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Engagements

Gunnland

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Virginia, USA
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Windhaven, Gunnland
"A Strange Engagement I"​

The Financial Building, Ayr

Gunnland was hard to love. Especially from the glass turret atop Ayr's largest skyscraper, the Financial Building. From the edge you could look down at the great clock, and see up-close how slowly time moved for the rest of Gunnland: unemployed mobs in rusty postindustrial cities, hillbillies of the highland hollows, gangsters in the plaid-skirt fashion of schoolgirls.

“Wake me up from this nightmare,” said Matthew Stolmand, mayor of Windhaven before Jake Blackthorn. He glared toward that big redhead, just now the fiancé of Gunnland's most powerful woman, in a black Prince Charlie jacket and red-on-yellow Buchanan kilt. He was in no celebratory mood. “If he’s sensible, he’ll leave Arundel and the 21st century alone. Don’t bite the hands that feed you. Fuck who he wants and let Molly fuck who she wants, you know?”

Robert Gunn smiled blandly. That's probably the long and the short of the arrangement behind the big diamond ring. Matthew used to hate these condescending Ayr élites. Where was the fiery gunsmith’s son from Purpoole? Robert understood that hatred, but couldn't feel it. For he had other old friends in the room. Not just Jake and Molly. Andrew, Brendan, Pat, Tim. Bankers keeping capital moving semi-efficiently: tens of millions of cumals, thousands of millions of talents. Fucking one another, and any number of other people, in relative peace. Wasn't that all the liberals wanted, anyway?

This thread will spin off a series of stories about various parts of Gunnish society that I don't think I have explored adequately yet. It will open into a few international trips various characters will take, in order to invite some interactive storytelling with those who'd like to join in. Many of the characters have been introduced both in my newsfeed and in The Hidden King, which sort of canvassed the dysfunctional politics of the ruling élite in Gunnland:
 
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Gunnland

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Location
Virginia, USA
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Windhaven, Gunnland
“Army Council I”
The Freehold, Windhaven

“If the Rurikgrad fleet steamed for the Gothic Sea, Commander Gallagher couldn’t stop them with a few rusty frigates. Mar and Oa are our sea urchins, now packed with hundreds of BZR-3 mobile sites. An affordable and effective A2AD strategy.” The Army Council was meeting. Baby-faced Colonel MacGarry had lost weight. His pants were baggy. The "warrior-poet" stood in his olive uniform beside an old map, aiming a laser pointer at the Isles of Oa and Mar. Leader Blackthorn felt a throbbing hangover from his engagement party the evening before. A red dot hovered over LOWER MARPESIA, still on the map as a separate country.

“In the south, we just added a force of 90,000 well-trained, professional soldiers, plus bunkers, tunnels, airstrips under mountains. With these Reivers, the Gunnish Army could finish off a combined Keith-MacAllister force in weeks. I have ordered a review of our defense plans. We may not need to dynamite Ayr and surrender Windhaven if the Red Army tank columns cross Elben, now.”

MacGarry found himself making the argument he had long rehearsed, make scorched-earth tactics Plan B, and get the ball rolling on a multilateral defense plan in case the Red Army rolled into Elben towards Gunnland. Which will probably be caused by some damn thing in Trivodnia. “The Elbenese can hold, I think, with assurance of a quick Burgundian counteroffensive and reinforcements from Geotri. This will take joint exercises, a Geotrian base south of Dalmyre, and bringing some advanced Burgundian naval reconnaissance ships, submarines, and ASW destroyers to Seaguard."
 

Gunnland

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Windhaven, Gunnland
“A Strange Engagement II”​

The Financial Building, Ayr

“Can you believe that they're here? I mean, I’m basically Gunnland's only feminist, and even I think it’s mad.” A little drunk, she guffawed at her own flair for the dramatic. Cathy Birmingham, Ayr's liberal Thingperson, loved to call herself a feminist. She meant Alejandro Pelagio and Marta Ramos, the respective Borovangen lovers of the couple celebrating their engagement.

The unmarried Thingwoman seemed to think this strike against monogamy was a victory; an engagement party with an open secret that the future bride and groom would continue longstanding love affairs titillated her. Robert found this strange. She should be first to decry the thrae. This was Viking-age Gunnish polygyny, where persons of status -- men -- retained not-quite-free women, usually three, that persisted informally in various more modern institutions. In fact, she just wants wants women to have an equal chance to keep a thrae. Now Robert looked awkwardly at his companion, blonde, put together, and almost pretty. “Cathy, allow me to introduce my research assistant, Magdalena. We are preparing for a conference in Pelasgia."

Cate’s eyes narrowed at Robert’s elja. “Hairo polu gia ti gnorimia,” said Madgalena in the stilted Demotic of northern classics scholar, “I am honored to meet the author of ‘Helen of Troy and the Sacred Feminine in Critical Theory’.” The Thingwoman beamed. Robert was off the hook.
 

Gunnland

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Windhaven, Gunnland
"Lectures"​

The Capitollium, Marian University, Windhaven


Here is a paradox for you: the most powerful conservative institution in “medieval” Gunnland, the Marian University, is as much a hotbed of Left theory as the Laurel Union colleges of the S.W.R. Why? Poor student fellows are locked in exploitative, financialized contracts. And with no free press, what's the danger of Marxo-Serazinist radicalism? Robert Gunn smiled. I love this place. Walking the halls, he heard parts of lectures.

“…God? The question isn’t whether there is a prime potential manifold, but whether the prime potential manifold is a simple,” Michabarach Foucoža sputtered. Students sat in the aisles and crowded the walls. Joachim Litzberg, his messy hair messy clearly uncut in prison, smiled broadly at Robert. Blasphemy! And more in the next room. “…Fine. Take Jesus, then. All you’re saying is that he would have transworld identity, incarnated in every possible world, perhaps in every possible attribute in those worlds. To say he was actually a first-century Jew in our world is only an indexical statement, see?” John Skylaw was lecturing to a near-empty room of hardcore metaphysicians.

“…Rousseau was impressed that the bagpipes would reduce Gunnish soldiers, long on campaign, to a paralyzing depression of homesickness.” Rhyderch catechizing his acolytes in Gunnland’s civil religion. Young Stephen Larkin met Robert’s gaze and rolled his eyes. Nonsense. Rousseau thought modern languages could not foster real citizenship. “…In Kapital, Marx quotes John’s Apocalypse. The Beast of the Earth becomes commodity fetishism. It’s right there.” Fr. Gregorius Keiper. What a man.
 
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Gunnland

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Location
Virginia, USA
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Windhaven, Gunnland
“A Strange Engagement III”
The Financial Building, Ayr

"To marriage. And the end of Serazinism!"

The men in tuxedos and women in black evening gowns raised their champagne flutes to follow the redheaded power couple in the middle of the room. Seeing his friend Andrew Mackowski, Robert rolled his eyes. A dramatic gesture for the unbetrothed lovers. And pointless: the Borovangen Civil War had been over for a long time. . But one could not say these things to Gunnish liberals or the children of Borovangen exiles. One needed more discretion than Catherine Birmingham to survive in this world. As if on cue, “The Cardinal is in conclave. That gargoyle Gallagher and that fatso Smith are abroad doing who-knows-what. The MacDougall is pissed. It’s time to chip away at the revenge laws. We can do this. You know…” She eyed Robert in a dramatic pose. “…the MacLeish has offered the Liberal Party a big donation.”

So this was the liberal plan. Bribe Integrity thingpersons. Curb the legal protections now existing for bellicose clansmen to perform honor-killings and other acts of revenge. Robert almost yawned. Windeggs weren't as bad as these Ayrheads, he thought, even if we're all the same to the highlanders, reivers, and downwashmen. He felt his phone buzz in his pocket and excused himself. A delay processing his paperwork in Pelasgia. Unsurprising. Perhaps I can make that trip with Keiper to Belonovino after all...
 

Gunnland

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Virginia, USA
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Windhaven, Gunnland
“Army Council II”​

The Freehold, Windhaven

"Doesn't that dope know they bug phones? Probably the KDI itself?" Colonel MacGarry, ever nervous.
"Jim's no plotter. He's amazed at how happy the people of Shigö are." Blackthorn giggled hoarsely.
"You be laughing when the reds storm through Elben, and the Gothic Sea fleet..."
"Steve, relax. All he said was that Chagny approves. No details. No nothing."​

"That's my uncle you're talking about, Leader Blackthorn." Commander Patrick Gunn Gallagher smiled slyly, close-cropped hair and a pressed uniform making him the only convincing military officer in the room. Just appointed to lead the fledgling navy, he was eager to prove the worth of a visiting year at Lans Naval Academy. "Anyway Colonel MacGarry is right. An asymmetrical war would be costly for the reds' Gothic Sea Fleet and their trade artery in the Straits of Mar. And if we can't build infrastructure fast enough, or the Burgundians and Geotrians fail to come, it's the old highland guerilla war. But I'm sure we can get clever with Bourgogne. Repaint their recon ships and fly Gunnish flags. Satellites alone won't know everything coming through the Straits of Mar."

"The MacLeishes will take those isles before the Kadikis." A big and brooding Colonel Wilson rubbed his eyes, unwashed longish hair hanging down messily. His kid sister said he looked like a sad monster. The earl's third son looked and thought most like his father. Who wants Mar, except Duncan MacLeish and a whisky distiller or two? "Mark my words, there are people in the Party playing dangerous games with Villesen and the MacLeish both. If we don't want to end up like our friends in Beira, or worse, we had better put an end to the Smith-Gallagher circle and their meddling."
 

Gunnland

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Windhaven, Gunnland
“A Strange Engagement IV”​

The Financial Building, Ayr

The cocaine plane hasn’t left yet? Laughing, the redheaded banker was asking Robert Gunn repeatedly, “You need money? More money?” His skin had the pallor of too many whiskies, but his overexcitement had a different source. The professor wished he was home, before a fire, reading Rosenstein or Van der Zeemst, those new modern histories of the northwest. Even Grimondite propaganda beats this.

MacFallon didn't wait for an answer. More than a little embarrassed, Robert smiled curtly at a pert blonde, hair professionally curled at the ends, trying to maintain his dignity while Padraig MacFallon wrote him a check. She smiled back a flawless smile. Evelyn Flashman. MacFallon bankrolled the Patrimonium Institute. It hired beautiful young lady scholars like Evelyn to parade him around cocktail parties, and do whatever sordid things they did in Engellex. For all her success, Robert pitied her. Human bondage can have subtler, invisible forms than it takes in the SoCRER. Robert remembered that story of J.S. Mill tripping over workers’ babies in a Hammersmith park, worrying about that ‘social tyranny that enslaves the soul itself.’ Men like Robert and his boyhood banker friend notwithstanding, the very idea of Gunnland was that the "tyranny" of living according to unexamined customs was better than the anxious freedom and envious equality coursing through he modern democracies of Europe.

Goddamned pants-wearing perioikoi! MacFallon and his ilk wrote checks to the Fergusine brothers who schooled them, perhaps also to the university they attended for a semester or not at all. Otherwise they turned their backs on Gunnish customs, worked for Ayr banks, lived like Gallians, and took weekend flights to Hammersmith. Robert shuddered. And then, worse, he saw his cousin Gregory.
 
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Gunnland

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Location
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Windhaven, Gunnland
"Born Killers I"
Isbre Glacier near Purpoole, Gunnland
60 km southeast of Ayr/St. Tears
Winter sun, sickly pale. Fog through the "Anvils." Hell’s Forge, the locals here call the craggy, impassable Arundel Mountains. Anything by road or rail between Seaguard and Ayr needs to go through Windhaven. The locals stay put. No use going to work in a Dalmyre factory to make fifty cents on the dollar to a Cameron or a MacLeish. The brokenmen and MacAllisters who live up here cut wood, trade hides, or cash remittances sent back from the army. This time of year, it’s more than an hour by snowmobile to the nearest Fergusine school, down alongside one of the paternoster lakes, in Purpoole. Two men in parkas trudged through knee-deep snow. One in army uniform.

“How’s the MacGarry dairy farm? Fat cows, smiles, fat tits.” Was Walter drunk again? Probably.
“You said this was serious, Walter.” The colonel, impatient.​
“Yorc did for the Gunns. But our clan can’t be run Ayry fairy. Kids are dying.”
“I thought you liked him. Farrier and Fick are useless. Talk to Colmac Stoke.”​
“Colmac. He used to hit her. Bessie, I mean. No, us, first thing tomorrow.”

A parka man with a bushy beard and rifle looked hard at them from a ridge. These were natural born killers, men who knew how to stalk animals, human or otherwise, and inflict pain by instinct and habit rather than training. Stephen MacGarry wondered if he and Walter Matthew still had those instincts. They would find out tomorrow.
 

Gunnland

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Windhaven, Gunnland
“A Strange Engagement V”
The Financial Building, Ayr, Gunnland

"MacLeishes, man. Donald squealed like the pig he is. Turning emperor's evidence..." The youngest brother of the chief. Embarrassing. To think, Duncan MacLeish came within a hair of the throne. His cousin Gregory Smith was big; with lots of curling dark hair and a close-trimmed beard, he looked like a suave Vinedian. Robert felt Magdalena tense up on his arm. Great. She probably thinks this is why we're going to Pelasgia. More politics. It wasn't that Robert Gunn wanted to control Gunnish politics from behind the scenes; he was terrified to think what would happen if someone else did. Gregory was still talking. "...my father is going to have to go down there and clean shit up." I'm surprised it's not time for cyanide pills or guns or bombs or something. He had read about a scuffle in the courtroom in Apogeumatine which required the politarchs to break up.

"How have you been, Greg?" Where's his thrae? Did he still have Caroline? It had only been a few months, but the way Greg goes through girls. Usually Gregory had two or three disreputable-looking women hanging from him, like chattering apes from an oak tree. And sometimes clothed little better. Cousin Gregory, spoiled son of a VP at Lloyd & MacLeish shipping company, had fatal attractions: Eiffellandian cars, Burgundian motorcycles, and Plautine slaves -- Gregory's playthings had a way of having their way with him. He liked voluptuous ladies, and these vixens could spot him a mile off. Robert realized he had ignored Gregory's description of some Helgoland party. He changed the subject.

"Magda and I shall be in Pelasgia at the same time as your pa. Perhaps we'll see Uncle Mark and..."
"Shh. Shh. Watch this. Alice and Caroline are going to tackle Jake into the fountain." Gregory giggled boyishly.
It was too late to stop the two women, each buxom and almost pretty. Robert saw the plunging necklines, the scandalous side-profiles, big costume-jewlery chokers advancing slowly across the room, preparing to innundate the acting political leader of Gunnland. Attention that will help the price of their contracts next year, maybe, but which will embarrass the Smiths. Again.
 

Gunnland

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Joined
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Location
Virginia, USA
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Windhaven, Gunnland
"Born Killers II"​
Isbre Glacier near Purpoole,

Tools of all kinds hanng from the wall behind a long workbench. Gunbarrels and stocks in vices. Frost on the windows. A bearded man in an apron peens rivets on a Serenien R74 with no jig, just a hammer. This is the man from the snowmobile yesterday. Alex Stolmand? the colonel wonders. Walter Matthew, with an unfashionably long combover and blond mustache, sits on the bench. The dangling cigarette and blows of metal on metal make him hard to hear.

“Ready to go, colonel?” They don't take guns. MacGarry, of course, has his service sidearm; they will pull a half-dozen MacAllister soliders off regular duty in Ayr for their mission. The ranking Gunnish Army officer gets no days off. The smoking journalist takes a ball-peen hammer from the bench and puts it in his pocket. “I’ll have your boy send this back to you, Alexander. We may well see him.” Matthew Stolmand’s father. Father of the man who used to be the “liberal wing” of the Integrity Party, such as it was.

Thunk. Thunk… Thunk, thunk. For a long while, it seems like the gunsmith won’t answer. But then he wipes his brow and puts down his own machinist hammer.

“He’s embarrassed of me. Remind him why.”
 
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Gunnland

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Virginia, USA
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Windhaven, Gunnland
“A Strange Engagement VI”​
The Financial Building, Ayr, Gunnland

“YURRUH!” The man just titled Leader is knee-deep in a fountain, tuxedo soaked, splashing water at squealing women and distraught men worried their mobile phones are ruined. With his freckles and antics, he could pass for eight years old. James Blackthorn’s new fiancée was nowhere to be seen. Nobody could blame her.

A few minutes later, the same goofy grin on, he was receiving a white hotel towel and a stern lecture from an old friend.

“Privatizing Gunnair? Free trade negotiations with Geotri and Elben? Don’t you think you could at least have consulted me? If we're not careful, that money will go straight to the MacLeish, and from there to the liberals.” Robert Gunn massaged his temples in frustration. Magdalena had gone to fetch their coats.

Jake squinted as he carefully poured water from a black dress shoe onto the floor. “Woah, Rob, listen. It was your friends who came up with the idea when you were in Eiffelland.” He gestured over to the three bankers, MacBoyle, MacFallon, and Mackowski, heading for the exits across the room with the three most beautiful women at the party.
 

Gunnland

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Windhaven, Gunnland
"Born Killers III"​
Fox and Arm Pub, St. Tears, Gunnland

“Get out of the country. Eiffelland. Bourgogne. Somewhere they can look at your hand.”
“Walter… what… my hand?” Yorc looked at his hand, stupidly.​

Pale, with bags under his eyes, Yorc MacAllister looked like an emaciated wolf. Pathetic. Incidentally, he looked like a man who badly mismanaged clan finances. The four of them barely fit in the small room above the Fox and Arm, dark wood wainscoting, little frostpaned windows, radiators hissing steam. Yorc sat at table across from Matthew Stolmand, bored by the lecture about the bankruptcy of the MacAllister insurance scheme. Walter Matthew had interrupted with a different idea for getting the young chief's attention.

Get. The fuck. Out of Gunnland. MacAllister.” The ball peen hammer came down on Yorc's fingers with each stressed syllable. Walter pinned the boy-man's wrist. Strands of his combover flew with each furious hammerblow. Yorc screamed. Wood cracked. Metacarpals crunched. There was blood on the white tablecloth, blood on the hammer. Blood dark on the red MacAllister kilts that Yorc and Walter wore.

Shit, gross. Colonel MacGarry averted his eyes. Too late. He continued to see a hand that was not a hand. A horrible tetraskelion of blood and bone, like an avatar of hate. A double-jointed octopus, smashed and limp. The MacAllister simpered.

The thud of the hammer on the table. “Make sure that hammer gets back to your old man, Matt. It’s his.”
 

Gunnland

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Windhaven, Gunnland
"Klippenstein"​
Schloss Klippenstein, Radeberg, Eiffelland

She refused to attend the MacLeod-Blackthorn engagement party. (“But they’re the most powerful couple in Gunnland!”) She refused to receive the Mormaer of Finlaggan. (“But Yorc almost single-handedly elected you queen!”) She even refused to go to the Duke of Clyth’s funeral. (But Robert is your uncle!”) Each rebuttal of Julian’s made Maddie more nervous. The girl was long used to serving others; she didn’t even complain of double duties with Ashild on her bicycle in Beira. Prim in a green sweater, Maddie looked nervously at the manila envelopes on the low mahogany table before the grand fireplace, “STEWART,” “GALLAGHER, C.,” “MacLEISH,” written in bold black marker. Time, Julian thought, Time will make Furies of my thraels.

A queen in secret, and her government of survivors: this is how Julian liked to think of them. At least she had Adelaide. They smoked on the ramparts of the oddly shaped castle that rose over Radeberg, their long hair blowing across their sunglasses. They embraced. They cried late into the night. They smoked and drank too much. (Now with Ashild gone, Julian exercised hardly at all.) “We deserve the rest,” Adelaide said, “We’ll stop next Lent.” Sometimes Prince Ludwig came over, and seemed to have the uncanny comfort gay men have in houses full of women. Other times Julian screamed on the telephone at the cautious, useless agents of her government in Gunnland.

Her wicked mother had run off with the MacLeish, down to Bremen. The stories Adelaide told about that monster! Her crippled father, uncrowned, had gone mad with grief. Cardinal Stewart, who arranged her kidnapping (“And yours, Maddie!”) still drew breath in Herzogenrode. Julian’s fuse burned shorter and shorter. ("But a clan war will be an international war!") Where did Maddie hear that? Julian hurled her glass of brandy in anger, and watched it explode into shards of firelight.
 

Gunnland

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Windhaven, Gunnland
Epilogue: "15AR"​
15 Alexander Rex Avenue, Windhaven, Gunnland

"The queen has ordered us to arrest Cardinal Stewart, Duncan MacLeish, and Coemgein Gallagher." Robert Gunn's words were soft and measured, but might as well have been a volley of cannons. Take on the Church? Start a clan war? Purge the ruling Integrity Party? All at once? Dionysius MacHugh, small and wiry, held his messy brown hair in his hands. You could tell he was tired: his right eye stopped tracking properly. Stephen MacGarry looked out the diamond-shaped panes of the oriel window, his eyes tearing up. Something nasty had happened among the MacAllisters. Gregorius Keiper's eyes widened, and his gray Fergusine robes shook with laughter. "Well ho-lee shit!" Even if it succeeded in modernizing the country, Julian's revenge would ignite a clan war that would ripple across Gunnland and the disapora.

"I have counseled Her Majesty to be patient. The government has only just struck a favorable internal balance of power among the clans." Robert met Steve's eyes and nodded approval. "Another month of peace is always an accomplishment in this country. So we shall encourage our international partners to ramp up a narcotics investigation against the MacLeish." As for Stewart, we shall have to wait and see. "15AR's first priority will be to find out who shot down King Josias's plane two years ago. We have enemies out there, and we don't even know who they are."

Professor Robert Wylie, now Chief Robert Gunn -- the Gunn -- had spent the last years navigating the country through a royal plane crash, shifting power from a drug-addled, crippled king hidden away, the kidnapping of his liberal daughter by his radical friends, her secret election as queen, the secret elopement of Queen Consort Deoiridh ("Lady Beth Cawdor") with the lecherous MacLeish chief, and the consolidation of government power under his friend Jake Blackthorn, a moderate in politics if in nothing else. So far, no war. He sighed. I would kill thousands to prevent such a war. What would next year bring?
 
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