The cold, bitter, unflinching and tall mountains of the Urals stood, towering over the world below. The cold winds swept over the stone behemoths, the ruthless force of nature caring little for the world around it. The Urals however, laid quiet, no sound except the wind could be heard on this day. The snow and ice coated the nature, suffocating it in its cold grip, killing most life that remained.
But there was life still, clinging to the world around it, in a solemn and somber existence. For the year of 1962 brought no happiness among the people of the Ural mountains, they were still subjected to the same death and horror as the year before. The CCCP was gone,and with it went any civility and sense of organized civilization, with the terrified populace grouping together only in small villages, towns and the occasional city. The once beautiful Russian land was now scarred with bomb craters and scattered shrapnel, the work of the Luftwaffe, their bombers flying overhead like heralds of death. The people had other problems to deal with however, the infighting of rural communes and small villages played a minor role in the peoples lack of civilization, the bombers terrified the people and decimated the land, but the worst that came were the raiders. Weather they came in small bands or large groups, they came fast and struck hard with indiscriminate attitudes as to who would taste the lead of their rifles. The worst of these raiders being a name well known in the region, Oskar Dirlewanger. The former Schutzstaffel officer and his Dirlewanger Brigade roamed the land pillaging, raping, burning and destroying anyone and everything they who they saw as a prime target for their plundering. The "Black Bandit" as he became known, arrived in the city of Orsk one fateful day, there was no welcome for Dirlewanger as he proceeded to butcher the town, he himself shoving his Karbiner 98 into the mayors mouth, before unleashing a 7.92X57mm bullet into his throat. From Orsk Dirlewanger rains terror over the region, with his mixed band of German, Russian, and Kazakh raiders slaughtering their targeted villages and towns until the place once used for the housing of sometimes even thousands of civilians, breathed no more.
Though the raiders were not the only trouble for the people of the region, in the Infamous Black Mountain, Based out of Magnitogorsk, lied the cold and cruel members of the 22nd NKVD Motor Rifle Division, headed by the scientist and near madman Trofim Lysenko. Unlike with the raiders who inflicted pain and terror through the end of the rifle, the roar of the loud engine and the frontward slaughter of all they could find, the NKVD inflicted terror and paranoia on many through silence and . The NKVD acted almost as shadows, never seen, barely heard, and with a reputation only told of in the stories and rumors of the people. Slowly over time people would notice the disappearances of their neighbors and friends, and then realize they could do nothing except prey they were not the next one to be taken away in the silence, to be dragged into the secluded and dark labs and factories that made up the NKVD's base of operations. Lysenko uses his captured victims to attempt to create his Super Soldat. Lysenko's lack of success in this goal has only further decreased his already questionable sanity, unnerving the many NKVD agents who enforce his will. Even a member of the methodical machine that makes up Lysenko's power is not safe, as silence and order rain over all living things, and anyone who would be suspected of treason against the doctor would most certainly find themselves dragged away into some cell or interrogation room, only to find themselves facing death immediately or the occasional torture to draw out a confession of false crimes to keep a facade of legitimacy. Lysenko cares little for any lives wasted or destroyed in his attempts to create his ultimate weapon and perfect human biological limits.
However, even in the darkness and violence of the sadistic and malevolent raiders, or the terror of Lysenko's NKVD abductions, hope exists in the South Urals, hope for morality and a better world. This hope comes in the form of the Ural League, their militia the Ural Guard, and their leader, the Latvian Priest Janis Mendriks. The Ural Guard, themselves experiencing the suffering brought about by imprisonment, war or slavery, had marched south from the frozen northern wastes, and more specifically, the labor camp Vorkuta, and found a place to call home in the city of Ust-Katav. Mendriks seeks to create a safer region, where his Ural Guard can protect the people from the very dangers that they now face, and create a society of safety, where people work together for the security of all. His Ural Guard, being a well trained and effective fighting force, far out skill many of the non SS members of the Dirlewanger Brigade, and while they lack the equipment and training of Lysenko's NKVD, they certainly make up for it in numbers against them. The Ural League seeks to stamp out the onslaught of Dirlewanger, and end the shadow terror of the NKVD, attempting to finally bring security and safety to the people of the South Urals.
The last important piece in this chess game would be the large, but divided, council of the Southern Urals. The council, based in and centered around the city of Orenburg faces the major problem of being a large decentralized land mass, facing infighting between regions, and constant accusations of "centralizing tyranny" against the Orenburg Government if any attempts to mend the rifts between regions or interfere in any way with them. What is worse, the decentralized rule of the region makes it the most ideal spot for raiders to plunder, with the Council being unable to act against the terrors brought upon their people. The Orenburg council as it enters the dark year of 1962 will have to make very important decisions, the most widely recommended change being the appointment of a chairman, someone to guide the council through the dark times that it is now facing. The two most likely candidates for this position would be the outspoken centralizers Georgy Malenkov a former politician from the Soviet Union calling for a return to Central Communism, and Alexander Burba, an intellectual and academic who wishes to see more centralized rule with a maintaining of democracy. Either choice would see Orenburg turn away from the libertarian and decentralized rule that the council was founded upon, but as one might say, desperate times call for desperate measures.
As the Southern Urals slowly enter a new year, they either expect much the same, or the final showdown for control of the region in the coming future. However nobody could have anticipated the events that would come on that fateful new year of 1962.
Hello everyone, this is worldfan here, and I would like to welcome all readers to the prologue of The New Order:Heart of the Urals. This fanfiction will be a crossover between my favorite Hearts of Iron 4 mod, The New Order:Last Days of Europe. I know it might sound like it's going to be a cheesy fanfiction at first, but I intend to follow through the dark and depressing alternate history of TNO. So if you don't like it, let me know and I will see what I can do to cater to your needs, and fix any problems. While I have been banned from the discord for misconduct, I will continue to help tribute to the glorius mod of TNO.