Spartakus Bund

**Dev. Status** | Being concepted

*"Workers, peasants, pick up those rifles,*

*Take those guns into your hands!*

*Annihilate the fascist bandit armies,‎*

*Set every heart ablaze!‎"*

*Plant your red banners of labor*

*On every ramp, on every factory!*

*Then shall arise from the ruins of the old society*

*The Socialist World Republic!‎"*

- *The Secret Deployment, by Ernst Busch*
The *International Proletarian Defence Pact* or more Informally the *Spartakists* or the *Spartakus Bund* is an alliance of Socialist states from another timeline where the springtime of nations would lead to an earlier, greater German unification under a Jacobinite Republic that would, in the aftermath of an attempted containment war launched by France, give birth to the great Spartacist revolution that would sweep far to the west, even into an America split from the secession of the Confederacy and deep into the east where the Emperor was forced to flee past the Urals. Britain and Japan faced the peasants revolting, inspired by the Spartakus, with their monarchy falling when CEOs Reinbert Rumok II and Oujirou of the Oda clan rallied and successfully destroyed the revolts and, alarmed, decided to form the Seven Seas Alliance along with a number of allies such as the "South American Federation" of British client states Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Siam allowed to expand into Indochina. The exiled reactionaries, consolidating into East Russia and looking for allies such as the Confederacy, the Golden Circle Empire, and the Saharan French Exile state at first were despondent; how could they possibly prevail in this new world order?

At least, until a bald stranger entered the room and offered them means with which to regrow, to rebuild, and to have their revenge. Thrice they would try, first under the bitter and enraged Nikolas, then under the Ogreish King Jean-Henry of France (in exile), then under the almost frightfully deranged Jake Featherston from the Confederacy, but each time the Holy League was defeated. They were being pushed farther back, they had such precious little left even with Kane's miracles. Until that is, they entrusted another source entirely, a stranger who would refine their technology to dominate the mind further. Salvation, and ultimately damnation as the Holy League shattered, its final nail being their defeat by the newly formed Xian in their attempt to take China, and became the birthplace of the Unitary Domain, United under one vision, one purpose under the Dominus Dei while Kane and Yuri remained in the shadows.

Two more times they would emerge, a newer, more terrifying army with dreadful science pushed to make monsters of men fuelled by a poisoned crystal that fell from the sky and into China, stolen from the Xian Viceroyalty. These were more dire, more horrible wars, and the Spartakus Bund would find itself severely more pressed in these conflicts, but not unbowed, not when the Domain had made the calculus victory or the annihilation of the mind, not when they had created marvelous machines and mastery of the technology of flesh to fight back against the mysticist and esoteric horror before them, or even the Seven Seas Sphere's attempt to "restore sanity" in the final war where it was just them and them alone. But the Domain was a resilient monster, difficult to root out, free from old reactionary confinements to land, blood, and soil in a world more and more filled with anomalies.

But the third Domain war would bring about their encounter with the so-called "Norseverse" as they were in the throes of their own particular terrible conflicts, forcing new allies to be sought and reshufflings of balances of power. The old nations had largely been forgotten in the time of international power blocs, but this conflict would only get worse with the great invasions from beyond. Conflicts won by the skins of teeth and allies in the right places as well as desperate measures to throw back the tides to their own times, their own places in new worlds. With the new age and its new threats, the Spartakus Bund is one of the major legs of the Intertimeline Proletarian Defence Pact.

Heavily influenced by its international nature beyond borders and nations, the Spartakus Bund unites many of the best and brightest under one banner to practice a form of warfare that masters the operational art of deep battle, pressuring the whole of an enemy's frontline with very durable and long ranged if somewhat slow units that can lock down the battlefield and allow the follow up medium speed but high offence units to sweep in and break open any weak points detected, finally allowing the fastest units to move in and exploit the breakthrough with attacks on the enemy's rear operating area to allow for the line to advance and repeat this process.

## At a Glance

 **Visual Themes** | Wolfenstein The New Order, and similar "super advanced nazis/mad German scientists" in fiction, but Communist and more Heroic

## A world in Revolution

In many timelines, the great revolutions of 1848 were mostly a failure, with the attempts to create radical realms and united nations in a continent of great and old empire mostly getting crushed in the end, though leading to a number of concessions out of fear of it occurring again. In this timeline however, the revolutions of 1848 would create a new, unified German Republic from the disparate realms of the confederation as well as Prussia and Austria. A new realm inspired by the likes of the Sans Coulottes in France in the prior decades, the German Republic and its Italian Sibling would shake the halls of Europe to its core. Enough for France to seek to crush it in the great war of 1870; only to transform both once again into something more radical still in the great Spartacist revolution that would count among their leadership none other than Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx themselves.

The revolutionary wave would sweep far to the west, even spilling over the seas into the divided America and into the east where it would reach into the halls of Asia, from the North into Scandinavia, and into the south into Africa. The Tsar of Russia would flee into the Siberian hinterland past the urals, while the Confederacy that had seceded to preserve slavery found that the North was now waving the red banner while Britain, observing carefully from its island fortress, would reinforce its position in its empire; both formal and informal ad seek to ensure that Tokyo was firmly within its orbit while consolidating itself in much of Africa and Latin America and ensuring that the Royal Navy would be as strong as possible to guard the isles from the red juggernaut that looked to the great black and red German eagle for guidance.

Such a smashing success for the revolutionary wave should have guaranteed the eventual fall of capital and reaction, with so many of the world's industries collected into the hands of the worker's democracies and the people's republics, but figures watching from the shadows were concerned that such strides towards a world where there would indeed, be a final conflict and then peace afterwards would interfere with their plans. A pair of bald-headed figures would court the exiled reactionaries who had resigned themselves to dying out in the distant wilderness or encircled enclaves that had little in the way of realistic hope in the face of the Red Behemoth and the Brown Leviathan. But with the technology offered, they could build armies far larger than they should have been able to, with populace more loyal than they ought to be and with access to technologies they shouldn't have had with so few scientists and the world's academies in the hands of the giants.

Their first offensives in the 1890s would come as a surprise, armed with strange weapons and fighting with odd armies against both the Spartakists as well as the Liberals in a mad dash to reverse their fortunes and rebuild their empires with interest. Though the exiled Tsar would wage a brutal war, he would find defeat as his foes overcame his strange technologies with sciences of their own and the Emperor would meet his end when an air raid buried him in his palace in Novosibirsk to be crushed to death. But with their large population of grown soldiers and servants, to pursue them into their den would be a hard ask indeed, so the Kautsky chaired central committee of the International would vote to simply keep them contained for now while they prepared means with which to break into their fortress.

Twenty years later, and the French King in exile would condemn the world to another conflict, brief but furious with fighting across every continent, only for the King in exile to have to retreat with his holy league armies decimated and the man arrested in his palace in Dakar in his underwear. And then yet another defeat under the Confederate President Jake Featherston, this time with his attempt to escape the surly bounds of earth only ending in him being consigned to a war crimes tribunal and put away for life. Each time they triumphed, the Spartakus Bund had grown more closely aligned, the barriers of nations weakening and softening as they lurched towards a more unified Pluri-culture, even if they used German as their primary lingua franca for the sake of a common tongue, the boundaries between the brother republics had only grown blurrier and less distinct with every passing decade. With Featherston's defeat seeming to spell the end of the Holy League, the Spartakus Bund could focus on truly realising its dreams.

### We Won the war you know?

With the abolition of the "tyrant of the currency form" and the imposition of the labour voucher and credit system, the Spartakists would even declare the dictatorship of the proletariat ended and the onset of the lower stage of communism achieved; for the victorious proletariat to in essence, dissolve itself along with the bourgeoisie into a new classless society where everyone's relation to the systems of production was liberated of the profit motive and the threat of unemployment, poverty, and starvation. The mobile production vehicle technology used had allowed for revolutions in automated production to cut necessary work hours per week down to mere fractions of what it had been before.

Technology that had once been primarily focused on military usages had increasingly come to be used in the civilian sphere until life had transformed utterly. Free time had become so abundant that finding things to do had become a great priority for many people, not merely due to increased automation but also by the increased input of the populace in the direction and management of social production as well as focusing work and output on what was needed or desired, rather than purely for profit. Technologies used to heal soldiers back to fighting readiness in moments were used to cure most diseases and make lifelong debilitating from injury a thing of the past and the nanotechnology brought about in the name of that cause had eliminated pathogenic disease and even cancer itself. Artificial intelligence made to coordinate soldiers, production, and make battle plans were now being put to the task of furthering technological advances into a singularity where the world would not be the same coming out as it was coming in.

There were of course concerns with the Seven Seas democratic Sphere, with the Holy League forced out of much of its old territories, it was believed that they would of course be the inevitable next menace. Especially as the two expanded their interests into the seas, space and even other dimensions. While the League had brought many of its assets onto sky ships or sea fleets or void armadas and had some remaining hold outs in lonely corners of the world, they were beaten, so the Liberals who had been foe as often as friend remained a potential problem.

When most of Russia was reunified under the Socialists, there was more concern for the fact that the Seven Seas had used materials pulled from their explorations into other worlds to provide to build an artificial archipelago to expand Britain's holdings and strategic depth than there was for the fact that there were holdouts of the Domain on the arctic ice caps or the antarctic or diving deep into the sea or in the air. They were even less concerned with word of a fissure between the Holy League's old loyalists who clung to distant territories where they could still hold some sway or to far off colonies and those who had embraced a new figure that had emerged following the embracing of the word of a strange bald figure who promised those who listened power enough to reverse their fortunes.

And finally, there was China and most of East Asia that had remained neutral throughout everything. Having won the First and Second Opium War the Chinese dynasties remained unbroken and the trade restrictions and enforced neutrality they put on the British in the first, unintentionally leading to the formation of the SSDS, Spartakus, and League (such as only allowing foreigners and trading within Hong Kong and Taiwan) had saw their economy and technology suddenly boom. And while the current Qing dynasty may be (relatively) primitive compared to their neighbours, China’s massive landmass and population meant that invading the country would take too long.

Perhaps they should have listened to the warnings, as the Holy League gathered what resources it could to build artificial habitats and territories and its sky fleets while the Roof and Floor of the World fell into the grasping hands of something far more sinister.

### Did you, indeed? I say not

When the Seven Seas and the Spartakus Bund found themselves in the midst of another war over control of the seas and the Holy League made an attempt to claw back some relevance in a world that had largely moved past it, the new figure known as the Dominus Dei watched and waited with a great plan and design in mind. With their forces being largely an unknown to the forces fighting around them, they were able to strike with surprise and lethality. The Unitary Domain emerged from its places of hiding within the Underworld, the depths of the Sea, the void of space, and from the frigid polar caps to push into now vulnerable foes it saw all around it, enemies who would be a simple matter for them to eliminate and bring under the glorious gaze of the Lord-God who had such a grand plan for humanity that would bring them to a level far beyond their present limitations.

The war would be unlike any other before it, far stranger, far crueller. Mind Control, Psychic Thralldom, and hordes of carefully engineered troops would pour from many angles and directions to try and claim territory and press the agenda of the legions of the Dominus, fighting without mercy or quarter and expecting none for they were nothing if not glad to die in the name of their beloved ruler. Any atrocity, any act of barbarism, would be justified because their Lord God loved them so, and would forgive them their trespasses against the unbelievers who merely needed to be awakened to the truth that awaited all mankind and indeed, all thinking beings in this world. A desperate alliance would be struck, to hold the line in the sand against the invaders and destroy the network of deep charging superweapons they had built with the intention of dominating the world.

It was a terrible, awful war, but one that would not be without its benefits as many were awakened to the technological possibilities offered by the twisted and perverse science that the Dominus had unleashed on them, even as the Dominus' forces were gradually forced back and his schemes undone, though the fanaticism of the defence and the break down of the grand alliance would ultimately ensure that the Domain would not be broken just yet. Not when a strange meteor fell from the sky and brought with it a curious material in both central China, leading to the Chinese reclaiming their homeland and becoming a superpower, and the Rio Grande, that was spirited away for study all over the world, setting in motion yet another world war that would prove stranger than all the others.

The drive to make use of powerful superweapons would tear at the fabric of space and time and open gates to another world. One where history had zigged instead of zagged many hundreds of years ago, and was most certainly responsible for revivals of old pagan religions through odd and scattered contact in the past. There the Christian faith was a dying thing, cast into the long shadow of a triumphant Norse Paganism while the Pacific had grown into a great bastion of socialism. It was a world at war with itself, and with an invasion from above and below, one that threatened to rile up the strangers in the dark corners of their own world and prompted the rising of ancient civilisations from long hidden corners. Truly, the world was far, far stranger than even the Spartakists could have imagined.

The Spartakus Bund was the first to reach a hand out in friendship, looking to a Pan-Continental Federation of Workers and its allies for a pact to pool together their resources while the stars and ground disgorged all manner of strange terrors and foes. It would be a great and terrible war, but it would ultimately be resolved with a surviving but tired humanity that would turn towards the great reconstruction and repopulation. But when one door is opened, others can soon follow, and the Spartakists would find that there were doors into yet more worlds, including one that seemed curiously at the crux of a great many things.

Whereas their world and the Norse world had diverged centuries ago, this one's divergences were newer, more recent, and to their surprise, Russia was the home of the revolution. Feeling a responsibility to lend their hand as they had before, they began infiltration operations to study the situation and see if any great dangers were looming on the horizon, and if their combined powers may allow for the great revolution dreamed of for so long.

## Gameplay Mechanics

### Build Mechanic

The Bund Construction Yard constructs structures in the traditional C&C method, with structures only appearing when their build time has completely finished. Notably, they can switch between either the 3D multiple build queue system used in Generals and Onwards or the 2D single build queue but every multiple of a production structure speeds up production out of the primary building at their Construction Yard, offering a significant deal of flexibility.

### Power Mechanic

Bund Power plants are conventional but scale up quite well and quickly, at least until the Topological Defect reactor is available, where it is rare for a Kommandant to ever need more than one.

### Resources

Before the battle begins the Bund advance recon team will mark deposits of uranium via markers that teleports in special Base Stations when the main army arrives. These Base Stations are completely indestructable and can't be capture by non-Bund forces, but they are not connected to the Bunds mainframe which must be manually downloaded by ground units, note that the enemy can uncapture these Stations, removing the Bunds uranium supply, and opposing Bunds can capture it for their own use. Once a Base Station is captured it will give a fixed amount of Uranium to the commander, create a secondary income of cash like an Oil Derrick, and can be upgraded into Outposts which can be further upgraded to increase the amount of Uranium and money alongside upgrades such as defense turrets and a portal that lets their forces instantly move between Stations and built Portal networks. Uranium is an important resource to the Bund as many of their high tier units and protocols costs Uranium to activate, and once the effect/upgrade ends or the unit is finished 100% of the Uranium spend is refunded back. Thus a Bund commander is encourage to not turtle since most of the Base Stations are scattered around the map and possibly within enemy territory.

## People's Revolutionary Red Army

*"Just as there are four Continental Districts for the Revolutionary Bund, there are four forms that the RRVA takes. The Festung, which binds the force together and anchors the enemy's movements against its iron walls that roll forward like a glacier, the Schwert which is plunged close and deep into its chest, the Taifun which pours into every gap and flaw and seizes each opportunity, and the Regulars upon which the whole thing rests. Alone they are formidable, but limited and one-note. Together, they have proven unbreakable and irresistible."*

- *Feldmarschall Margit Zinke*

### Infantry

All Spartakus Bund troops have Exosuits or are robots, making them resistant to most traditional anti-infantry weapons, but adding a weakness to magnetic or EMP weapons unless protected from them.

*"What the [CENSORED] sort of guns are those? We lost half the squadron just buzzing their rifle grunts!"*

- *Atomic Kingdom Noble Pilot Commader*

### Robotic Auxiliaries

*"I have heard a sound of distress!"*

- *Auxiliary Mekmensch responding to injury*

### Panzertruppe

*"The hammer of the working class in this case is less metaphorical."*

- *Kommandant Ingrid explaining Spartakist Armoured Doctrine to her Soviet ally when fighting the protectorate*

## Behind the Scenes

The Spartakus Bund takes after a number of different aesthetic sources, such as non-eastern bloc visions of Socialist Futurism as well as a parody of the many attempts at a Nazi faction in Paradox by making the German-dominated alternate timeline faction communist instead and also being pretty sunny and optimistic rather than an ultimate evil. They borrow somewhat from the Foehn Revolt as well as the Blue Alert Comintern in gameplay, but aesthetically are probably closer to Wolfenstein than anything else.

The name is an artefact of when they were originally going to be from a timeline where the Spartakist revolution of 1919 succeeded, but this was changed for the current format when it was decided that this would probably give them too much thematic and historical overlap with the Soviets instead of letting them develop a more distinct aesthetic and road through the historical process.

The Spartakus Bund was also meant to provide a sort of morally muddied opposition to the HAF as they both mean well, as opposed to the more conventionally far-right terroristic RUN or the NKGB themed PSB, but their end goals are not compatible. They were also chosen for annihilation due to the presence of the Ostplan Division, as well as the Volkskorps seen in Null.

The Spartakus Bund is also something of a parody of early Paradox's troubled history with wehrabooism where German gear and generalship was constantly praised unironically despite the historically lacklustre performance of many forms of German equipment (particularly infamously the glowing description of the King Tiger's prowess as the Mastiff), the notorious degree to which excuse making former Wehrmacht personnel tried to clean up their image and explain away their crushing defeat, and the unfortunate implications of downplaying French, American, British, and Soviet equipment and commandership.

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