Thursday 13 May 2010

A Pain in the Bolkans 4

Dateline: Geneva

By our Correspondent at the League of Nations.

Amidst unprecedented scenes of chaos and mayhem in the chamber today, two national delegations resorted to physical violence and had to be removed from the League Building.

Count Duckula, the Ainomor representative, had just risen to speak in the debate on the Scandanavian Pig Smuggling dispute when the gentleman from the Brobdingnag Union leapt to his feet and interrupted him with loud accusations of Ainomor atrocities against the Union in the just ended Royal Army exercises near the Union border.

Showering delegates with photographs which he claimed to be proof of his claims, Shishkebab Bey, appeared to say that Royal Army forces had made several incursions into Union territory and committed numerous offences including kidnapping and assault of women and goats from border villages, sniping at Union Gendarmerie border guards and turning the Union flag upside down outside town halls and other buildings.

This was greeted with howls of laughter from Count Duckula, and the singing by his assistants of the Ainomor National Anthem "Cummen havago iffudink yurhardenuff ". Almost at a point of apoplexy, Shishkebab Bey, then denounced the Ainomor Royal Aviation Corps for having bombed the rail junction at Cheyssac, destroying several buildings and killing a number of villagers.



Cheyssac in ruins.







At this point Count Duckula stated that the accusations were totally without foundation, but that if the RAC had truly intended to bomb Cheyssac then rather than merely damaging it, the village would have been totally wiped from the map. Whereupon, Count Duckula went down under an assault from several Union delegation members, including Shishkebab Bey wielding a large, traditional but not ceremonial knife. An unseemly brawl between the two missions only ended when police carried the two parties from the building.

The Union delegation left for Boughre without comment. Count Duckula was last heard screaming abuse at the Bey and shouting " This Means War!".

Thursday 15 April 2010

A Pain in the Bolkans 3

Dateline: Boughre
By our Special Reporter.

No sooner was King Mikhailus making threats against the Brobdingnag Union on the wireless earlier this month, before the Royal War Ministry announced a series of major military exercises in the southern county of Borta, just adjacent to the Union border.

A Ministry press release stated that " The Royal Army and Air Corps are determined to defend the Kingdom's borders from any and all external threats. This ongoing series of exercises will show the world that Ainamor will not knuckle under to any enemy."

Official photographs released by the Ministry show Ainamorian forces on Manoeuvres, including recently acquired modern aircraft.










After issuing a statement condemning the exercises as "blatant warmongering directed at Brobdingnag", the Union Ambassador to St.Pode de Vache has been recalled for "consultations".
In a separate announcement from the Latviestonakian Ministry of Truth, the Republic added its' condemnation of Ainamor's actions stating that" Knakians everywhere are justly concerned that Ainamor's ambitions are not limited to internal matters." The Republican armed forces have been put on alert and limited numbers of reservists have been called up.

Interbellum: War in the Bolkans?

Interbellum: War in the Bolkans?

Sunday 11 April 2010

A Pain in the Bolkans

Imagine a world almost like ours,but not quite.... That is the premise for the Interbellum imagi-nations blog. Creating a wargaming world set in the 1920s-1940s where you aren't tied to the orthodox, no complaints that you've painted your Guard Marine Grenadiers with five buttons on their sleeves instead of two! Well here is mine.....

The Rhue River War

With the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire after the Great War, several small countries emerged from the Empire's provinces. These countries were largely based around specific ethnic groups but the Treaty of Triang-Hornby (1920),where the victorious allies fixed the borders to prevent the Empire's revival, left everyone unhappy and determined to recover what they perceived to be their true territorial boundaries. With the rise of fascism and re-armament by the likes of Germany and Italy the Powers are distracted and perhaps the time is right for certain petty states to seek their place in the sun.



The Brobdingnag Union
Capital: Boughre. Population: unknown.
Vaguely Republican with a consensus government made up from representatives from the five Vilayets (counties) of the Union, nominally headed by a President who is usually just a figurehead.

Southernmost of the former HRE's provinces, Brobdingnag was once the old military frontier, inhabited by fierce mountain tribes performing military service in return for land and a series of major fortresses , home to Imperial settlers. This has produced a poor country with little industry but it controls the rail and river links from the old imperial lands to the outside world. The armed forces are tough but backward, lacking almost everything that is required by a modern army. However, alarmed by their neighbour's posturings the Union is seeking to upgrade its' forces.




Kingdom of Ainamor
Capital: St.Pode de Vache. Population: about 5 million.
A constitutional monarchy, headed by King Mikhaelus, scion of the former ruling family from the German Principality of Grossgottnein.

Claiming Latin descent, the Ainamor Kingdom was previously the semi-independent Woijvode of Ain which incorporated various slivers of the HRE. With strong connections to Italy and Rumania, the Kingdom has seen major industrial investment based on numerous hydro-electric projects originally started by the Imperials. Unfortunately, this is being hampered by the lack of decent rail and river connections to the sea with Ainamor being reliant on the ramshackle and incompetent Union transport network. Having failed to buy control of these from Brobdingnag, the King has hinted in his weekly radio broadcasts that other solutions are being sought.......




The Republic of Latviestonakia
Capital: Wzjldgj. Population: about 2 million.
Officially a democratic republic but currently ruled by a triumvirate of Field Marshals.

The bulk of the country lies on the edge of the Great European plain that stretches all the way to the Urals. Once forming the HRE's gateway to the east, the Republic now looks more like somewhere waiting to be swallowed up by the neighbours, such as Russia. Blocked from expanding into the former empire by the Central North Western Mountains, snowbound for six months in a year, or more specifically by the heavily fortified passes, the only direction to go is south; there lies the little mountain enclave of Kondatka County, a salient into the Union's lands.

This is the setting for what promises to be A Grand Little War.