Russia

In ancient times, the vast steppes of Southern Russia were home to disunited tribes of nomadic people like the Scythians, Bulgarians, Bosporans and Khazars as well as trading colonies established by Greek explorers in the latter part of the eighth century BC. But the ancestors of modern Russia are the Slavic tribes who settled the lands vacated by the migrating Germanic tribes in two waves and slowly but peacefully assimilated the native Finno-Ugric tribes.

The 9th century saw the establishment of Kievan Rus', a predecessor state to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Scandinavian Norsemen, called "Vikings" in Western Europe and "Varangians" in the East, combined piracy and trade in their roamings over much of Northern Europe. In the 10th to 11th centuries this state of Kievan Rus' became the largest and most prosperous in Europe. The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980-1015) and his son Yaroslav I the Wise(1019-1054) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda,In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Kievan Rus' was, like many other parts of Eurasia overrun by the Mongolians, who formed the state of the Golden Horde which ruled over the area for over three centuries. However, the Novgorod Republic managed to retain a certain degree of autonomy and was spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. While Novgorod experienced a Golden Age, Kiev's dominance waned because of in-fighting between its rulers and regular raids by the Golden Horde, which conquered the Rus' in 1240.

The most powerful successor state to Kievan Rus' was the Grand Duchy of Moscow. It would annex rivals such as Tver and Novgorod, and eventually become the basis of the modern Russian state. Under the rule of Ivan III, called Ivan the Great the Grand Duchy managed to threw off the control of the Golden Horde in the Battle of Kulikovo (1380). After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moscow claimed succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. At this time the region was under the presence of the witch Baba Yaga. Then came the long, brutal reign of the immortal Tsar Koschei the Deathless a powerful sorcerer who was one of the few to create a Horcrux, separating his soul from his body. He would be killed by a great hero Ivan Tsarevich, the son of a Tsar, with the aid of the witch Baba Yaga. Ivan Tsarevisch at this time roamed the unified lands and married many princesses and sorcerers, acting as a Russian counterpart to Prince Charming. In 1547, the Tsardom of Russia was founded with the coronation of Ivan Tsarevitch(1547-1584), who quickly became known as Ivan the terrible, Despite his cruel rule, Ivan managed to strengthen the Tsardom, but only under the rule of Peter the Great(1721-1725) that the Russian Empire became a real world power. Peter secured Russia's access to the sea by conquering Sweden, Estland and Livland. His reforms brought considerable Western European cultural influences to Russia as well as a new capital: Saint Petersburg.

Catherine the Great(1762-1796) continued the efforts to establish Russia as one of the great powers of Europe. During the Napoleonic Wars, Russia managed to overwhelm Napoleon's troops, who clearly where not prepared for the merciless Russian winter. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia joined the War in the Air, while being divided within itself, torn apart by conflicts between revolutionaries and reactionaries.

After the Osterlich-Zubrowkan troops attacked their neighbouring nation of Serbia, Russia joined the First World War in aid of the Entente. The already existing public distrust of the Tsar, the rising costs of war and the enormous casualties during the battles against Germany and the Osterlich-Zubrowkan Empire ignited the Russian Revolution of 1917. Under the command of Vladimir Lenin, a series of violent uprisings overthrew the Russian monarchy of Tsar Nicholas II, resulting in the deaths of most of the royal family. These events were allegedly orchestrated by the Sorcerer Rasputin who was killed but revived as an undead. A surviving Member, Anastasia, would be revealed to have survived. The second revolution, the October Revolution, led to the creation of the first socialist state which would later be called the USSR. In 1921, Russia initiated a communications blackout with the rest of the world, and built a heavily guarded wall against its European border called the "Red Curtain". For plenty of years there was no contact to the outside world apart from rumors about a strange cold and the destruction of entire cities.

Following the death of Lenin's successor Pasha Antipov in 1927, Josef Besstrashnyy consolidated power, becoming a dictator. His merciless rule was marked with propaganda, espionage, public distrust and the time of the Great Terror. During the Second World War, the troops of German dictator Adenoid Hynkel invaded Russia, breaking the Russian-German non-aggression pact signed by Hynkel and Besstrashnyy Although the German army had considerable success early on, they suffered defeats after reaching the outskirts of Moscow and the Soviet forces managed to press the front towards Europe again and were able to capture Berlin in 1945. Installing socalist governments in the occupied parts of Eastern Europe, becoming the world's second nuclear weapons power and hiding again behind the Red Curtain, the USSR entered into a struggle for global dominance with the United States, which became known as the Cold War.

In the years to come the contact to Russia was cut of again and the European intelligence agencies who spied on Russian radio stations only heared a single message repeated over and over: *"Brotherhood, Strength, and Fortitude...in the face of the angry night."*In December 1949, the Red Curtain was suddenly breached by numerous forces of an extraterrestrial species known as the Chimera. These alien beings where actually Russian people who where infected by an unknown extraterrestrial virus. The Chimeran forces overran continental Europe by February 1950 and proceeded to dig underneath the English Channel, invading Britain in late 1950. Only the combined efforts of Russian, European and American forces were able to overwhelm the alien hordes and the British SRPA (Special Research Projects Agency) even found a cure for the virus.

After Russia regained its freedom from the alien conquerors, the Cold War continued to increase the tension between the East and the West. The Cold War threatened to escalate more then once, most notably during the Cuban missile crisis, the Strangelove Incident and the Vietnam war. During the Cold War, Russia achieved many technological improvements like the launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 and a powerful satellite weapon called "GoldenEye". During its last years, the economy was afflicted by shortages of goods in grocery stores, huge budget deficits and explosive growth in money supply leading to inflation.

In August 1991, an unsuccessful military coup against Gorbachev aimed at preserving the Soviet Union instead led to its collapse. In Russia, Boris Yeltsin came to power and declared the end of socialist rule. The USSR splintered into fifteen independent republics and was officially dissolved in December 1991, creating among other nations the Russian Federation. Boris Yeltsin was elected the President of Russia in June 1991, in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. After some years, the attempted assassination of Golovko, head of the SVR (formerly the KGB) turned out to be an attempt to sow confusion in the Russian government because of China's designs to annex Eastern Siberia, where geologists had recently discovered a large amount of oil and gold. The following Sino-Russian War led to the inclusion of Russia into NATO and the assistance of US forces in the battle against China, which would surrender to the USA and Russia after the raid of the Politburo in Beijing by student demonstrators, which caused a Chinese change of politics.

The Chernobyl Disaster of 1986 influenced the development of Russia at the End of the 20th century, but the second nuclear reactor accident at the Chernobyl Power Plant in 2006 had an even greater impact. After the explosion, the Russian government created "The Zone", a protected area inhabited only by mutated people and creatures. But the lost secrets of Russian government technology, the ghost city Pripyat and the artifacts found near the inexplicable anomalies attracted the attention of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s : "Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers, Robbers". The Zone turned into a home of mutants, criminals, fanatics and other lawless groups that lived in a state of constant warfare.

The Awakening of Magic in 2011 had only little effect on Russia where only few wizards and magical beings were introduced to the public as most of them were hidden by two ancient magical societies: The Night Watch and the Day Watch. But the assassination of Russia's president Chelenko and the financial crisis and foot riots of 2016 led to the strengthening of the totalitarian Ushi Party in Russia. Out of fear of an upcoming revolution, the Russian government banned the Ushi Party and declared its dissident new leader Grigor Stoyanovich an enemy of the state. This harsh political act led to a violent uprising at the end of 2018. Stoyanovich's followers managed to seize power over Volgograd, Rostov and Saratov and attacked the city of Voronezh. But the battle took an unusual turn with the arrival of the time travelers Sergei Molotov and Molly Ryan from the year 2098. Claiming Stoyanovich's revolution would turn into a bloody campaign for world domination, the time travelers got past Grigor's cyborg army which was sent from his future successor back in time and executed him. In 2020 Russia became the victim of the Combine, an interdimensional alien empire which invaded Earth using portals created during the so-called Black Mesa incident. The Combine used the city of Tunguska (renamed City 17) as their headquater until after nine long years of occupation, a revolution led by the remains of the Black Mesa science team closed the remaining alien portals and shook of the Combine regime. Revocering from the alien dictatorship, Russia lost much of Siberia to the Native American Trans-Polar Aleut Council and to the Yakut nation, but thanks to reverse engineering of alien technology and cyborgs from the future its technological level increased dramatically. With this new power, Russia invaded Eastern Europe and later Germany in 2031. In January 2033 an armistice was signed to end the so-called EuroWar I because an unknown faction (suspected to be the United Kingdom) entered the conflict attacking both sides. Following the war, the Russian government designed an emergeny program called "Metro 2033" to allow the survival of the Russian people inside the metro tunnels. During the following EuroWar II or Great Jihad in 2034 Russia lost much of its southern territory to the Alliance for Allah.

Blaming the government for the disastrous EuroWars, a coalition of the Ushi Party and the National Soviet Reconstructionists seized power turning Russia into a dictatorship known as Novaya Russia. In the following years the diplomatic tension between Russia and its neighbors reached its peak: Using the terrorist attacks of the New Islamic Jihad as an excuse Russia invaded the Middle East because of the global shortage of raw materials, thus coming in conflict with the nations of the former European Union. At the same time border conflicts with the Yakut nation in Siberia led to political tension with its allies at the United Federation of Asian Republics. In 2077, the struggle for Middle Eastern and Siberian dominance led to the nuclear holocaust of the Third World War after which most of Siberia was turned into an extensive nuclear desert which seperated Europe from Eastern Asia. The only remains of Novaya Russia were the communistic mega-cities East-Meg One and Two at the former locations St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. But outside of the security of the mega-cities, the nuclear winter turned the remains of the western parts of Russia into the arctic homeland of a new species of mutants called the Dark Ones. With the Dark Ones claiming the top of the food chain for themselves, the remaining human survivors were forced either to flee to one of the mega-cities or to escape to the underground: following the plan of "Metro 2033", the old metro tunnels of Moscow became a more or less safe haven for the surviving inhabitants of the former capital of Russia.