Editing Trenchbreaker (section)

=The Setting=

[[Image:Former_aquilonese_empire.png||thumb|300px|right|]]

Four decades ago, the Aquilonese Empire was a prosperous steampunk nation that stretched from one end of the Aquilonese continent to the other, unrivaled across the world. The League of Starlight had been defeated a generation ago, leaving the Empire the world's only superpower. The surrounding nations of Varangia, Fillion, Kiserre, and Shoshkepal were peaceful vassal-states, their ambitions long checked against the risk of their rising against their Aquilonese masters.

Then the coal mines failed.

It started slowly, mine-by-mine, but it quickly became evident that the dependence on steam power had stretched the world's coal reserves to the breaking point. Economic upheavals followed; the coal miners, out of work and out of pay, began to call for an end to the Empire's control of power and the "capitalist economics that abandoned the hard worker the moment he was no longer convenient" and while these calls started quietly, they grew louder and louder, until they became not calls for reform but battle cries. The King's own brother fell to the whispers of democrats, and became convinced that their "one man, one vote" call was the only way Aquileon would survive. But his brother would not be persuaded, so in the dead of night, assassins infiltrated the palace and killed the King.

They had intended to kill his wife as well, but Queen Sayphay was less than thrilled with the prospect; she was a queen from the Astarian province, the head of that region's ancient matriarchy, and a champion fencer as well. She cut her way free of the assassins and fled to her ancestral homeland; as her brother-in-law declared the end of Aquileon's monarchy and a call for free elections, she declared herself the legitimate ruler of Aquileon. In practice, this was the secession of the western Astarian half of Aquileon from the main body of the nation.

To the southeast, the democrats fared more poorly; instead, a doctrine rose of government where all were equal, by and for the people. This doctrine combined with the ancient traditions of the wandering Nzemyan people, and so rose the Tribal-Communist nation of Nzemya. Aquileon's former vassal states also rose up, invading and taking stretches of territory for their own or expelling all remnants of the Aquilonese aristocracy from their territory. To the south, Shoshkepal underwent a bizarre revolution of its own in which the scientists took control of the nation, bringing the entire nation of Shoshkepal under so-called scientific rule.

Forty years later, the world hovers on the brink of war; new power sources have been discovered to replace coal, from Astaria's atomic reactors to the direct-beamcast transmission used across Shoshkepal through to the exotic power crystals Kiserre harvests from the depths of the ocean floor, all forced on them by the world's lack of significant oil reserves. But the incompatible governments of Astaria's monarchy, Shoshkepal's scientific meritocracy, and Aquileon's democracy have kept them at each others' throats long enough. Armies are marshaling, trench lines are being dug, and the latest generation of mecha are being activated to crash through them.

This is the world of Trenchbreaker.

[[Category:Wargames]] [[Category:Homebrew Settings]] [[Category:Homebrew Rules]]