Phoenix Federation

"Every time I look in the mirror All these lines on my face getting clearer The past is gone It went by, like dusk to dawn Isn't that the way? Everyone's got the dues in life to pay" -  'Dream On', by Aerosmith.

The Phoenix Federation is a superpower megastate with the capability of traversing through the large collection of universes (and maybe the multiverses). They originated from a corrupted timeline, and seek to protect the worlds that they've discovered from their mortal enemies, the ‘Vitriolic’ Tyrannies. Originally a relatively normal timeline, the discovery and forced opening of the so-called Timeslash in the closing days of the 1960's changed that forever. The Timeslash tore through this timeline, compressing and warping 12,000 years of history into a single state. The universe was in complete ruin; madness, chaos and violence ruled, and from the ashes, a slew of new world Tyrannies arose. One of these, the Phoenix Empire of Britain unfolded its wings on what was once the United Kingdom, making use of the remnants and twisted mockeries of the Island’s past, and soon – they began to conquer and fight. Anywhere in their universe was fair game for Britain, but they have and have had contenders to their attempt of world conquest, with similar groups arising in Mongolia, Mexico, China, Italy, Germany, and even in the quagmire of violence that Canada had been melted into. Now, due to their loss and sympathy, the Phoenix Federation has set its sights on the conquest of new universes – one touched by both war and madness, and one that would be the perfect breeding ground for the troops they need to conduct their next series of wars; wars against the opposing Tyrannies, and virtually anyone who made them an enemy...

The Phoenix Federation is more or less insane – but are still within reasonable limits – driven to that point via the unnatural energies of the Timeslash, and only augmented by the torturous past that had befell them, and many of their people have been warped and mutated via the unnatural energy that flows through the Timeslash, and they now possess abilities that are more akin to magic rather than science as the common man in their worlds will tell you. But let’s just cut to the point.

Background
It’s weird that you’re here, you know. I’m not sure why you’re here, but I suppose there isn’t much I can do about that now, anyway. Welcome to the Phoenix Federation although, technically, it’s the Eternal and Most Serene Phoenix Federation. Let’s just call it Phoenix, to save us time, yes?

Introductions are in order, I suppose. The name’s Lucy C. Quartz, and I’m the dictator of the EMSPF. I mean, it’s kind-of complicated, but I’ll explain it shortly, and introduce you to my fellow rulers in our little oligarchic clique. Including myself, there’s about… seven or so of us. I’ll cut to the bottom line, now, though – we’re not native to this timeline, I mean, I’m not even native to where we’ve just come from, but I’ll explain that shortly, anyway. To cut a long story short, we come from an alternate universe, one which has gone… let’s just say, a touch [censored] up. We’re trying to escape from the horrors back there, and we were hoping that this world might offer us some form of sanctuary, but it seems we’ve arrived at a bad time...

Listen, I’ll tell you about it. I guess I’ve got the time to kill.

The Timeslash
Now, I’m not too clear on any details about this world before I arrived, but I have been able to salvage some notes and research papers from the ruined continent, so I hope you won’t mind if I just paraphrase them for you. For brevities sake, you know?

Apparently, on the 23rd of November, 1970, a research institute just outside Geneva were performing an experiment that had never been done before. It seems like that, earlier in the year, a strange anomaly appeared, or at least, was detected, and these scientists were trying to find out what it was. They had no idea where such an anomaly had come from, but if I were to hazard a guess, I’d assume it was caused by people, or similar beings, from a different universe, messing with things that they don’t understand. Or maybe, refuse to acknowledge that they don’t understand. Most likely, the people from the other side was either the guys we know as the ‘Comintern’ or ‘Epsilon’.

It seems that the initial phase of the experiment, that is, securing the anomaly in the physical world, went off without a hitch, but it’s the second part we’re interested in. Just before midnight, 23rd November, they entered stage two – which was opening the anomaly.

Judging by the seven mile deep sea where Switzerland used to be, I’d say they were at least partially successful in that field (maybe a little bit too successful). Seems like when they opened it, the securing methods failed, causing it all to go critical. Nothing survived. I mean, in that initial explosion that wiped Switzerland from the map, somewhere in the region of over 4 million must have died, and that isn’t counting on the people living immediately next to Switzerland, who were horribly mutated by the energies now flowing from the giant sea now in the Alps. The aftermath is quite a… it’s quite a sight, shall we say. The shores of that sea are also where you’ll find some of the worst and most horrific of creatures, outside the Petroleum Seas of the Rub’ al Khali, or such similar places. And then, from the anomaly, those energies covered the world, and it was changed irrevocably, forever.

So, this anomaly is called ‘The Timeslash’, or at least, the papers I’ve found that make mention of it, refer to it as the Timeslash. It’s a literal tear in the fabric of space and time and reality itself. It can alter the laws of physics, biology, all that sort of thing. However, further investigation shows that it isn’t merely a tear, it has, in fact, compressed about 12,000 years of human history, into a single state.

12,000 years. That’s before cities, and civilization. Everyone was just running around hunting deers and bears back then. Anyway, everything that has ever existed, exists again. Everyone who has lived, lives again. Animals that went extinct between then and 1970, are not extinct anymore. You get the idea. From that point, the world descended into chaos, literal anarchy.

And that was before I, my fellow rulers, and our enemies, showed up.

Enter, the Empress of Britain
As I’ve said, I’m not from this Timeslash world originally. Heck, I’m not even from 1970. It was the 18th of January, 2017, when I somehow ended up here. I wasn’t the first, and I wasn’t the last to end up in this hellhole.

I suppose I should elaborate. I was in the New Forest with my family, including my bratty little brother Damien, for a little post-Christmas family break, sort-of thing. Well, last I recall, I decided to ditch my brother and wander off. If you’ve met Damien, you would understand why. Anyway, I wandered for a little bit, and then… I can’t really remember. I sort-of blacked out, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in a twisted rendition of the New Forest, alone, and during a blizzard.

I was confused, and I’ll admit it, a little bit scared. Yeah, 19-year old Lucy Quartz was scared, so sue me. You’d be a bit scared if you woke up during a snowstorm surrounded by screaming tree people. Obviously, I’d thought I’d just passed out and was dreaming, or that maybe my hallucinations were playing up again, but I soon found out that it was real.

It was all real. So horribly, horribly real.

I saw creatures, and what I think were once people. I saw the dead walking, and feasting on each other. It wasn’t a wholly pleasant experience, to say the least.

I can’t believe I’m going to say the next sentence, but… I was actually rescued from the New Forest by Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington himself, accompanied by a regiment of undead redcoats.

It sounds silly, and surreal, but honestly, it only devolved from there. Wellesley told me that others ‘like me’ had also been arriving in this world, people uncorrupted by the Timeslash. Due to the fact that I was uncorrupted, I was escorted back to the maze-like freezing fortress city that London had become, and I was coronated as the Tyrant of the Tyranny of Apathy. I never did discover why it was called the Tyranny of Apathy to begin with anyway, but I changed the name to the Phoenix Empire of Britain, just because it sounded cool.

I have, or rather, had, a bunch of titles as well. Supreme Hegemon was one of them, which was a bit… weird. Anyway, I was placed as the dictator-in-chief over what was once the British Isles, as well as some other places around the world, like Aden, and… Auckland, and some Australian junk and places like that.

I wasn’t the only one to receive such treatment, as by this point, similar ‘Tyrannies’ had materialized in the likes of America, Israel, China, Japan, Russia, and France, and shortly after my arrival, places like Spain, Canada, and Mongolia of all places, received similar ‘Tyrants’. All, it would seem, from different universes, but I’ll explain that shortly enough.

For a while, I ruled the Phoenix Empire of Britain, or as I liked to call it, the Phoenix Britain, well enough, with my council advising me on things. I even had another ‘normal’ joining me – albeit, an American born Japanese from the year 2019, called Shinja Miyamoto. I’ll tell you more about him later, if you want, but anyway – I ruled alright for a time…

But of course, all good things had to come to an end, and the wars that soon came were the perfect example of that.

The Republic Rises
Before I continue, allow me to explain something, about what I call ‘Empathetic’ and ‘Vitriolic’ Tyrannies. An Empathetic Tyranny was one that is led ostensibly by well-meaning and ‘good’ people, for varying degrees of the word. The Vitriolics were the exact opposite – bloodthirsty psychos and 1984 ripoffs. This distinction becomes important later, by the way.

So… the Wars. I stayed out of a few of them, but I saw the damage. A collection of four Tyrannies, based in Canada, Russia, Mongolia, and China, were the worst offenders, but the horrors and atrocities committed by the likes of the one in Mexico, or the depraved hedonism of the one ruling Italy were just as bad, if not worse in some cases. I was lucky – being island based, I was essentially safe from any sort of real invasion, but I saw the likes of my allies in Europe and Africa, and in the states burned to the ground before my very eyes. I actually lost a lot, a lot more than I should have.

I’m not a politician. Hell, then I was even barely an adult, and I have to maintain armies, colonies, allies and fight wars? Jesus Christ… This is why I wanted to go into psychology, rather than politics. I’ve never felt so… useless, so helpless against greater and more dangerous enemies. I couldn’t reason with them, couldn’t manipulate them, I couldn’t do anything to permanently dissuade them from attacking what was given to me. I mean, I was at a low point there; very, very low.

But then, something happened. Four other tyrants, the Empathetic Tyrants, from the US, Israel, Japan, and France, came to me. Their territory was getting overrun, ravaged and destroyed. The British Isles was generally stable for me, but they had had almost all their ‘territory’ taken away from them, and their people butchered. At the time, I was still skeptical of some of the things I had heard, but my-soon-to-be-fellow-leaders gave me eyewitness accounts to the depravity and violence that they saw. I couldn’t believe it, really. Still can believe some of the things I was told. They also told me that they had come from vastly different original universes, which actually worried me at first, but I kinda got used to it. Not everyday day you get to rub elbows with a ‘famous’ mage, samurai, news anchor or actress from a different world, right?

So, they came to me, for protection. I don’t know why, really. But I’m kind-of glad that they did. I couldn’t give them the amount of protection that they needed, but I offered them something else – to join me in ruling Britain and what was left of my overseas territories, as well as what was left of their lands. They couldn’t have agreed faster.

Now, I abdicated as Empress of Britain, and with my new friend’s help, reformed the dictatorship I had been ruling, into a semi-democratic oligarchic republic. It’s not as democratic as some want it, but it’s a good start.

Soon, we were joined by a couple of other ‘tyrants’, from the smaller regions, such as Serbia and Spain, and they too were accepted into our little ruling clique.

However, despite our new republican rule, we were still beset by enemies on all sides. Enemies that wanted, and still want us, dead and rotting beneath their jackboots.

So, we decided to find a solution, and I believe we have one...

Getting On the Long Road
The Timeslash is a tear is the fabric of space and time and reality, as I’ve said. But, while investigating it, I soon found out that it could act as a gateway to other worlds. Safer worlds, worlds that we could jump to, and escape the monsters that chase us.

My fellow rulers were mixed on the idea. Some were worried that it might end up somewhere worse, or be stuck in a wheel of samsara; continuously hopping from world to world. Others were a bit more receptive, seeing it as an adventure, or a better-than-nothing idea. Eventually, after much discussion, we finally agree to the idea, and as such, began our preparations.

It didn’t take long, and soon, we had selected a seemingly appropriate world – yeah, it was 1971, but being stuck in the 70’s is better that being ripped to pieces by pig-faced chariot monsters, right?

Well, yeah, turns out we ended up here, with the Fascists fighting the Communists in a Third World War. The whole thing looked like a mess, and we were quickly disoriented – at least until we got picked up by some seemingly friendly people from something they called the UASR – Red America, as I later found out.

We parlayed with the Communists, explaining enough of our situation to get sympathy, but not enough so that they would feel threatened. We even promised to stay out of their war, and that if they wanted, we’d help them against the ‘Allied States’, ‘Solar Empire’, and ‘Epsilon’ blocs. Not that any of us really agree with what the Commies are preaching, but hey, better the devil that doesn’t kill you straight away, than the devil that might, as my paraphrasing goes. Lucky for us, it seems that we arrived in late November of ‘71, and the war ended a couple of weeks later in December.

As such, we’ve continued our semi-begrudging ‘friendship’ with the International. We have a dozen or so embassies, and we taken some useless, uninhabited islands for our bases and resupply depots. Still, it’s not quite what I envisioned we’d end up with when we arrived.

Rebuilding What was Lost
Now, between you and me, I have my eye on taking the Antarctic landmass from those creepy freaks called ‘Epsilon’. However, Antarctica is pretty much an impenetrable fortress, and my plans have been put on hold, especially seeing as our ‘friendship’, with the Commies, is starting to sour. None of us are too keen on their rhetoric anyway, but they seem to take slight umbrage at our Oligarchy, and I have reason to suspect that they want us to fall in line with their tune, and I have an even greater reason to fear that they possibly want their hands on some of the new species we’re bringing with us, or even the Timeslash itself. ‘For Science!’, of course.

So, we’re starting to look to other places for potential new allies. Japan’s top of the list, with their own bloc of Pan-Africanists and Monarchists, amongst others. The Allies and Epsilon are a no go, for reasons I’ll get into later on, if you’re still around. There appears to be a group operating in Ireland, worshipping pagan stuff and wearing antlers, so we might reach out to them down the line.

And also, we’ve had arrived in an universe we called the ‘Phoenixverse’, and settled on it. We’ve isolated the universe with the Timeslash, settled the weirdly unsettled Earth, killed off the Lovecraftian deity we call “the Icon” (it’s really, really powerful if you ask me. Most likely beyond the level of Cthulhu.) that inhabited it, and designated that Earth into our capital ‘planet’.

Besides Bluesverse and Phoenixverse, we've contacted the ‘Concordiatverse’. That Earth is split between the Axis and the Allied blocs; the Unification Concordiat, Uchiwa Shogunate, High Andean Lordships, and Confederate States of America fighting against the Norse Fylkirate, Imperial Russia, Yuan Khanate, and Shogdian Shahdom. We’ve fought alongside the Directorate of Seven Great Nations, the predecessor of the Axis bloc, against the easterners and then the aliens. After that, we’ve retreated into isolation, observing the Concordiatverse’s wars. That’s the gist of it anyway.

Of course, we aren’t the only ones with an interest in the multiverse(s). We’ve seen whispers through the Timeslash, telling us of various other… Invaders, slipping in through the cracks, one of them being Apathyverse. God help us if our enemies found out about this, or even try to follow us.

Of course, I have my own ideas, and plans, but I’ll tell you them later. I’ve got a long game planned, something quite spectacular. I hope you’ll be sticking around for that, at least. It’ll definitely be something to watch.

Unique Faction Mechanics
How2BuildLiekUs: All Phoenix buildings are constructed via the Command Center. Calls are made for a building, funds transferred, and then a nanocore is given to the commander. The little bot then deploys into whatever building or defence it has the materials for, and virtually anywhere it can travel to. They do take quite some time constructing, though.

C&C Economy: I only need to strip some ore off the face of the Earth, loot a base, or just haunt a gold mine to supply my forces. The rest? Provided via the Command Center. Plus, 97% of us are not human to begin with, so yeah.

Necro Fantasy: Perhaps one of the more fortunate side-effects of the corruption of the Timeslash on the Coalition's troops, at least from a military viewpoint, is their resurrection ability. All my infantry troops can bring themselves back from the dead after they're initially put down. However, this is strictly a second chance thing, mind you. After they're put down a second time, they ain't no coming back.

Pandemonium Planet: A more unfortunate side-effect of the Timeslash is the residual corruption it causes to everything it touches – including the land our buildings are built on. We call it Mania. While we can negate the bad effects, it seems that it could prove useful in a military engagement. Mania saps life away from people, hell, it even causes vehicles to start rusting, should they stay in the vicinity for too long. However, other than our buildings, we have no way of mass spreading the corruption, other than... perhaps... No, let's not go there yet.

U.N. Known Was Them?: Many units (only the vulnerable ones, mind you) have stealth, so it’s very difficult to track them down. Our weaker buildings share this ability as well, including the Command Center and the MCV (six wave-force guns and stealth? This is too OP). This allows us to annoy the hell out of the enemy before sending in the crashing hammer of the Federation’s military might.