The League of Extraordinary Kriegspielers presents....End of Empires

[Ignatieff]

Our latest outing, later this year....

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 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............

14/02/2009

[argsilverson]

Now I see:
Qarakul [Kara-kul] lake with crystal clear waters
Italian alpini (?)
Gurkhas
the forthcoming Pulp miniatures Mountain climbers!
Uighurs, mongols 
glaciers
and whats more Ignatieff;s and co fantasy will bring!

[ See the following link: It has some story that is inspiring:
http://www.photos-of-the-year.com/challenge2005/showphoto.php?photo=822 ]
some yurt:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/7414364

[Mad Carew Snr]

Sounds amazing!

ATG was a mason - huh?

[Ignatieff]

Sounds amazing!

ATG was a mason - huh?

That was the plot of Kiplings 'Man who would be King'....and who am I to disagree!

[Emir of Askaristan]

Sounds awfully close to Askaristan...mind you dont stray over the border....
 

[Mad Carew Snr]

That was the plot of Kiplings 'Man who would be King'....and who am I to disagree!
[/quote]

It was? I need to read more!

[Ignatieff]

Sounds awfully close to Askaristan...mind you dont stray over the border....
 

And where might that be then?

[Plynkes]

Mad Carew Snr, it's an interesting short story, but this is one of the few cases where the film is better than the book.

You need to see this:

[answer_is_42]

Best film ever made. That's a fact.

Also, nifty background there, although I only understood about half of it  .

The son of God goes forth to war...

[commissarmoody]

Its true Mad Carew Snr, you need to watch that movie, I have been planing to play a game with it as a setting for a few years now myself

[Ignatieff]

It certainly is the best movie ever made!

[Emir of Askaristan]

Askaristan..You've never heard of it??

Its where Tajikstan, Pakistan and China meet. Even today few westerners have been there. Its people are a mix of persian/uighur and turkic stock though its deepest valleys are the residence of the Kaalash..decended from the soldiers of Al-Iskander, the horned one, who lead his army through its gorges when the british lived in skins and wooden huts!

Of course you wont find it marked on any maps....

[Ignatieff]

excellent.  I'll make sure there are a few peltasts in the valleys!

[Emir of Askaristan]

Thats the beauty of your own campaign setting..you can run anything u like there.

We've done late 70's early 80's games in Askaristan using the AK47 Republic Rules, Back of beyond games (come to think of it the chinese bandits are going to chop up a turkish column tomorrow night!), using TSATF and T&T and there was talk of a lost crusade at one point a year or so back.

Google earth is great for maps of nowhere in particular and Ive found an online Uighur dictionary so all place names and characters are in their native tongues. A bit of "realism" helps the players buy into the scenarios making them all the more interesting.

We also had AWCstadt, a European state where the Archbishop of Hoegaarden fought his rival the Duc d'Stella et Comte d' Artois in the late 15th C.. all the armies had to be beer related and incorporate the livery of the beer in their colourscheme and banners.

[argsilverson]

Askaristan..You've never heard of it??

Its where Tajikstan, Pakistan and China meet. Even today few westerners have been there. Its people are a mix of persian/uighur and turkic stock though its deepest valleys are the residence of the Kaalash..decended from the soldiers of Al-Iskander, the horned one, who lead his army through its gorges when the british lived in skins and wooden huts!

Of course you wont find it marked on any maps....

Kaalash supposed to be Greek ! Although  they were converted to Islam, relatively recently -I think by the early 1900 or later,  they still have rituals, words and even traditional relegious beliefs that are pure ancient Greek. There are recently some expeditions, cultural, ethnological and anthropological, from Greece trying study the case and "help".
By the way the traditional hat of the ladies resemble the macedonian helmet!

Al-Iskander [Sikander also] supposed to be Alexander the Great! [Recently I met some Muslim guy from Pakistan, who claimed that Iskander is not known person and believed to be Alexander by mistake, take your pick]
   
It is a good escuse to find a way to send some of my BoB Greek army expedition to find them!
A good thought!