Commission: The Great War: 1910-14

Scenario by Neotokyo6

The Tenth Crusade or the Great War (1910-4) would reshape not just the map of the world but also the arc of magical technology and the structure of the state on this twisted, dying Earth.

    In Europe the angelic Eastern Holy Roman Empire tried to seize the lands of Muscovy, stripped of demons and angels by the Behemoths, or repopulated by demons after the angels are killed. The new tsar--some minor cadet of a cadet of the Dolgorukys--is basically a puppet of the near-human secret demons running the Yakut/New Russian/Pacific empire. 1908-09 skirmishing and expeditions turned into a Great War, and then a Crusade proclaimed by the Lateran Council and the College of Bishops. The Empire of the New Men and the demon realms of Siberia and the Urals quickly joined the fray. The States of the Church, France, Iberia, Hanoverian Britain, the new German State, and the Kingdom of Scandinavia prepared for a long, hard war. They had no idea.

    Of course the real causes of the war were murkier: there are ten Elders in the world, as is whispered by the highest angels and devils, who see themselves as helpers and protectors of Creation while God sleeps. Long ago they split up, most following the leader calling itself "Mithra" to Rome: he commands the angelic forces against the demons possibly unleashed by Seth. Despite their differences and diverse approaches, both sides of the Elders want to tend humanity, to save who they can and leave the rest to perish.

    Two centuries of warfare have created strange new brutalities, from ether given as Communion to curious rituals of spiritual and biological degradation at an angel's seeming whim. Mithra's undoubted might can't hold his seven Elders together, Cain even defecting to the Mideastern realm of vampires, baby-eating lamias, and howling ghouls. The Crusade dissolved into siege and trench warfare as anti-air/angel weaponry got too strong. Its mortals fight with coal and steam, so it's closer to the Franco-Prussian War than OTL's WWI. Behemoths destroy the ecosystem, famines crippling humans and demons: nauseating abominations, soulless homunculi, and massive Church-blessed alchemical tanks all batter the Behemoths back. A meteor was even summoned to crack a Black Wall after spirit-unraveling A-Bombs proved ineffective. Elder Duma is a feared mind-reader and lawkeeper, his search for spies and his tyrannical nature killing plenty of those developing military technology, isolating them from one another and hobbling proper science at its moment of victory. But they've still managed to devise elixirs that can push particularly valuable generals and researchers' lifespans to 200: too bad that they require a lot of tissue from all three of the subspecies. Steam-powered cabbalistic difference engines run on a little more than "on" and "off," and are used by the angels to supplement their

    Mithra had wanted a world of spiritual and magical cultivation, but the spiraling warfare even between his allies has sent him into a deep depression in the caverns under Rome. Human nature, he figures, is unpredictable and moves towards violence and even the clergy he governs favor humans over his beloved angels. Titus is a beloved, handsome warrior who controls fire and wind against the Behemoths even as he's being sucked into their maws. Elder Petrya, worshipped for her healing and making crops and livestock grow, can't regrow food in lands deprived of ocean currents by Seth's Black Walls he uses to accelerate progress in his half of the world--and "purify" the humans and demons he puppeteers. More alarmingly, the Antarctic Current has been cut off, and the loss of its refrigeration effect is starting to show.

    In the Americas the slaveholding Confederation had died quickly 1882-5, leaving only Henry Wirz’s terrorist, megalomaniacal Empire of America around Texas and James Longstreet in Havana. Increasingly-demonic planters had fought with white commoner humans: this split made the new provinces a tremendous headache for the American Republic. Wirz crowned himself to compete with a slight economic surge in Europe and to grab some of its great cultural capital as everyone around the globe took to the sea and the air in the 1890s. But the Empire (well, permanent regency) of Mexico remained the real power in the Caribbean and the Spanish-speaking world. The Confederation of the Southern Cross dissolved Argentina and the Brazilian Empire by 1870, with Miguel II sent to Lisbon. Loss of Brazil frightened Iberia into unifying--and now the Confederation has brought more-than-fascism to its African provinces, alerting the Great Powers that Africa was open (at least for demonic empires). Despite their demonic  rulers they're particularly gleeful when the Black Walls conveniently weed out "impure" near-humans. To this empire, magic is just another type of technology--that angels and lower demons are just there to be used.

    To avoid defeat of the demons in the State of China, Cyrus removed the Jesuits from power via an ascetic Mohist movement. Oceania responded by forging the puppet of Insulindia (sometimes "Indonesia"), but Banten is still has ties to restless China. A Hanoverian "Family Compact" allows for Victor I of Oceania, John I of Canada, and Charlotte II of Britain to rank as monarchs, while Prince Albert gets India. Under the hidden Elder Seth himself, Oceania is very advanced, followed by Dmitri's Yakutsk. Their "PCs" and "smartphones" wouldn't really be recognizable to us: New Russia, the Japanese Empire, and Oceania are already starting to spar over rare earths for the digital technology, while Yakutsk goes more for biotech and weaponry. Oceania and the American Republic prosper by selling to all sides--but that increases the ethnic tension as everyone wants a more developed "good life." The American Republic and Canada only faced a few skirmishes with Estoty (the Rocky Mountains part of New Russia).

    Once the war had whimpered to a halt after some millions of starving soldiers are killed by a 1914 superflu, new realms shivered from the old--like hot glass in running water. Buryatia and the neo-Khitans held up Elder Cyrus's reunification of China. The Philippine Empire, nominally Iberian, immediately conquered Brunei after the cease-fires, causing concern in Botany Bay. The Kazakhs coalesce again and the bizarre Social-ist Republic of Greater Annam partakes of both the One Church and demon-friendly developmentalism; it's a real headache for even Mohist Canton.