brasses and they'll give you one good round.)

The overall feel of this is that lots of people, especially out in the countryside, own firearms, but ammunition for them is scarce, and - as you can gather from the name - most of the killings will be done with machetes. It is the common man's arm.

[The Cookish States]

I'll RP my character (of my two charactes and their 5 person family, there's one firearm) as having significant issues finding ammunition. He'll likely have about twenty rounds. Is there a Songhian model bolt action rifle to be used? Or can I just use an RL variant that fires Songhian rounds?

[Songhia]

I'll RP my character (of my two charactes and their 5 person family, there's one firearm) as having significant issues finding ammunition. He'll likely have about twenty rounds. Is there a Songhian model bolt action rifle to be used? Or can I just use an RL variant that fires Songhian rounds?

I have decided that in the long run, there's no reason to be picky about it. Have whatever seems reasonable. It's be an NAF-somethingorother.

[Lydenburg]

My character will probably retain a MAS-36, the oldest rifle still seeing official use in Lydenburg. The military phased them out in 1968 but they were still deployed in a reserve role until the existing ammunition pool for French 7.5mms was exhausted. Ex-LDF members and civilians of every description still have one, but most have been rebored to fire common .308 rounds better suited for hunting, crop protection, etc.

Basically, what Kris Plaatjies would typically have. I'm taking into account that a single firearm discharged once in a blue moon at a fleeing leopard conveys no advantage in itself over an army of berserk farm invaders hopped up on dawa and mad for 'settler' blood. It's also possible that the weapon may be lost, abandoned, or never shouldered at all. Going for your gun at the first sign of danger isn't part of everybody's instinct.

[Songhia]

My character will probably retain a MAS-36, the oldest rifle still seeing official use in Lydenburg. The military phased them out in 1968 but they were still deployed in a reserve role until the existing ammunition pool for French 7.5mms was exhausted. Ex-LDF members and civilians of every description still have one, but most have been rebored to fire common .308 rounds better suited for hunting, crop protection, etc.

Basically, what Kris Plaatjies would typically have. I'm taking into account that a single firearm discharged once in a blue moon at a fleeing leopard conveys no advantage in itself over an army of berserk farm invaders hopped up on dawa and mad for 'settler' blood. It's also possible that the weapon may be lost, abandoned, or never shouldered at all. Going for your gun at the first sign of danger isn't part of everybody's instinct.

I've never heard of dawa, and Google turns up nothing. Is this speed or something?

[The Cookish States]

I think this RP will be less focused on firefights ( there will be some, I imagine) and more focused on horror, blood, and survival.

Speaking of which, remember to put a WARNING-GRAPHIC sign on the thread, queasy people may not want a part in this. Genocides aren't pretty.

[Songhia]

Cookish speaks with verity; this is not a gunfight thing.

On the other hand, though, what I'm afraid of, is that I don't want to make it a 'zombie' thing, either. A handful of armed people with scarce ammunition, trying to escape from a horde of people who want to chop them into little pieces...

What I want this thing to be about, rather than purely on survival - which will certainly be a dominant element - is on an exploration of the oppressive enormity of people's hatred. It is, in a way, about the massive sickness of score-settling, and how there's never a happy or clean resolution for things like this.

But yeah, obviously I would have to warn people that it's gonna be graphic. If you get grabbed, you're getting panga'd into sirloin.

[Norvenia]

All of which sounds fantastic, so...

When are we getting an IC?

[Songhia]

All of which sounds fantastic, so...

When are we getting an IC?

Soon as Altak's finished, whenever that is. Or should we just go ahead on this one...