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Votann

2023-05-08T17:09:50Z

2600:387:9:9:0:0:0:1E: SPAAAAAAAAAACEEEEEE!

[[File:Votann.jpg|thumb|400px|[[Meme|"Forty-Two"]].]]

{{Topquote|Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a [Votann]. We are close to gods, and on the far side. ‘We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more slowly, and we die more completely, too. Never forget I have had the chance to compare and contrast the ways of dying.|An ancient Votann speaking with a (soon to be dead) tech-priest}}

{{Topquote|Behold the One Commandment: God Needs <s>booze</s> RAM.|An ancestor after speaking with the Votann for the first time.}}

{{Topquote|The gun is good, the penis is evil.|Votann commandment.}}

{{Topquote|Dad, I'm in space. I am proud of you, Son. Dad, are you space? Yes, now we are a family again.| Core obsessed with space talking to itself.}}
The Votann (also known as [[Spirit stone|Ancestor]] [[Belisarius Cawl|Cores]]) are massive AI constructs that are venerated like [[Gestalt|ancestors]] by [[Leagues of Votann|Leagues that share their name]]. These are closely guarded secrets, for [[Adeptus Mechanicus|reasons]] that should be obvious, and while the word itself might be known to outsiders, the precise meaning is know only to the Kin. They communicate with the Kin via a tangle of arcane technology called a "Fane" and through the special class of Kin priest-psykers called the [[Grimnyr]]. This unique variant of Kin cloneskein has been specifically engineered by their fellow Kin both to have technopathic powers to access the Votann's empyrically stored knowledge and power from anywhere, and to minimize the usual problems that come with psykers (namely the whole exploding heads and surprise demonic possession nonsense).

Each Votann is a massive repository of knowledge. This knowledge concerns topics all the way from [[Necrons|Science and Engineering]], to [[Just as planned|Military theory]] and [[Creed|Strategy]], and even [[Orks|Philosophy]] and [[Hobbits|Genealogy]]. They're even some [[Standard Template Construct|STC]] fragments in there, big 'uns too, from the sound of it. Basically, if you have a question, then these things can probably answer it. All these constructs are absolutely priceless relics, essential to their League, and the members of each League are more than willing to lay down their lives to protect their League's Votann, and probably another League's too, if push comes to shove.

Unfortunately, even these majestic devices were not designed to last forever, and over time, more and more of their memory has been used up. This has caused many Votann to slow, and develop idiosyncrasies, even what you might call [[Machine Spirit|personalities]], and response times have become painfully long, sometimes taking decades or even centuries for them to answer complex questions. Their minds may have a bandwidth and memory capacity greater than sneaker-net, but that bandwidth comes at the expense of latency being as long as three hundred billion millisecond pings (to all the IT guys in the audience, just ignore how tortured this analogy is).

Lore dumps from ''Loremasters: Leagues of Votann Pt. 1'' reveal that the reason why the Kin seemingly can't just ask how to repair the Votann is that it's simply beyond the Kin's abilities to achieve such a feat. The Votann have been stated to be borderline supernatural, and their massive amounts of data and intellect are so large, that it makes them shine brightly in the Warp and also made them act like mini-[[Astronomican]]s. Anything the Kin make without the Ancestors' assistance is always of lower quality, and modifications to the Votann are at the Votann's specific request. It seems as though the only thing that can fix a Votann is something that is at a similar or greater power level to it.

The Votann are also central in the recycling of deceased Kin. Both iron and clone have their minds uploaded, and their bodies recycled for new kin. With the Votann slowly breaking down, you can guess that this does not bode well for the Kin (not that the Kin can't make more of their own kind without the Votanns' help but again, inferior quality). Additionally, the categorization, archiving, and duplication of every dead Kin’s brain scans, schematics, and genome means that the longer the Ancestor Cores take in their children’s digital signatures, over millennia, the less bandwidth and processing capacity is left, exacerbated by the aforementioned decay. The Votann of the Emberg Agnir Bloc even went mad after absorbing all their dead kin's biomass following their destruction by the Tyranids, becoming the aptly-named Mad Core.

The grimnyr interface in Arcane technological structures called Fanes. A space of timeless devices and quiet contemplation, at the heart of which lies a complex tangle of machinery that is part altar, part interface. It is said that these machines were simply nodes through which the wisdom of the Votann flashes with the speed of thought from one voidcraft to another. They still fulfill this practical purpose. Culturally though, Fanes have taken on a greater spiritual significance to the Kin, so that now they are viewed as places where one stands in full regard of the Ancestors, and where the presence of the Votann lies heavy and Sombre. Indeed, through arcane technological processes that even the Kin do not understand, there have been instances recorded of Fanes miraculously developing artificial intellect in their own right, and joining the ranks of the Votann themselves. These occurrences of miraculous self awareness are cause for great honour and celebration amongst the Kin in whose Hold they occur. By comparison though, more than one Votann has degenerated in recent centuries until they have become little more than Fanes themselves. To witness such a decline is a terrible tragedy for the Kin.

==Trivia==
The name Votann is pretty obviously derived from Wotan, the German name for the god most famously known as [[Odin]] (remember that Germans pronounce W's as V's). Presumably this is a reference to his role as a god of runes and wisdom.

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Communism

2023-05-08T17:08:15Z

2600:387:9:9:0:0:0:1E:

{{flamewar}}
{{Fail}}
{{heresy}}
{{sick| Real Communism Has Never Been Tried!!}}
[[Image:Communismleaders.jpg|right|thumb|400px|Contrary to western propaganda, this is how communism has always worked]]

{{topquote|Under [[capitalism]], man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.|Anonymous radio host from Soviet Armenia; also attributed to Yakov Smirnov}}
{{Topquote|MASH THE DIRTY RED SCUM! KICK THEM IN THE TEETH WHERE IT HURTS! KILL! KILL, KILL! FILTHY BASTARD COMMIES! I HATE THEM, I HATE THEM! AH! AH!|Ordo Xenos Inquisitor John Cleese, responding to the threat of the Damocles Crusade}}
{{topquote|Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.|Adlai Stevenson I}}

'''Communism''' can refer to two concepts: the society where the economy is collectively managed and organised government is replaced by local communes (hence the name), and the (usually) authoritarian ideology that seeks to instate such a perfect society. Communism in the first sense had been tried in various villages through the early nineteenth century before fizzling out or being suppressed by authorities, but most people are only interested in the second sense, due to its enormous impact on the twentieth century. Communism the ideology is generally associated with oligarchic rule of the "vanguard party" and a degree of central planning; it was the state ideology of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, as well as a few minor powers such as Yugoslavia and Vietnam, during the Cold War. It is still, albeit in a very modified form, adhered to in a few countries today, such as the People's Republic of China, North Korea and Cuba.

In many ways, it is the opposite of [[capitalism]], both of them along with [[nazi|nazism]] are considered by some historians as diverging branches from [[humanism]].

==Overview==
[[Image:Boris_Yeltsin_in_Texas.jpg|right|thumb|400px|Boris Yeltsin visits a Randall's in Houston.<br>Two years later the Soviet Union was dead.<br>Communism < Jello Pudding Pops]]
The ideology of communism is highly diverse, as numerous thinkers have proposed different definitions and pathways to a communist society, yet most modern communists, in one way or another, derive their ideas from the writings of Karl Marx: hence, it is Marxist communism that will be discussed here. Even then, a full explanation is far beyond the scope of this wiki, so [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism Wikipedia] might be a better bet if you want to get into the philosophical and economic details.

Most non-Marxist communists are more anti-authoritarian (e.g. Kropotkin, Makhno), so they are sometimes classified as [[Malal|anarchists]] instead. However, even Marxist communism is not homogenous, ranging from the more extremist (Hoxhaism, Stalinism aka Marxism-Leninism) to more moderate (Titoism, Kadarism, classical Marxism), sometimes mixed with nationalism (Juche), liberal capitalism (Dengism) or - ironically given communism's recurring [[Imperial Truth|anti-religion]] tendency - ''Catholicism'' (Liberation theology). Perhaps the reason why there are so many different variations of communism is because Marx and Engels' blueprint is so vague in many places (it didn't help that Marx died before finishing ''Das Kapital'') that it lends itself to a dizzying array of interpretations, for better or worse.

Marxism originates with the work of (newsflash) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Engels was the working son of an industrialist, while Marx got a PhD in law and spent much of his life in academia and radical politics; this arguably makes them the world's first [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee|socialist justice warriors.]] These two developed their economic theories as a response to the effects of the Industrial Revolution. Marx observed that while the mechanization of production was a good thing since it generated a lot of wealth, he believed it was [[Rage|grossly unfair]] since said wealth was accumulating in the pockets of only a few [[Games Workshop|fucking rich pricks]] and most other people lived in Victorian poverty. He further saw this as another step in a long historical trend in which a class that owned the means of production (i.e. factories, land, etc.) exploited and dominated a lower class that had to sell its labor power to survive (by working in said factories, land, etc.) even though they had no say in how the means of production could be used and had a better claim to it on account of being the class that actually used the means of production.

Marx viewed society as being on a very clear cut path of social evolution with clearly defined phases, based on his interpretation of Hegelian philosophy (we suggest you look that up yourself, it's much too complicated to make into a pithy explanation here). Every phase represented a different form of economy and social hierarchy, and, while starting out "progressive", would eventually [[Imperium of Man|fall into degradation]] as it exceeded its limits. At this point, this decayed socio-economic system would have to be overthrown and replaced with a more just and advanced one, starting a new phase: Marx considered the Fall of the Roman Empire (transition from individual slavery to land-based feudalism) and the revolutions of the 19th century (transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism) to be the moments when such a transition occurred. He believed that capitalism was rapidly approaching its own collapse and replacement.

The new social order, Marx believed, would be collectivist, atheist and classless: as industrial production required people to work together on a large scale, so too would the new system of government. The new society would start out more authoritarian (socialism) before its government would eventually dissolve (communism proper). The economy would be controlled by the workers rather than by individual shareholders, competition would be discouraged in favor of a more cooperative and collective-oriented mindset, and religion (which Marx considered an obsolete "opiate of the masses"- although contrary to popular belief he did not actually oppose its existence) would fade away when it was no longer needed to distract people from the poor conditions they lived in. Most importantly, the new order would end the traditional state of affairs in which one class dominated all others through its control of the means of production and allow for true equality and prosperity for everyone. It is for this reason that no Communist party has claimed it has actually ''created'' a communist society, as according to their ideology they are simply guiding society through its socialist phase until true communism can be achieved at an unspecified future time.

However, Marx and Engels never gave a clear outline of how such a society could be created or what it would look like, either because they believed the workers would decide that or [[Profit|they had no idea or plan for how to achieve it]]. The the first one to put it into practice on a national scale (Vladimir Lenin) gave it a distinctly authoritarian spin which only got worse with Stalin. It should not be surprising that even in Marx's own time there were many opposing views of how a communist society would be created and maintained since he failed to give a method to accomplish it.

As a whole, most forms of Marxism are highly skeptical of liberal democracy (albeit supportive of the democratic process itself and direct democracy in particular), as it is considered to be corrupt and easily manipulated by the wealthy (even if you take the role of the media and its ability to influence public opinion into account, the old stereotype of politicians serving their richest donors rather than the people they allegedly represent didn't exactly spring out of a vacuum); similarly, they dismiss the process of slow reform advocated by social democratic ideology as a mass of half-measures intended to preserve a broken system instead of replacing it. In its place, communists propose the "dictatorship of the proletariat". Before you jump to conclusions, Marx considered all forms of government to be a form of dictatorship in that one class held absolute power over all others; in this case, the class in question would be the workers, who would use the innately authoritarian power of the state to ensure that a worker-controlled democratic decision-making process would not be opposed by reactionary elements attempting to re-establish the old order (also, keep in mind that back in Marx's day even the most democratic societies restricted the vote to male property owners). According to Marx, this dictatorship would last only long enough to eliminate the differences between classes- as the state's existence is due to said class differences, this would eventually lead the state to dissolve when it was no longer needed...somehow.

One of Marx's most prominent socialist rivals, Mikhail Bakunin, made the prediction that a dictatorship of the proletariat wouldn't "wither away" as Marx expected, but instead would serve as the foundation of a new ruling class that would dominate and exploit the proletariat just like the capitalists did: rather than class differences leading to the creation of the state, it was the state itself that allowed those class differences to exist in the first place. As a result, using the power of the state to end class differences would only perpetuate them further.

In Leninism, Marxism-Leninism, and their offshoots, the dictatorship of the proletariat takes form of the "vanguard party", consisting of the most "class-conscious" individuals. This party would be given near-absolute power over society and economy, so that transition towards socialism and eventually communism would proceed properly. As such, most communist states using the Marxist-Leninist model and its relatives have been dictatorships, headed either by charismatic despots (Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot), or by the party oligarchy (modern China, late USSR). While other forms of communism exist that do not follow the vanguard party model, they are too lacking in influence to have ever been implemented on a national scale so we can't really say what they'd be like. It should also be noted that Marx and Engels themselves doubted the idea that a small revolutionary party could represent the will of the working class, an idea originally espoused by one of his other contemporaries (Blanqui, if you're curious).

===Issues===
One of the (many) major flaws in communist ideology is that its economic theories simply cannot be translated into the real world. For all the bullshit and genuine problems that happen in the free market (or the corporation-dominated form that exists today, at any rate), it still has the advantage of solving what economists call the ''economic calculation problem''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem .] To make a long story short, free markets work by allocating resources to where they are most needed and will produce the most value for people, and they are able to do this through ''price signals''.

Consider: Games Workshop wants money. You have money. So they make little [[Space Marines|metal figures]] that you want and so you buy them, and [[profit|they make money]]. Then they decide they want to make more money. So they try making a [[Manta|big honking model that costs a lot of money]], but you don't buy it because you're poor. By doing this [[Age of Sigmar|over]] and [[Primaris Marines|over]] again, GW eventually figures out what will and won't sell at what price, and you come to regard them as a money grubbing lawful evil because they're making a thing you want and charging you close to the highest price you're willing to pay to get it.

In a free market, nobody really needs to know what the whole economy looks like or how much steel the country will need in a given year; people only need to know how ''their own'' business works: what their customers want and what they'll pay for it. Under planned economies, by contrast, decisions are made by politicians and bureaucrats who have no understanding of how anything works and who pay no price for being wrong, leading to massive malinvestment and waste. Even nominally Communist governments were forced to implement some capitalist policies after learning this the hard way, though the degree to which they did so varied from country to country, with China being among the most capitalist and North Korea being the least.

Furthermore, Bakunin's predictions about the dictatorship of the proletariat turning into a dictatorship ''over'' the proletariat have proven to be consistently correct, with party bureaucracies quickly assuming the same exploitative practices that their capitalist precursors used and claiming the means of production for themselves rather than passing them onto the workers. Often, they actually made those practices worse and suppressed labor movements more aggressively than the capitalists they had overthrown.

Liberal philosophers like Karl Popper on the other hand took a more fundamental approach to their critique; Popper in particular had the major criticism that history doesn't run on predetermined rulesets and laws, like Marx thought, and that such a line of thinking, especially when paired with the promise of a socialist utopia, would ultimately just serve people like Lenin and Mao Zedong, who would abuse this ideology to create authoritarian nightmares that only serve themselves. Seeing how the Socialist dream always ended in stagnation, dictatorship and misery, he was ultimately proven to be right about a lot of things. Sociologists like Didier Eribon formulated another criticism on how Marxism views society; mainly that the working class, especially in our day and age, is not a uniform monolithic bloc that can be rallied to join a revolution or even a cause. While sharing common interests, how these interests manifest themselves in any individual can range wildly and also how the influence of social background often unconsciously makes people act against their own interests.

Even in an ideal universe where the bureaucracy running a centrally planned economy wasn't corrupt or inept, the technology to monitor and plan any sort of national economy has yet to be invented and what we have now can't keep track of everything well enough to make it work; the average economy is incredibly complex and not even the most advanced computers that currently exist can predict every possible variable that might affect how the economy functions (let alone predict the long term effects of a plan), so mistakes will inevitably occur and snowball with dangerous consequences. As a result, a centrally planned economy invariably destroys the countries in which it is attempted due to drop of quality in consumer products, and eventually, food sources. Countries like China use the international market to get around this, but this is only delaying the inevitable. It gets even worse when you factor in the further increased complexity demanded by globalization. Technological advancements in the future might be able to mitigate this issue or even solve it outright, but they may not happen for a very long time.

Other types of planned economies exist too, but they are much less common and tend to exist on smaller scales so we can't really tell how well they'd work on a national level, let alone an international one. They do seem to function surprisingly well on a regional/municipal scale though, especially those which are decentralized and use little to no top-down authority when making decisions. Only time will tell if they work on larger scales too, assuming that they are not forcibly ended by their rivals first.

The economic failures of Socialist countries can also be found in Communist ideology itself; if your state says that it's heaven on earth, then said state won't do a whole lot to potentially improve things it has apart from occasional repairs or inventing new things that aren't necessary for its own survival. The downfall of the USSR and its aftermath is a good example of this; WWII destroyed a lot of stuff in Russia, so the government increased funding for sectors essential to rebuilding the nation. Productivity remained high until the late 70s, when, paired with party cronyism, the job of rebuilding Russia was finished and productivity started to stagnate on a high level. The only sectors that saw regular innovation and new invention were the arms and nuclear weapons industry. So it came to be that the West ultimately shot waaaay past the USSR in terms of productivity and wealth and ultimately defeated it.

That being said, mixed economies combining elements of communism and capitalism (e.g. Keynesianism and the "Nordic Model") have consistently proven to be functional enough to not destroy countries, albeit these successes have much more to do with cultural factors than with any success of communist ideology, the latter of which has steadily been abandoned over the last few decades. As mentioned above, these mixed economies are typically viewed by socialists to be more closely related to capitalism than communism, and most of them believe that the welfare systems they depend on are likely to be privatized in the absence of a stronger shift away from a capitalist economy. Several of these economies have indeed been abandoning their socialist elements over time in favor of a more capitalistic system, due in no small part to economic stagnation and near-collapse due to socialist economic policies, although one could also point to major corporate and capitalist interests undermining said socialist policies as a cause of both of those. We're not in a position to say which of those explanations is more likely to be true, so we'll leave it at that.

Furthermore, Communist governments tend to move away from the tenets of Marx and Engels in an attempt to force their ideas to work in situations they were never intended to function in. Marx believed that the shift to socialism and then communism could '''only''' work in an advanced industrial capitalist society with an established working class and that any attempt to make it happen before that point was doomed to backfire (and as Venezuela has since shown us, even THAT prediction was clearly wrong), and one must also remember that while much of what he said was prescient, he had no idea how capitalism would develop past his own era.

Lenin got around this by claiming that he could "telescope" the capitalist and socialist revolutions into a single event with the aid of the aforementioned vanguard party and proposing an alliance with the Russian peasantry to compensate for the undeveloped presence of the working class. Even then, Lenin tentatively allowed a shift back to private ownership for the Kulaks just so the Soviet economy could get back on its feet, before Stalin purged them all as class enemies and triggered a widespread famine known as the Holodomor (which the vast majority of historians suspect was intentional on Stalin's part).

Mao Zedong took this to an even further extreme by forcing the revolution in the primarily agrarian China and then trying to kick-start industrialization with the "Great Leap Forward". It was a total failure for several different reasons, and Mao's hamfisted attempt to retain control of the Communist Party afterwards gave rise to the Cultural Revolution and all the bloodshed that came with it. Somewhat like Lenin, Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping ended up implementing capitalist policies (while leaving all the other oppressive elements intact) in response to the earlier economic crises. While it did salvage the economy, it also ended up producing a system that arguably combines the worst qualities of both capitalism and communism that survives only by constant pandering to nationalist sentiments.

Because of the legacy of the Cold War and everything mentioned above, mass famines among numerous communist countries, and widespread human rights abuses from the regimes of communist leaders, communism is about as "loved" as fascism; there's good reason why people occasionally put Stalin and Mao, and communism/socialism, on equal footing with [[Nazis|Hitler]] and Imperial Japan in terms of evilness. Even the forms of communism that originated independently of the Leninist traditions are generally poorly regarded at best due to guilt by association. This is ironic, given that Lenin (and later Stalin) spent a considerable period of time trying to wipe out the forms of communism that diverged from Leninism.

As an interesting closing note, some people claim that the rise of automation (robotic and algorithmic) has the potential to bring about a society that resembles what communism tried to achieve. Today, most farming is done either automatically, or by a single dude riding a combine and doing the job of hundreds of farmers in a single day, manufacturing has also similarly gone through a wave of automation which has seen many factories reduce the number of their workers from hundreds to mere dozens, and the recent bastion of human labor - the service sector - is slowly seeing the penetration of algorithms and in rare cases robots into the fold. What all this means is that humanity needs to do less and less work while the automated systems do it just as well if not better, these 'means of production' can be (in theory) easily nationalized and the usual problems of people slacking off due to everyone being paid equally is eliminated since both the neurosurgeon and waiter who are 'paid the same for their effort' are robots. Add to that the rise of 3D printing which may act as poor man's Star Trek replicators (eliminating the need to buy a smörgåsbord of stuff) and theoretically we could be on track towards "fully automated luxury gay space communism". However, none of these advances do anything about the economic calculation problem. They do not tell us how many robots to build or whether those robots should farm corn or assemble 3D-printed guns. More relevant from a communist perspective is the fact that these robots are still ''privately owned'' and so fail to address the core issue with capitalism in that the workers do not control the means of production and still have to sell their labor to live. All of this automation merely reduces the demand for human labor in some parts of the economy, pushing workers into whatever sectors of the economy are still hiring humans and leaving them destitute if they can't find anyone to sell their labor to. In fact, the original Luddite movement was a reaction to this very issue: it was composed of textile workers who had lost their jobs as a result of machinery eliminating the need for their skilled labor. (Contrary to popular belief, they didn't oppose technology itself so much as the fact that said technology was being used by employers to put weavers out of work and offered the ones that remained employed nothing in return but lower wages.) As always, only time will tell if automation can live up to its hype but historical precedent thus far is not promising.

=== Note ===
It also is notable that Communist is often used as a dismissive snarl in modern first world politics against the left wing, even when actual Stalinist-style communists (or "tankies" as other communists and socialists call them, a reference to the Soviets' sending in tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956) are a small minority on the fringes. There is also a distinction between Revolutionary Communists like the Bolsheviks and the Democratic Socialists such as the German SPD, which believe that the transition to socialism and then communism does not necessarily require an outright revolution and can be implemented through peaceful means. Ironically, it is the latter that more closely resembles classical Marxism. Democratic socialism in turn is not to be confused with social democracy, which is a form of liberal democracy whose capitalist economic system is paired with regulation and social welfare programs to mitigate the excesses of capitalism (with varying degrees of success as described above).

==Communism in Traditional Games==
In general there are three ways communism is used in fiction and board games:

1: '''Filthy Godless Red BASTARDS!''': Dangerous, faceless enemies, ripped straight from the wettest dreams of the Cold War-era American John Birch society. These communists are the enemy; a vast, brutal, godless horde determined to take over the world that our heroes must resist. Nowadays, this attitude is usually played for comedy, as in ''[[Paranoia]]'' where Friend Computer's glitched-out personality has made it a paranoid wreck obsessed with a largely-imaginary adversary (while creating some actual communists in the process). Others have played it seriously, especially in works produced during the Cold War (such as the 1984 film ''Red Dawn''). By the way, if you want an example of literal CommuNazis, the East German Stasi are a good place to start, although the Nazi part is mostly aesthetic and the Communist ideology is what was dominant (for CommuNazis as an ideology, Nazbols are basically that, combining far left economic policy and far right cultural party). Red Alert 1 is a /v/idya example, totally starting with a massive Tabun gas attack on the Polish city of Torun with ''children'' being discussed as dying the easiest.

2: '''Champions of the Proletariat''': The other side of the coin to what is listed above. These are either rebels against corrupt corporate overlords (frequently cyberpunk heroes) or a body of workers and soldiers fighting against fascist invaders (any game from the Russian perspective in WWII will count). Occasionally this show up in Medieval settings as anachronistic peasant revolts or other politically-radical types out to pull down the social parts of [[Medieval Stasis]]. Red Alert 3 has this a smidge between the lines, moreso in Uprising where they avenge innocent Russian citizens being frozen and crushed alive for fun by bloodthirsty Allied mercenaries.

3: '''GLORIOUS COMMUNISTS''': Somewhere between the other two and generally played for laughs. Communist regimes are oppressive and ponderous, but also able to do great things through sheer force of Industrial Might, Soviet Super Science, Stalinist Architecture and Will-Of-The-People and can be heroic just as easily as villainous. See Red Alert-II(more of it) and III(less of it), and to a lesser extent a few parts of the [[Imperium of Man]]. As close to real communism as you can get, comrade.

Communism has also provided us with the Russian army, which is an awesome gaming resource and reference, either in a drunken, drown-your-enemies-with-bodies-and-artillery sort of way (World War II), or a send-in-the-hardened-and-manly-Spetsnaz-and-tanks way (Cold War). It is a sacred law of [[/tg/]] alternate history [[/tg/'s homebrews|homebrew]] settings that there must be at least one communist faction and it must control at least 50% of the world's total landmass. Even [[Warmachine| Khador]] draws on the imagery of the Soviet armed forces, despite being more analogous to Tsarist/Imperialist Russia politically, aside from their Manifest Destiny "Why can't everyone else just roll over and let us conquer them?!" ideology that has... [[Nazi| other roots]].

Like all radical ideologies, communists are all over [[Shadowrun|the Sixth World]], mostly among the poor and disenfranchised who can't help looking up at the big fancy megacorp enclaves and wondering how ''that'' makes any kind of just sense. The Berlin Flux State was probably the biggest and most successful anarcho-communist enclave in-setting for a while, before it became such an embarrassment to the megacorps insisting they should be the only game in town that many of them (including the one run by the great dragon Lofwyr) had it dismantled somewhere around second or third edition.

People like to call the [[Tau]] communist. There's ''some'' truth to that, given they're a highly-collective society that generally values group achievement over personal accomplishment, but they're also a largely class-stratified society, with only the assurance that their leaders are theoretically cooperating for the [[Greater Good]] to keep them from being out-and-out feudalists with castes. This system is actually very similar to Italian and Spanish ''[[Nazi|fascism]]'', where the economy was split between several large trade-based corporations, where the workers and the bourgeoisie were supposed to talk out their issues together (under the benevolent guidance of the party elites of course).

There was also the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]], a parody of the kinds of communist guerrillas of previous decades, who are armed grots out to demand equal treatment from their Ork masters with comical results. The Imperium, being a decentralized feudalistic empire, undoubtedly has many worlds that have communist governing bodies and economies, and maybe even a few where things worked out okay.

In '''Pariah: Ravenor vs. Eisenhorn''', Alizebeth Bequin (The clone) was seen hunting for relics from a collector. There, she came across [[wat|an ancient children's toy in the shape of a rocket with the marking of C.C.C.P (aka '''оюз Советских Социалистических Республик''' (Soviet Union))]]. Although it was obvious that 40k sets in the far future of our real world, it none the less confirmed the existences of Soviet Russia and communism in the setting. Btw, neither Bequin nor the collector knew what CCCP meant, considered much of the ancient Terra history were lost in the far future, but at least they remembered ancient humans on Terra made their ''first step'' to space using chemical rockets.

[[Pathfinder Roleplaying Game|Golarion]] has got a semi-hemi-demi communist nation in-setting: Galt, land of insane, constant revolution where the only winners are the ''final blades''. It represents the "messy revolutionary" kind of communism rather than any of the three flavors above, though there's some obvious mixing with the principals of the French Revolution that was its more-direct inspiration.

The [[Harpers]] of Faerun are semi-communists in outlook. They strongly favor removing power from single governments and shifting leadership to individual communities. This can make them heroic when unseating despots but significantly less so when assassinating anyone who tries to unite the city-states.

[[Khador]] in Warmachine takes the Glorious Soviet Russia identity and wears it like a badge, even though its actual government resembles Tzarist Russia.

''[[Star Trek]]'' is complicated. On the one hand, the Federation has essentially a communist economy and they have the humanist element down, but their advanced technology has created a post-scarcity economy, so it can be interpreted that the producers thought this would be a natural product of a society where everybody was self-sufficient. Conversely, their chief rivals, the Klingons and the Romulans, are transparent analogues of the USSR and Maoist China seen through the pre-détente eyes of an American lounge lizard. Similar post-scarcity communists are common in ''[[Eclipse Phase]]'', though with a much stronger anarchist bent. They are largely and uncomplicatedly perfect due to the game designers' raging stiffy for that kind of thing.

Any WWII or quasi-WWII game worth its salt will have a communist faction, including the classic ''[[Axis & Allies]]'' and the modern wargame ''[[Flames of War]]''. Additionally, many classic board games have attempted to tap into the forty-five year struggle for dominance between America and the communists. The most famous and best is probably ''[[Twilight Struggle]]''. [[TSR]] also released an RPG set during the Cold War called ''[[Top Secret]]'', though, like most non-''D&D'' TSR products, no one under thirty-five has ever heard of it.

{{BLAM|This article has been marked as containing treasonous capitalist road sentiments. Please report to your local commissariat for re-education through labor.}}

==Gallery==
<center><gallery>
File:AK-47.jpg|Glorious Soviet Industries could be used to produce huge numbers of reliable and effective things which are still in high demand after a half a century...
File:Lada 1200.jpg||...Their cars are not on that list.
File:Communism and the NTS Fallacy.png|Still a better track record than the Nazis (not pictured, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and more)
File:Space marine commie.jpg| Do your duty comrade
File: Stalin space marine.jpg| This is how some people think World War II actually went
File: Space marine revolution.jpg| The cure for [[Chick Tracts]] ("something something worse than the disease")
</gallery></center>

==See Also==
* [[Imperium of Man]] as it too was based on a revolutionary progressive ideal that gave way to despotism, with the big question being if this was a natural consequence of the ideal or a complete perversion.
* Come to think of it, most failed utopian societies that /tg/ loves probably borrowed from the history of Soviet Russia in some way, especially from the revolutionary to Stalinist era.

[[category:Not related]]
[[Category:history]]

Historical Empires

2023-05-08T16:53:56Z

2600:387:9:9:0:0:0:1E: Humans are animals we have races

{{Cleanup}}

The common definition of an empire, as opposed to a kingdom, is that a commonly but not always divinely-ordained Emperor rules over subjects of multiple cultures, races, and/or religions. '''''Empire''''' is derived from the Latin word '''Imperium''', which means "authority" and more specifically the authority to command numerous Roman legions.

=What does this have to do with /tg/?=

Historical empires are a commonly-referenced source for fantasy and sci-fi cultures. For example, the Holy Roman Empire had a lot of influence on the design of the Empire of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Most roleplaying settings feature big, huge empires based on historical empires or the decaying remnants of such. And empires are common window dressing for board games like Twilight Imperium. Empires give you more options than typically smaller, more parochial kingdoms.

=Notable Historical Empires=
Not an exhaustive list, though there are relatively few empires compared to kingdoms in history due to the size and demands of maintaining one.

==Ancient==
Empires first emerged as the economic and agricultural needs of individual city-states outgrew the palace economy they had hitherto relied upon and priest-kings began to covet the lands and wealth of their neighbors.

*'''Akkadian Empire''' ''(circa 2234-2154 BC)'': The oldest known empire in human history, arising in the Fertile Crescent in northern Mesopotamia. Arose when Sargon of Akkad conquered the cities of the Sumerian civilization and then conquered its neighbors and subjugated their kings.
*'''Neo-Assyrian Empire''' ''(911 BC–612 BC)'': An empire which had in its foundation a belief that if their army ever lost a battle, the world would end. Unsurprisingly, it lasted until slightly after they lost their first major battle.
*'''Egyptian Empire''': Depending on your definition, one could define it as starting with the Old Kingdom unifying the Egyptian city-states until the fall of Ptolemaic Egypt to the Roman Empire. Mind you, the civilization is not the Empire. For details, please consult relevant professionals and their works instead of a wiki for tactical genius.
*'''Achaemenid Empire''' ''(550–330 BC)'': Most famous for being conquered by Alexander and, along with Egypt, providing visual inspiration for the [[Thousand Sons]]. Infamous for how they're depicted in the [[/pol/|oil-slicked fantasy epic]] that is 300, the Persian Empire was not, in fact, a highly decadent empire of monsters and evil god-kings; only a regularly decadent empire that was actually quite lenient for empires of the time - Slaves were outlawed among Persians (but not their subjects), and slaves had more rights than usual; women could own businesses and they were very off-hand in their dealings with their vassal kingdoms. It was still a militaristic empire, mind, but they were not some evil eastern "other" for the Greeks to defeat - in fact, the "Greeks" did not exist yet! The people that would become the Greeks were as different culturally from each other as they were from the Persians, and many even saw the Persians as closer to them culturally than some of the other city states! Why was that? Well, a good number of Greek city-states (particularly the ones in Anatolia or very close to it) had had years of either being tributary to the Persians or had incredibly good trade relations with them.
*'''[[China|Chinese Empire]]''' ''(221 BC-Present)'': Though already unified under a king as late as 841 BC (re-dating based on astronomy ''claims'' to trace further exact years way into 2100BC and there is evidence of complex agrarian civilization going back well before that), the Chinese did not live under an Emperor until 221BC. They survived interim catastrophes by coming up with the Mandate of Heaven (if the dynasty turns into a bunch of idiots then your local emperor definitely isn't favored by the gods and every peasant can hang them off), their equivalent of a common law, in the Zhou (not empire), and enhanced social mobility with a general disregard in right of blood (began in the Qin(Chin), first empire) and the test system for enlisting government officials (began in the Sui, some 600 years later). Lasted until the fall of the Qing Dynasty in the early 20th century, after the European imperialist ambitions exploited the hell out of the Chinese state and societal structures being essentially the same for almost 3000 (yes, really) years (and also these 3000 years of prevailing against all odds made the Chinese aristocracy complacent to such an extent that the Russian nobles the Soviets had shot looked progressive by comparison). Resurgent, you may say.
*'''"Greek Empires"''' ''(Ipsum Lorem)'': More or less just Sparta and Athens. Athens was a naval power that dominated after the Persian Wars and formed a "league" that roughly amounted to an Empire. Got roflstomped by the Spartans who formed their own "league" that resulted in them becoming an empire to replace Athens, until everything devolved back into city state violence until this nerd named Alexander showed up.
*'''Macedonian Empire''' ''(330-323 BC)'': One of the largest Empires in ancient history, created by Alexander the Great. Conquered Persia, the largest Empire in history at the time. Shortly after the empire achieved its height, Alexander died at only 32 years old and his Empire was split into several smaller countries such as Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Kingdom, ruled by dynasties started by his generals, called Diadochi.
**'''Seleucid Empire''' ''(323-63 BC)'': The only one of the Diadochi Kingdoms to be called an Empire. By far the largest of the Diadochi Kingdoms, it stretched at its largest extent from western Anatolia all the way into modern Pakistan, although that period didn't last very long. In spite of the difficulties of managing a realm of such a size, they stuck around for a very long, because of a whole couple of clever alliances struck with proto-Indians and the gradual assimilation of its Persian populace. Its strength started to vain in the middle of the 2nd century BC when a couple of political intrigues messed up the day of the ruling dynasties as well as the the constant warring with Ptolemaic Egypt in Syria and modern-day Israel and the somewhat-resurgent Greek states in the west. Its final demise came at the hand of the Romans, when Pompeius dismantled the remainders of the Seleucid Empire in Antioch in 63 BC.
*'''[[Roman Empire]]''' ''(27 BC – 476 AD (Western)/1453 AD (Eastern)/1475 AD (Trebizond))'': The codifier for <s>fictional</s> empires everywhere, and (through borrowing/stealing Greek technology) largely blamed for turning Europe from a backwater land of barbarians into the home of the most ambitious superpowers in history. Has lots, and I mean LOTS, of successors whether it be the directly-descended Spanish and French Empires, or the more-religiously-oriented Roman Catholic Church, et cetera. Roma Invicta.
**'''Byzantine Empire''' ''(395-1453 AD)'': Originally the chopped off eastern half of the Imperium Romanum with Greece, Egypt and Anatolia as its most important core territories. It came into being when the last Emperor of both halves of the Roman Empire, Emperor Theodosius, made Constantinople his permanent residence and gave the leadership over the Empire to his two sons, Honorius and Arcadius. The Eastern Empire survived the cataclysmic events of the Migration Period (not in small part due to generous bribes to the Huns and throwing the western half under the bus) much longer than its western cousins did and even enjoyed a long period of relative peace between 400 and 503, during which time the East Roman Emperors consolidated their Empire and greatly strengthened its civil institutions. The first major points of its eventual demise came at the hands of the Seljuk Turks and Mamelukes, who conquered Egypt and all of the Empires holdings in Anatolia as well as the sack of Constantinople by Crusaders in 1204. After the sacking of its capital, the Empire only persisted as merely a rump state with holding in Thrace and Greece and saw its ultimate end when the attempt of the Polish King Wladyslaw to save Constantinople from the Ottomans failed at the Battle of Varna in 1444 and the city subsequently was conquered in 1453.

==Medieval==
Many medieval empires that are known to fa/tg/uys claimed legitimacy, in some way or another, from the Roman Empire. Even the Ottoman sultans claimed to be Kayser-i-Rum, or Caesar of Rome. New World empires, obviously, did not, and most Asian empires embraced the trappings, if not the lineage, of the Chinese Empire. The great empires of the ancient period thus laid the foundation for the creation and culture of many modern nation-states through the transmission of medieval successors.

*'''The Holy Roman Empire''' ''(962–1806)'': Sometimes called the [http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/germany/a/Otherreichs.htm first Reich]. Started as a powerful medieval state, but ever since the beginning of [[High Middle Ages]] started to devolve into something "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." (Voltaire) So complex that its easier to explain what it was not than what it was. If you know how the [[Empire]]'s politics works, that's the HRE in a nutshell. In essence, the HRE was more of a loosely-connected confederation of innumerable fiefdoms, counties and kingdoms (over 300 by the late 1600s) formally unified under the leadership of the Romano-German Emperors. Its political power in Europe rested entirely on the willingness and ability of the current Emperor to keep his underlings in line, but by the 1300s the Emperor's authority began to crumble and was completely gone when the Thirty-Years-War (1618-1648) ravaged a third of its population and foreign powers (mainly France, Prussia and Sweden) started to chip away at its territory. Saw its ultimate end when Napoleon defeated the Prussians and the Austrians in short succession, prompting the major dukedoms that were still left to formally leave the Empire, and the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II abdicated the imperial crown in 1806. Luckily, the Hapsburgs had installed a backup empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, meaning they retained the title of Emperor even when the HRE dissolved.
**Named "The Holy Roman Empire" because the Pope of the day went around baiting kings with religious recognition to earn more loyalty from the brainwashed, god-fearing masses. The Pope did this because, after seceding from the Roman Empire ruling in the east and declaring its independence from the Emperor-dominated Orthodox Church papacy, the Roman Catholic Church needed to sponsor a Roman Emperor of their own.
**Was preceded by the '''Carolingian Empire''' that lasted for about eight decades until it was partitioned into three successor kingdoms. One got split and merged in between its siblings, the other of which would evolve into the Holy Roman Empire, and the last one into the Kingdom of France; thus laying the groundwork for the greatest Hatfield-McCoy feud in history. The Ottonian House that founded the HRE liked to claim descent from the Carolingian House and Charlemagne as a result.
**Note that the Byzantines in the East also laid claim to the title of Roman Emperor and occasionally acknowledged the Holy Roman Emperors as their equals. This was a pretty messy period though and a detailed explanation would require a full article of its own.
**As to the frequent asked question why there were so goddamn many states on the territories that up the HRE, one needs to look at German inheritance custom, which survives to this day. It was the normal custom for each son of a noble family to inherit a piece of the realm after the previous ruler's death and found their own little dukedoms, especially if the sons couldn't agree on who got what. Add to that an incomprehensibly complicated net of political marriages with the addition of bishoprics which were issued by the Vatican and free cities (plus a number of other miniscule imperial territories like the "Imperial valley of Zell) and you get a clusterfuck of fractured territories that were constantly at each others throats and only banded together when the perfidious French tried something.
*'''Ummayyad Caliphate''' ''(661-750)'': The Largest of the four classical caliphates established after the death of Muhammad.It's borders stretched from Northern Spain to Pakistan. Overthrew the last Rashidun ("Rightly-Guided") Caliph Ali in order to gain power. At it's apex, it was one of the mightiest empires the world had ever seen and cemented Islam's new role as a religion of caliphs and kings. When one thinks of the Islamic Golden Age, it's either these guys or the dudes that took them down, the Abbassids. The Ummayyad's were rebels who promoted an early form of Arab nationalism throughout the Islamic World, as well as shifting the role of the Caliph from an elected position to a hereditary one. Eventually, their rampant Arab nationalism would get them overthrown by the Abbassids and the last remaining heir fled to Muslim Iberia, where they established the Emirate of Cordoba
*'''Abbasid Caliphate''' ''(750-1258)'': A caliphate born in a revolution against the Umayyads, the Abbasids are what you think of when you think of the Arabian Nights. Opulent cities glistening with the fruits of empire, [[Dark Eldar|crafty viziers who hide behind puppet sultans]], and all the glories of Baghdad in it's prime. Notable achievements include the many inventions and advancements of the Islamic Golden Age, Dominating the Mediterranean (Just look at Sicily), and battling the Chinese Tang Dynasty for control of Central Asia. Unfortunately with the coming of the Seljuk Turks, their hegemony would shatter and eventually their dynasty would become nothing more than a line of puppet kings hiding out in Mamluk Egypt.
*'''Ethiopian Empire''' ''(1137-1935/1941-1974)'': an empire of Africans, and one of the only two African nations to remain independent of the West, depending on your view of Liberia. Also used to have Judaism as the official religion and then switched to its own version of Christianity. Its last Emperor, Haile Selassie, was revered by a religious movement as [[God-Emperor of Mankind|God incarnate (which, notably, he neither started nor approved of)]].
*'''Portuguese Empire''' ''(1139-1975)'': The lesser Iberian empire that liked keeping their maritime maps secret, becoming the first global empire in the world. Notable for the founding of Nagasaki, moving their capital and court to Brazil to escape Napoleon, and coming back from the brink of dissolution three times. Also, their nicknames, Portugal Overseas: [[Ultramar]] Português or the Império [[Ultramarines|Ultramarino]] Português has something to do with some smurfs made by a [[GW|British company of Grimdark]]. Due to [[Inquisition|secrecy]], nobody has found the old Portuguese royal sea route maps.
*'''Mongolian Empire''' ''(1206–1368 AD)'': '''The Empire made from Empires.''' Your stereotypical savage-nomad-kill-burn-kill-maim-burn empire. But only because they liked their reputation to precede them and do the conquering without the bloodshed and the damage to their soon-to-be territories. Was more civilized than Alexander the Great and their empire lasted even longer than his when you think about it. The empires they conquered were actually at THEIR golden ages too, like the Khwarazm and Song (China).
**Like Romans, once a people surrendered, they welcomed scholars and engineers with their new ideas, especially that of war, and they went from steppe cavalry with arrows to heavily armored cavalry with horse trains, gunpowder, and siege weapons. Religiously tolerant/gave no shits. Built a lot of bridges and blazed a lot of trade routes. Remember Marco Polo was writing about their empire. Put the Four Khanates and the conquered China (Yuan) together, and lol, the second largest human empire, ever, at 88% the size of the British one. Mind you, the Mongol Empire was ''continuous'', though, unlike the British Empire with isolated territories and islands. But the British are a seafaring empire, so there's that.
**Through the 4 sons of Genghis Khan, was the progenitor of other vast, mostly Muslim, empires. Its last successor, the Mughal Empire, only fell in '''''1857'''''.
*'''Ottoman Empire''' ''(1299–1923)'': A vast and powerful Muslim empire that started out as an amalgamation of nomadic tribes uniting to fight off Mongol raiders. From there they became a small Turkish state in Anatolia that conquered Constantinople, the Balkans, Middle East, and North Africa. In its heyday, it was huge, technologically advanced, well-governed and constantly driving forward, the terror of Europe. Its Janissary Corps the most feared and elite group of soldiers in Europe or the Middle East. Yet beginning in the 1600s the Empire began to transition towards a more sedentary state, and while it kept parity with its contemporaries well into the 18th century, missing out on the advances that came with Europe's Seven Years War and then its age of Colonization created a gap the Ottomans were incapable of surmounting. Adding to this was the introduction of Nationalism into the boiling pot of ethnic tensions, (with the Greeks being the first to win their independence in a brutal civil war), the conquest and liberation of much of its territories in Europe by the Austro-Hungarians in the mid 1700s and the Pre-WW1 Imperial Powers of Europe frequently exploiting the political weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire to their benefit. Its eventual end came with World War 1, when the German-allied Ottomans suffered a series of embarrassing defeats against the British-lead Arab minorities and the Russian Empire in the Caucasus. Trying to exterminate the Armenians in the largest Genocide up until the Holocaust did little to alleviate its decline. Kemal Atatürk ultimately dissolved the Empire in 1923 and founded the Republic of Turkey.

==Modern Period==
Note that when WWI started, the crowned rulers of Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Greece, and Romania were all related by blood or marriage, making both the war the single biggest family feud in history, as well as the royal family the single most successful genepool in all ecology. A similar feud, but between the rival Houses of Bourbon and Hapsburg, sparked pretty much all European wars between 1400 and 1798.

*'''Spanish Empire''' ''(1402-1975, at its height 1516-1700)'': Starting with the discovery of America by Columbus, it quickly colonized huge swaths of the New World, making Spanish the official language of most of Central and South America and the Caribbean. Annihilated the Aztec empire in the process of plundering its gold and silver. They established a trade route with China from the Philippines to Europe going through America, which was one of the first oceanic spice routes of the Early Modern World (the other one being the Portuguese route to India). In its hay day, the Spanish Empire was a frightening entity, controlling the overwhelming majority of trade with Silver and Gold, fielding the largest army and navy in Europe and only adding to it was the union between Spain, Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire under the Habsburg dynasty which dominated much of the history of 1500s central Europe. Its strength started to fade when economic stagnation and an over-reliance on its colonies paired with a serious succession crisis (the result of generations of relentless inbreeding within the Habsburg dynasty) in the early 1700s made its oversea holdings more of a liability than a boon. Adding to this were the constant efforts of the Dutch, British and French to chip away at its powerbase in the Caribbean. In the early 1800s, when mainland Spain was thoroughly beaten into submission by Napoleon,(so thoroughly in fact, that many Spanish historians argue the country basically ceased to exist as an independent nation for a decade) the colonial elites in the new world saw no use in their status anymore and declared independence in quick succession between 1810 and 1830. The final nail in the coffin was the establishing of the Monroe-doctrine as a central tenet in US foreign policy, which saw the Spanish kicked out of Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, ceding its last holdings in the Americas to the United States. While no longer a global empire they still held some territory in North Africa and brought back dictatorship after the Facist victory of the Spanish Civil War. Definitively ended once and for all when dear Franco died leading to democracy.
**When talking about the Spanish and Portuguese empires the Treaty of Tordesillas is worth a mention. Created by Pope Alexander VI, the treaty split the New World between the Spanish and the Portuguese, which is why the Portuguese settled Brazil and got to Japan because that was east of the line.
***Also, between 1578-1668 the Spanish and Portuguese Empire were under the same crown, turning it into the biggest colonial entity until the XIXth Century.
*'''Aztec Empire''' ''(1428–1521)'': Inspiration for [[Lizardmen]] buildings and homeland. It had a weird political structure because it was technically the alliance of 3 city-states, each with their own sovereign priest-king, that split up the spoils of war and regular tribute from their conquered territories in accordance to their contribution to the alliance. Infamously incapable of metalsmithing despite their greatest and most dangerous foes, the Purépecha Empire, knowing how to forge bronze.
**The real reason they were conquered by a band of Conquistadors under Hernan Cortes was not that they beardy crack team of war vets and military engineers of the reclamation of Spain from Muslims, not horses, not cannons, not guns (guns aren't all that deadlier than arrows until in the 19th century with machine guns. Guns are easier to handle and train with, and that is what made them useful), but his craftiness in exploiting '''how the native city-states all hated the Aztecs.''' Because they kept demanding humans for their ritual sacrifices, even going so far as to plant spies to instigate rebellions every decade or so, and spies informing Aztec warriors of all enemy intel to easily reconquer them... all just to justify their taking of even more sacrifices/slaves as "punishment." (Really similar to what Spartans did to their vassal cities). Unlike the greedy and short-sighted Columbus who was reviled by his own men for stealing their cut and discoveries (once they even allied with natives to kill him in his sleep). It doesn't matter how good you are, a few hundred men can't control 10s of 1000s of natives especially when you have limited supplies, arms, and bullets. Cortes promised the natives a good life and equal treatment as new subjects of His Majesty of Spain if they cooperated, and later even pushed to get his mestizo children legitimately recognized by the Church. As it turns out, he was the nicest and most successful conquistador as a result (debatable. There's a reason he's a national hero to Spain and Hitler levels of evil to Mexico). Still killed a lot of people but that was in war rather than pointless massacres and backstabbing/slavery of cooperative natives like Columbus.
***A good example of this are the Tlaxcaltecs. Cortes kept his promise to them. Chichimecs and peoples of Mayan descent also hated the Aztecs and banded together with Cortes.
*'''Inca Empire''' ''(1438–1533)'': Notable for it's size, road systems and the fact that it got so big without horses or wheeled vehicles. Unfortunately for them they got hit with the full Guns, Germs and Steel package when the Spanish showed up.
*'''Mughal Empire''' ''(1526–1857)'': A Muslim-Mongol superpower. After squandering the treasury on buildings and war, British influence managed to increase its presence on the subcontinent. Technically spent its last century as a British vassal.
*'''[[British Empire]]''' ''(1583-1997)'': At its height, the British Empire ruled a quarter of the Earth's land. Began the decolonization process after World War II and the Empire is considered to have ceased to exist as such when Hong Kong was formally turned over to China. Even so they still have handful of overseas territory [https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/ over which the sun has still yet to set]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars Had a hilarious war over trying to peddle drugs into China.] And again. God Save the King/Queen.
*'''Russian Empire''' ''(1721-1917)'': Big, powerful but often backwards in technology and social development. Came into being by destroying the Swedish Empire and proceeding to look east for colonial gains, getting around the nasty conflicts over America that the British and French had. At its height stretched from modern Poland to the Kuril Islands that it annexed from the Japanese, until the Japanese got pissed and took it back, along with stealing Korea and a large portion of Manchuria. Figures that when it ''finally'' started to catch up it decided to enter a world war.
*'''First French Empire''' ''(1804–1815)'': "Vive la Napoleon!" A pampered child of [[/v/]], too. '''Also the O.G. [[Imperial Guard|IMPERIAL GUARD]]''' (Napoleon's La Garde Impériale). In case you don't know about Napoleon, here is the tl;dr version of his and his Empires exploits: Starting as a lowly Lieutenant in the Revolutionary French army, he innovated many tactics of that time (incidentally inventing the basic concept of modern maneuver warfare in the process) and took many of the numerous enemies of the first French Republic by surprise, resulting in astounding victories for France in Italy and Egypt. He then did a Julius Caesar after the government of the Republic lost the support of the masses and installed himself as its sole military dictator, first with the title of First Consul, later crowning himself as Emperor of the French Napoleon I in 1804. His military and logistical genius saw France ground the major powers of Europe fall to their knees in short succession and by 1806, only the British were left to oppose him (although he couldn't do much to defeat them, as the Royal Navy handed him and his incompetent Admiralty a devastating defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar in the same year). Satisfied with his supreme rule over most of continental Europe, he grew a bit complacent which gave his enemies time to reorganize and reform their armies. The first major blunder of his career came when he tasked his Marshals with putting down a rebellion in Spain in a Guerilla War clusterfuck (fun fact: The word Guerilla itself was the name the Spanish rebels fighting Napoleon gave themselves) that rivalled later wars like Vietnam or the Eastern Front in WW2, which they consistently proved to be incapable of putting down, binding precious manpower and resources. THis however was overshadowed in every way by his historic defeat during the Russian Campaign in 1812, where a combination of underestimating the resolve of the Russian Tzar Alexander, overestimation of his own capabilities to overcome the massive distances in Russia, logistical fuck-ups from start to finish and the simple fact that France by that point had exhausted its reserves to the absolute breaking point lead to a devastating and humiliating defeat. This emboldened his former allies to form a new coalition to combine their forces and force him out of Europe in 1813. He did make one (and arguably doomed from the start) last attempt to grab power in 1815, when he was finally defeated at the by now near-mythical Battle of Waterloo.
**Seriously, fa/tg/uys need to stop with the tired French surrender monkeys meme and actually learn some history other than parrot arrogant British mockeries of their rivals. The French up until the Franco-Prussian War had the largest land forces in Europe, because after the Revolution, the military forces of the Republic were filled with people for the first time feeling like they mattered to the country, and this helped Napoleon immensely since his genius in logistical capabilities that let him to outnumber his enemies on the battlefield when least expected and minimize losses so they can keep on going and soon attack the next enemy army.
**Their defeats in WW1 in the trenches were not because they were stupid surrender monkeys like Italians, but too brave to a fault: they kept charging into MG nests and if they didn't make it, they thought they were simply not trying hard enough. Just like many scientific concepts at the time (like Social Darwinism), some generals misused the science/philosophy of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lan_vital "Élan vital"], which basically meant a creature is its will to live. Which in military terms, a military force is not dead until its commanders finally throw in the towel, so to keep up the pressure of life, one must never cease attacking. This on the surface The French learned that mindless charges and machismo won't win wars the hard way in WW1, but the Japanese took WW2 to learn it from their devastating losses by American hands.
**Next time you compare them to the British Empire, try minding that unlike Britain, they had to divide their forces among the sea, AND the land (The real reason Napoleon invaded Russia was because of England's blockade + Russia's refusal to cooperate with his isolation plans for the English). Britain didn't need massive armies to protect herself, just a bunch of boats, along with some soldiers to fight overseas. This explains why Britain and the US both were able to win wars on two fronts in the Second World War: natural barriers that impeded invasion directly through land, thus negating the need for large standing armies. Most of the time anyway.
*'''Austrian Empire''' ''(1804–1918, including time spent as the Austro-Hungarian Empire)'': Ripped apart after WWI. On the height of its power, Hapsburg Austria commanded respect across Europe through a strong army, reinforced through its very liberal policies towards non-Germans (Hussars were an Austro-Hungarian invention, after all). It served as a collective buffer between the Ottomans to the south and the rest of Europe alongside serving a relatively liberal oasis of refuge for multiple ethnicities at the mercy of Russian or Ottoman encroachment. Unfortunately, by the 20th Century, rising ethnic nationalism replaced the regional feudalistic sense of loyalties among the multiple ethnic groups in the Empire. By the time the run-up to WW1 started, Austria had fallen by the way side and was overshadowed in every way by its larger cousin, the German Empire, (ironically enough mainly because of it and Prussia) and although the peace between the Austrians and the Hungarian state structures was tenuous even at the best of times, it persisted quite successfully for a state whose structures looked like a relic well before it collapsed. [https://academic.oup.com/jsh/article-abstract/46/4/971/1065356 Lick a Stamp, Lick the Kaiser!]
*'''Mexican Empire''' (1821-1823): The very short-lived, broke and dysfunctonal first independent Mexican state, made up of the former colony New Spain. Had major civil unrest over the question who should rule Mexico throughout its entire existence, with various despots sitting on the throne for a couple months to be deposed by the next in line and continuing the cycle from there, until at one day, everyone was so exhausted that they thought insisting on a dysfunctional monarchy was perhaps not such a great idea and formed the (equally corrupt and dysfunctional) first Mexican Republic in its stead.
**'''Second Mexican Empire'''(1864-1867): The brief attempt of Mexican Conservative Landlords and General to revive Monarchy in Mexico, backed by Napoleon III of all people. Had a Habsburg Emperor on the basis that the Habsburgs once ruled New Spain (a claim that was by this point in time over 160 years old, if we count the death of the last Spanish Habsburg as the basis for that claim). Had a major civil war over the whole affair because the French thought the US were too busy killing treacherous slaveowners and underestimated the Mexican will to stay independent. Turns out the US ''did'' mind Europeans meddling in Americas affairs quite a lot and gentry told the French to fuck off via aiding the Mexicans in their war with military aid and mercenaries (many of whom later became the bandits you see in classic Westerns).
*'''Brazilian Empire''' ''(1822-1889)'': Like Russia but more backwards and way less powerful. It was one of the premier powers on South America alongside Argentina. Stopped existing when the rich landowners that controlled the country [[grimdark|got sick of the Emperor's shit for making the slaves free so they sacked him and declared a republic. Oh how ironic the monarchy was better than the "free" republic.]]
*'''Empire of [[Japan]]''' ''(538–1947)'': They've had an emperor since 538, but didn't actually make significant foreign or cultural conquests of any sort since the prior two attempts to do something in Korea ended in eventual expulsion. Japan really got into the empire-building business after it was first to industrialize among the nations of Eastern Asia, which wouldn't be that much of an advantage were it not for the fact that most nations around them (Russia, Korea, China) were in pretty bad shape so the Japanese had little trouble defeating and conquering them...except their own staggering ineptitude in some areas like the land-army and the navy actively undermining each other or not making any friends by being genocidal pricks, in some ways being arguably worse than the Nazis. For what it's worth, Japan did manage to build a respectably-sized empire starting from the 30s but saw it all collapse due to aforementioned assholery, poor supply lines and taking on the United Motherfucking States of America.
**As critical as we are, it would be dishonest to deny how rapidly the Japanese were able to modernize after Commodore Perry's visit in the mid 1800's. The Meiji restoration for all intents and purposes put Japan into a position of dignity and power after the tumultuous downfall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Japan also led the world in military aviation along with Germany in the 1930s, having developed the Zero and especially the aircraft carrier concept, which would be helpful in defending a seaborne empire. To put in the rapidity of Japanese growth into perspective, the US annexed Hawaii (and later the Philippines) precisely because they feared said islands would fall into Japanese hands if they didn't get there first. While not completely implausible seeing how the Japanese seized Taiwan and the Kuril Islands after kicking China and Russia in the balls, the Hawaiian island were a retardedly far distance from Japan (even though that didn’t stop Japanese migrants from settling on the islands in search of jobs).
**Note that while modern Japan is still named the same as the Japanese Empire was, the name is now officially translated as Japanese State rather than Japanese Empire. It also still maintains an Emperor as a constitutional monarch. Their <s>Navy</s> [[Rules Lawyer|Maritime Self-Defense Force]] kept the old flag though, which is on the level as the Nazi Swastika in many part of Asia, especially in China and Vietnam.
*'''German Empire''' ''(1871–1918)'': '''The Second Reich,''' put together by Otto von Bismarck's political genius and Prussian efficiency, it took a collection of feuding principalities and, in a few decades, turned them into the greatest industrial power in Europe until it was exhausted fighting pretty much every other industrial power that mattered, twice. Bismarck famously kept the Austrian Empire out of the German Empire owing to the long-standing Prussian-Austrian rivalry within the HRE and the fact that incorporating the Austrians would've meant bringing in huge masses of non-German populations.
**Officially ceased to exist after World War I. However, the German Empire had somewhat limited expansion after Wilhelm the Ist died. His successor thought he'd be better and kicked Bismarck out and pursued colonial ventures. Only problem was that Wilhelm the IInd couldn't decide whether they needed to be killing asians, French, Brits, or Russians for the majority of its existence post Bismarck. This explains why Germany had the odd colony all over the world and in the strangest places, including the Pacific, Africa, and the Caribbean: Wilhelm couldn't figure out which group of minorities he wanted to kill/compete with. Fun bit of trivia, the German colonial legacy resulted in China now operating the largest Brewery in the world, a leftover from when Germany had occupied the harbour of Tsingtao after the Opium Wars. Some kreolic German languages survive in parts of Namibia, Togo and Cameroon to this day.
*'''(Great) Germany (Grossdeutsches Reich)''' ''(1933-1945)'': Colloquially known as '''[[Nazi|Nazi Germany]]'''. The '''Third''' and shortest '''Reich''', though not for lack of ambition. Owing to Bismarck keeping the Austrians out of the German Empire, their first major conquest beyond the historic borders of Germany was Austria. They claimed to be the greatest industrial power in Europe until they exhausted themselves fighting pretty much every other industrial power that mattered.
**Did you know the term Nazi was a derisive slur originally used by their political enemies? The political party was actually named NSDAP, '''Na'''tionalso'''zi'''alistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or "National Socialist German Worker Party". They were called Nazis because, in German, it was an insult for Bavarian hillbillies, and most National Socialists came from Bavaria.
*'''Soviet Union''' ''(1922-1991)'': '''THE HEAD OF THE SECOND WORLD.''' <s>The successors to the Russian Empire,</s> Too many people forget the USSR was a body of many nations and peoples (to the point a lot of ex-Soviet peoples wistfully think of the old days when all were equal under the Soviet rule and Russians weren't jingoistic and neo-Nazis were unheard of), even when Russia was its most powerful unit with no doubt. With a Global Ideology based on [[Communism]]. But do keep in mind that not all (self-proclaimed) Communist nations were actually part of the Soviet Union (quite a number of them were just de facto dictator/monarchs with Anti-Western ideologies that proclaimed they were going to save the downtrodden people with Communism, and also get monetary supplement from USSR for being Anti-West). After defeating the 3rd Reich, managed to extend its influence over Eastern Europe and thanks to the appeal of Communism was also able to influence states on almost every continent. But was unable to keep up economically or militarily with the United States and eventually finally fell apart with a whimper at the end of the Cold War.
**In it's height of power, the USSR's GDP was around half of USA, but its military budget equaled it. And during the Cold War, American military budget was almost 10% of its GDP compared to 4.5% of today, compared to around 3% to 1st world nations who depend on the US military to protect them from China/Russia.
**Really screwed themselves over with a 20% GDP military budget. Every ruble spent in the military is one not spent in civil industry and commerce. But even this is heavenly compared to bleak militaristic shit holes like North Korea.
***That, and their version of Vietnam, called the Soviet-Afghanistan war. Started on the same year when China invaded Vietnam, in 1979. Ended in 1989. Not long before the collapse of the Union.
**The reason for its downfall are not easy to boil down. Aforementioned oversized military budget, being caught in the Cold War did a substantial part, but also a culture of administrative corruption and cronyism the Soviets inherited from the state structures of the Russian Empire. The whole economy was centrally planned around the ideal of maximizing productivity through a series of four or five-year-plans in which certain goals, issued by the Communist Party, were meant to be achieved. However, the slow, monolithic bureaucracy that would give the [[Administratum]] a run for its money in how inefficient in worked, made achieving these goals impossible, be it through the tedious gears of administrators that had to approve every single thing on their desks or just straight up incompetence: The Socialist ideal pushed people from the factories and lowest stratas of society into high level government offices they were in no way equipped or capable to manage. The constant atmosphere of fear and terror that drooled out of the KGB also made sure that no serious innovative initiatives could take place; you had to accept the party line or say goodbye to your (and your families) few privileges, if you had some sort of power or ability useful to the Soviet State. This created a self-destructive culture of officials and directors frequently falsifying factory and bureaucracy records, which were then further edited the higher they went up in order to earn a promotion, make themselves look better or just avoid the all too watchful eye of the KGB - it was only after Chernobyl and the beginning of Perestroika under Gorbachev when the Soviet Leadership started to grasp how deeply fucked the entire Soviet economy even was. The revelations from these inquiries very quickly lead to the collapse of the USSR within just 5 years through the people that finally had enough of the Communists. Gorbachev, for the shit he (on some accounts, rightfully) gets was by 1986 presented with a problem that was impossible to find a solution for, even for more capable statesmen he ended up being.
**These aforementioned problems were further exasperated by rising ethnic tensions in many parts of the multi-ethnic USSR, starting in the Baltic states. Ask most of the Post-Soviet states about how the KGB and Communist government treated them. The Holodomor and the KGB's treatment of ethnic minorities was atrocious. There's a reason that so many countries elected to leave the Soviet Union, a good number of which joined NATO to prevent ever being forced into the Russian state ever again.
*'''The United States of America''' ''(1776-Present)'': '''THE HEAD OF THE FIRST WORLD.''' There is much controversy over whether the global Hegemony established by the United States counts as an empire or not. The merriam-webster definition of empire reads: ''a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority'', which even before you consider out of territory influence the vast amount of states with different cultures certainly means American meets the technical dictionary definition of empire, which means everybody still argues about but that some people are just more nerdy about how they do it then others. For argument's sake, we will consider the American Empire a reality here. What is not in doubt is that since the end of WWII, and especially since the end of the Cold War the United States has held near total sway in terms of global power, though recent moves by a resurgent China look to be eroding American Global Power and Influence. Which is all Bush Jr.'s fault for wasting energy on the Middle East when he should have checked China and Russia.
**Much of the Global Hegemony of the US results from ordinary political pushes and pulls that happen between nations popularly called 'soft power'. It's just that America is seriously advantaged in this game, what with the largest consumer market, dollar currency, lack of resource dependency (America produces the most oil. Shocking, I know. America just needs even more of it), Lack of hostile/powerful neighbors being and military might. It also benefited greatly from the end of WWII, when the vast majority of its economic competitors were debt-laden bombed-out ruins that had to relinquish all their colonial possessions, giving America enormous market-share for several decades in international trade. Of course this share shrank after the rest of the world got back on its feet, but by that time America’s economic hegemony had been well-established.
***As a consequence of this, the US is home to the two biggest stock exchange markets on the planet with their combined value dwarfing their ten other rival exchanges combined. And the fact the US government’s financial regulators take a backseat but can sanction any country or company makes many global companies take pause on their rules.
**Controls the mightiest military force in human history. #1 largest military budget, and this is large as the those of nations in #2 to #10 combined. And excluding China and Russia, all those nations are American allies anyway (maybe except India and Saudi Arabia). Keep in mind that GDP Percentage-wise, '''this is less than half of American military spending during the Cold War.''' Should an alien invasion occur, they are your first and last hope. As a man once said, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyRmxjhYrmw&ab_channel=TheRussianBadger|America is the final boss of planet Earth.]
***And the military with most real combat experience to boot.
**With NATO, and many nations asking to station American troops around the world (and America pays a large chunk of the expenditures for them too), many nations voluntarily depend on American protection, especially from China or Russia nowadays.
**Still to this day, no nation in history has ever held as much power as it did as the United States of America. And compared to the other 2 contenders (The Spanish and British Empires), still is the most conscious of human rights and freedoms. (Keep in mind, while the US is a bit behind in human rights/freedoms/corruption than some European nations, most other 200 nations in the world have appalling oppression to the point the people there just don't even complain about it because they've been inoculated by [[grimdark]]. If you live in a country that can still complain about injustices happening within it, then there is still hope.)
** The USA is also frankly fascinating in that it achieved something similar to the Roman Empire but even better - it produced a dominant culture that can (relatively) easily assimilate various ethnicities and other cultures and strengthen itself through this process. If you know English and are a skilled worker, you can get a green card, live in the US for 5 years and then take a test to become a citizen, then you can open up a store that sells Sushi/Burek/Pizza and earn millions as you introduce a hitherto-unknown new dish to the country. America is the Borg except you get to keep your biological distinctiveness while culture and tech are shared to strengthen everybody.
**And finally, the simply IMMENSE cultural impact that the USA had/has on the whole PLANET also helps maintain it's status. Don't believe me - Mickey Mouse, Coca-cola, the frigging American flag will likely get recognised virtually anywhere in the world. Hollywood may as well be up there with the Army for the amount of influence it exerts on other countries.

=Notable Fictional Empires=
==Fantasy==
*'''[[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)]]''': Holy Roman Empire with bald monks, lots of gunpowder and [[Meme|Karl Franz]].
*'''Nilfgaard''' ([[The Witcher]])): Roman Empire + some HRE and Nazi Germany (at least in the late books) '''again''', although this time you'd probably want to live here than in the most of the oppressive feudal racist and constantly warring Northern Kingdoms. Especially with the fact that it almost became constitutional monarchy before Torres var Emreis took over.
*'''Mordor'''([[Lord of the Rings]]): Traditional evil empire lead by an immense final boss that lives in a tower. The Dark Lord Sauron rules Mordor directly, but his influence extends to Harad in the south, and Rhun to the east, with the humans living there serving as his vassals. He also commands Orc forces in Dol Guldur, the Misty Mountains, and (nominally) Isengard. Hard to pinpoint the exact aesthetic of Mordor, but there are certainly ancient middle eastern imperial influences, such as shield design and armor shapes.
:*'''Numenor''': A human empire that existed in Middle Earth's second age, and was the most advanced Human civilization. Started out as a benevolent island nation with trade colonies on the coastline of Middle Earth, but over time its political leadership was taken over by faithless, jingoistic militarists who conquered large parts of the continent and ruled with an iron fist. Numenor was destroyed when they were tricked by Sauron into invading the Undying Lands, which caused the sinking of Numenor. Those who survived the sinking founded the much smaller kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor.

==Science Fiction==
*'''Galactic Empire''' ([[Star Wars]]): An amalgamation of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union (under Stalin), several colonial or semi-colonial empires (Britain, Japan) and USA during Vietnam War. It's background also borrows many things from Rome, with an elected dictator gaining an absolute power to prevent the stagnation of previous democratic regime. Probably the most famous "Galactic Empire" in science fiction, despite having several precedents.
* '''[[Star League]]''' ([[Battletech]]): Basically HRE in space with [[mecha]]. Formed under House Cameron, it was more prosperous, technologically advanced, and much more peaceful compared to the [[Succession Wars|three century clusterbang]] that came after its collapse. Was looked back at fondly by the greater powers as the pinnacle of human civilization and something they all wanted to reform under their own banner.
*'''Galactic Empire''' ([[Isaac Asimov|Foundation]]): Space Rome. Asimov based the Foundation series on Gibbons' "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and so the Galactic Empire is a sclerotic, decaying empire doomed to collapse and be replaced with a new, more vibrant empire. At least, until he went back to write some sequels.
*'''Galactic Empire''' ([[Anime|Legend of the Galactic Heroes]]): What if Otto von Bismarck was a neo-Nazi [[LARP|LARPER]] who went full Julius Caesar on the Galactic Republic? Well, then you'd get the Galactic Empire.
*'''Empire of the Known Universe''' ([[Dune]]): Feudalism in space, its first iteration. Emperor doesn't play much role here (at first, at least), and usually has to meet the needs of Spicing Guild (the real ruler of the Universe) or interact with other Great Houses, who are as powerful as him. Eventually the Imperium turned into an oppressive dictatorship of the all-knowing and all-seeing immortal half-worm half-human hybrid, [[Just As Planned|all according to his plan]] [[Emprah|to elevate the Humanity]].
*'''[[Imperium of Man]]''' ([[Warhammer 40K]]): Dune and Warhammer Empire's evil child. Catholic-themed Soviet Union at first, extremely oppressive Catholic Middle Ages Europe with some Nazi flavor later, Catholic-themed Late Roman Empire/Republic now( with some more bit of the middle ages). Of note is that the Imperium despite its reputation of stagnation ironically stands out as evolving and changing politically over time in many different ways, reflecting an aspect of real life empires often overlooked.

[[category:History]]