Well, the first weekend in August saw The League of Extraordinary Kriegspielers convene for the leadfest culmination of our latest e-mail campaign: End of Empires. Unfortunately our master photographer V.I.Blackwood OBE was forced by a last minute change of plan to take his summer holidays over the weekend (ungrateful swine), so the photos this time round will be of the more ‘au natural’ variety. No matter. It was, as always, a cracking weekend, made all the more interesting by using period maps (mostly Constables 1893 Hand Atlas of India, a wonderful little tome). The end result was a heady blend of Back of Beyond, Pulp, VSF and weird war, which worked a treat as a one off. Back to a bit more historical setting next time around....Anyway over the next few posts, here’s the plot, a summary of the players briefs, and a few piccies which tell the tale of the weekend........Next out we’re off to Africa!!!
END OF EMPIRES
(Thursday 6th till Monday 9th August 2009)
The High Pamirs are one of the most beautiful and remote places on earth.
Once known as Bactria, the High Pamir region (in modern-day Tajikistan) with its ancient caravanserais, Zoroastrian fire-temples, wildly coloured desert canyons and huge glaciers is a remote wilderness with a history of romance and adventure. The Tajiks call this region Bom-i-Dunyo – the Roof of the World. Merchants and traders, military units, missionaries and pilgrims have been travelling here for centuries, and Marco Polo writes of the Pamir in his journal. Some two and a half thousand years ago, Alexander the Great led his armies through this wilderness, on his epic conquest of Central Asia, and the Sogdian language, which Alexander would have heard as he passed through this region, is still spoken in mountain villages here. The nineteenth-century manoeuvrings between British India and Tsarist Russia known as the Great Game also played out here among some of the world’s highest mountains.
And now, in the 192?, the High Pamirs are once more at the centre of world attention..........
Globally, a new era of relative peace has dawned. The Great Empires of the old world order remain tired and are being forced to look inwards and deal with the rising demands for independence within their disparate empires, whilst the new upstart - Bolshevik Russia - appears to have drawn breath amidst the ongoing turmoil of revolution and counter revolution.
International co-operation is therefore the politicians new clarion call, with former enemies coming together to create a new international order based on mutual trust and a peaceful co-operation. Visible symbols of this ambition are being made real around the globe. The League of Nations is perhaps the most obvious one, but elsewhere, and on a much more practical scale, numerous projects and initiatives are being started.
One such initiative is the new International Scientific Research Station near the remote Pamir town of Alichur. A joint US (who provided the funds), German (who provided the bulk of the scientists) and British (who provided the location and the security) project, its ambition is to push back the frontiers of known science. Centred around a modern observatory and clinical research facility at an altitude of over 7,000ft, the pure clean air and crystal clear skies make it ideal for purpose, albeit a remote and, particularly in winter, an isolated and demanding post. Scientists from the three nations rotate on a four month basis. Currently German scientists under the renowned Jewish eugenics professor, Dr. Manfred Isaacs, are seeing in the Bactrian spring after a particularly harsh winter. The US team, led by the famous explorer and oil man, Texas Ted, are en-route to relieve them, when suddenly, and without warning, radio contact with the ISRS is lost.
Two weeks has elapsed since this happened. Meanwhile all is not as it seems on the frontier. There are rumours that Bolshevik Russia has despatched a mission under General Nicolai Chuggerchevsky to Afghanistan. The Afghans themselves are keen to throw off the last influences of the British Empire (since the end of the second Afghan War in 1880, Britain has formally controlled Afghan foreign policy), although the current Amir Habibullah Khan is thought to be wary of confrontation.
The Bolshevik poster boy, V.I.Blackwood, has reportedly been on holiday in northern Bactria for the last three months with a specially equipped bird and butterfly watching expedition, close to the rumoured whereabouts by the shores of Lake Karakul of the White bandit and renegade army of Mad Bob Bobovsky.
To the west, The Beast of Bukhara, Adrian Enver Pasha, has declared himself ‘Iskander’ – Alexander – and is mobilising in his apparently insatiable (and unstoppable) thirst for Empire. He has declared a ‘March on the East’, amidst rumours that the treasures of Alexander the Great have been discovered in northern Kafiristan by the renowned Italian archaeologist Count Zeppo Capone. Enver Pasha’s German allies, under the archaeologist and adventurer Von Stauffenberg, are said to be particularly interested in the Italian’s project, and he himself has set off for a climbing expedition in the western Pamirs. Meantimes Count Smirnoff has been called away from the gaming tables of Biarritz and despatched on a search and rescue mission for the hero of Krasnovodsk, Lt. Draylon, who Adrian Enver Pasha is rumoured to keep in a wheeled iron cage.
Further east, Der Baron has declared that he is to follow the new bright star that has appeared in the western sky and search for the Christ child. Slan Ties, Chinese warlord and the come-back-kid of The Orient, has reappeared amidst the ashes of Kashgar and declared himself Bogd (‘Great’) Khan and vowed to re-create the glories of the Manchu Empire. Meanwhile Tibet welcomes back its favourite son, Cedric D. Van der Suds III, amidst rumours of an oil, gold and platinum bonanza just over the border from western Tibet in Tashkurgan.
And what of England, the one nation that could avert this forthcoming train crash in the High Pamirs? British India itself is being severely tested by the birth pangs of Indian nationalism and is still reeling from the International condemnation of the Amritsar massacre. The man who pulled the trigger in Amritsar, Brigadier Donald Linn, has been despatched to the lonely and isolated hill station of Gilgit, where he idles away his internal exile tiger hunting (in the newly established Flashman National Park) and converting the locals to Presbyterianism and apron wearing, whilst working on his lifetime project of proving that Alexander the Great was indeed the first ever freemason........
The scene is once more set for the League of Extraordinary Kriegspielers next Great Adventure. As always, we will be dealing with forces far beyond our comprehension............
STEVE LANGAN 14/02/2009
17 February 2009, 11:10:55 PM