Interlude

Weaving A Story

Excerpt from a transcript of Reuben Ashford's seminar on Advanced Robotic Engineering at the University of Oxford, September 12, 2006

Since its discovery, the "Philosopher's Stone" or Sakuradite as its most commonly called, has been applied to many different uses over the years, from primitive incendiaries to fuel for illumination, but it wasn't until the development of the Yggsdril Drive in 1904 at the University of Luxembourg by Doctor Nikola Tesla, who had first conceptualized it as a way to make a fuel efficient engine using the material, taking advantage of its superconductive nature. With this, the true potential of this marvelous element was realized, increasing the already impressive value of it considerably.

…The first commercial Yggsdril Drive was released by Von Wolfhausen Industries, who purchased the design from Tesla, in 1908, though quickly afterward several Japanese companies such as the Ushiromiya Group and Kirihara Industries obtained the designs through various means and released their own versions. Attempts by Von Wolfhausen Industries were made to claim copyright infringement, but international laws were looser then, and Japan was in the midst of the Meiji Restoration and militarizing rapidly, with anti-Western sentiments inflamed amongst its people, prompting Germany, at the urging of the greater whole of the European Union, to quell the complaints…

… The Yggsdril Drive was the first piece of technology to reveal the true potential of Sakuradite, setting it apart from other energy sources. Innovations and changes have been made to the device over the years, the most important of which was the creation of the Core Luminous module in 1987. Though more complex than previous examples of the Yggsdril Drive, it increased the output exponentially, meaning that possibilities of Sakuradite usage had grown limitless. One of those possibilities, of course, was the Knightmare Frame…

… As many developers of the Knightmare Frame have found, including yours truly, Sakuradite and the Yggsdril Drive are simply irreplaceable in the design of the war machine that has changed the face of modern warfare, or indeed any machine which can benefit from the massive energy output of Sakuradite- and the ones that do not benefit are few and far between.

…Cheap, efficient, and practical- the three keys to any successful piece of equipment that needs to be mass produced. Attempts at using an alternative source of fuel such as hydrogen or petroleum have been found as poor substitute, meaning that our reliance on the substance cannot be broken so long as its benefits outweigh that of the potential replacements…

As a closing thought, I leave you with this one philosophical quandary that I hope you, the new generation of scientists, will take to heart. Because our dependency on Sakuradite has become both the momentum and the crutch modern civilization rests upon in order to continue to function, whoever controls the supply holds the power to dominate the entire world.

Excerpt from Cherry Blossoms and The Sword: The Rise of the Japanese Empire by G. Freeman, 2007

… though the West had realized the power of the material Sakuradite by the end of the Dark Ages, the Emperors of Japan had grasped the potential the resources they held centuries before. Legend has it that Yamato Takeru no Mikoto, the 12th Emperor and folk hero of Japan, learned how to wield the element from his ancestral mother, Amateratsu-omikami, just before a foolish challenge against a mighty demon in which he went without the legendary Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, and only narrowly defeated the fiend by using a pebble of Sakuradite and his metal gauntlet to set the monster ablaze…

… in the 13th century, under advice from his closest advisors, Kublai Khan, the Mongol Emperor, chose to postpone his invasion of Japan to prepare his invasion fleet rather than risk the loss of so many forces… because of his foresight, the Khan's horde survived a deadly storm that would have broken a weaker fleet… in desperation, the Kamakura Shogunate ordered the first recorded full military use of Sakuradite to set the Khan's fleet ablaze using crude Sakuradite bombs, establishing Sakuradite as a recognized weapon on the field of war… further military use of Sakuradite, especially in the matter of anti-fortress weaponry, making siege warfare remarkably easier, has been recorded by famed military minds of Japan such as Uesugi Kenshin and Oda Nobunaga, cementing its place in Japan's power base…

… in the early 14th century, Marco Polo brought word of the tremendous hoards of Sakuradite in Japan back to the West… the resulting trade expanded the power of the Japanese Empire considerably, flooding its coffers with the wealth of the European nations who greatly desired the power of what they still termed the Philosopher's Stone…

… The 18th century was marked as an age of exploration for the wealthy and powerful Japan, which had flourished underneath the lead of the Tokugawa Shogunate. An intrepid explorer named Ryohiko Tatsumi, hailing from Hokkaido, requested permission from the bakufu to lead an expedition east, promising a new trade route with the West that would circumvent China's monopoly on trade with the continent. Intrigued, the Tokugawa Shogunate allowed Ryohiko's request… a year and a half later Ryohiko returned with word of an entirely new continent, a new world cut off from the rest of civilization and filled with natives who still wielded bows and arrows...

… in 1756 a task force led by Admiral Fukuyama Takehiro established the first Japanese base in the new world, on an island natives referred to as Hawaii… within five years of conflict, the whole of the northern continent was brought under the rule of the Chrysanthemum Throne… however the southern continent was allowed to the European nations who had colonized it, as the bakufu dared not risk open war so far from home with the West when China still loomed across the narrow sea, especially not with their new province just barely established and the aboriginal peoples still capable of mounting an uprising at a later time… in honor of the conquering of the northern continent, Fukuyama Takehiro's house was made provincial governors of the new continent, which was given the name Yamato after the old name of Japan… to the south, the name America was given to the southern continent… origins of this name, however, are disputed, given either to the Mayan language as "Land of the Wind" or to the explorer Amerigo Vespucci…

… by the 19th century a combination of centuries of resentment towards the bakufu, a loss in public faith in the Tokugawa Shogunate over the perceived concession of the southern continent to the West, and the rising power of the Chinese Empire, their eternal rivals in the region, created a growing movement amongst the people who longed for the end of Shogunate rule and a return to the rule of the Emperor, who had been the puppet of the Tokugawa's for so many centuries…

… the final spark that resulted in what is now referred to as the Meiji Restoration was an argument between Tokugawa Iemochi and the Emperor Komei, who had argued for a lessening of trade with the West in order to increase Japan's own Sakuradite stores to help increase Japan's control over trade with the West. The Emperor had grown bold during the reign of the Shogun's predecessor, Iesada, a physically frail man whose reign was marked with a growth in Imperial power against the Shogun's, as well as a time of relative peace. Thanks to Iesada dying childless, Iemochi's claim to power was also somewhat tenuous, and opposed by factions within his own Clan, weakening the Tokugawa's further…

… In defiance of the Shogunate's stance of continued trade in order to increase its own wealth, the Choshu and Satsuma clans ceased their shipments of Sakuradite in an unprecedented show of unity between two historically bitter enemies, thanks to the negotiations of Sakamoto Ryoma... under pressure from both internal and foreign powers, the bakufu sent troops to force the issue, sparking the first battle of the Meiji Revolution…

… with the Emperor restored to power, the Chrysanthemum Throne, breaking with millennia of tradition, moved out of Kyoto and to Edo, renamed Tokyo, the Eastern Capitol, to avoid the threat of any remaining supporters of the Shogun… under the Emperor, Japan became more and more militaristic, and began a restriction on Sakuradite trade by enforcing an export quota on the material, thereby establishing a stranglehold on the world's most precious resource…

… by the 1930s, inflation of the price of Sakuradite, worsened by a strike that erupted in the Congo that had sealed off the mining operations in the regions as workers began civil action for better rights, especially the right to unionization, reached critical levels. The Chinese Empire, whose own supplies of Sakuradite depended heavily on trade, imposed sanctions on Japan to attempt to force the price back down and demand a change in Japan's trading policies, with only limited support from what should have been their greatest allies in this endeavor, European Union, thanks to an internal conflict brought on by an ultranationalist party in Germany referred to as the National Socialists...

… The conflict between the two great Eastern empires, now recorded as the Oriental War, erupted into military action in 1941 after Japan, under imperial decree, ceased Sakuradite trade with China…

… in 1945, after four years of bitter war, Japan emerged victorious over their millennial rival in the region, the Chinese Empire, conquering almost all of mainland China, Korea, Tibet, Vietnam, and half of Mongolia, and taking the family of Chinese Emperor and other important ministers as hostages to ensure the complicity of the political leaders…

… by the beginning of the new millennium the Japanese Empire's wealth and power had exponentially increased yet again with the rise of the Knightmare Frame weapons system, first developed in Brittania by a number of special interest groups, though the leading innovations that make the Knightmare what it is today, including the Landspinner and Factsphere technologies, were attributed to the Ashford Foundation. The Knightmare Frame could dominate the field of battle, but relied on Sakuradite to function, meaning Japan's stranglehold on the resource only tightened further as they found their own use for the technology. Under Kirihara Industries, Knightmare Frames were adopted and innovated upon in Japan, adding a terrifying new weapon to the Empire's arsenal…

Excerpt from Age of Empires: A History of the World's Superpowers by Jonathan Stark, 2013

… After Japan's victory over China, Russia, which had been united under the Chinese Empire since the rule of the Khans, along with Thailand, Burma, India, and the remains of Mongolia, joined the European Union and formed the Eurasian Federation, as a check against the Japanese Empire… a conflict, however, erupted by nationalists in the various nations who had no desire to join the Federation, resulting in the Unification War…

… increasing unrest in the African and American continents, along with Japan's recent victory over China, the brief civil unrest within the European Union that had only recently ended in 1944, and the pressing matter of the Unification War that was sapping the newly formed Federation's resources accelerated the growing movement to formally release hold over colonies in those areas. The Africa Act was finalized in 1951, ending centuries of rule, followed swiftly by the America Act in 1952…

…The newly freed peoples, after a brief period of civil unrest, decided to unite with each other against the two superpowers of Eurasia and Japan, starting with the establishment of the South Atlantic Trade Community (SATC) in 1960 that eased trade amongst its members while blocking against foreign intrusion using high tariffs and import quotas that were mutually agreed upon by all member nations... Only five years later, they signed the final treaties and gave birth to the American-African Treaty Organization (AATO), a military treaty of mutual protection in 1965… finally, after putting an end to all resistance to the idea in the member countries, all nations in the continents agreed to unify into the South Equatorial League with the ratification of the Rio De Janeiro Treaty in 1974… though young in comparison to the other two forces, the Equatorial League was rich with natural resources, including mines of Sakuradite… while not as considerable as Japan's, it allowed them to grow rapidly from former colonies to a recognized threat by both Eurasia and Japan…

…The last remaining bloc of independent countries surrounding the Mediterranean, including the Arabian Peninsula, Italy, and Greece, were thereby forced into creating the Mediterranean Pact in 1978, a loose economic, political, and militaristic alliance to protect themselves against the multinational superpowers that had carved up the world. They were not a true union, not in the sense of the Eurasian Federation or the South Equatorial League, but the power of the alliance has thus far managed to hold against the mighty powers which circle on all sides of them… A last, but significant result of this alliance was that the Brittanian Empire, which had withdrawn itself from most world affairs, remained the last truly neutral country…

… Brittania had long resisted rule from the European continent, and had in fact successfully repelled any invasion of its lands from the time of Julius Caesar on. The Empire's size had ebbed and flowed over the centuries, though by the latter half of the 20th century it had been reduced to only the Brittanian homeland itself, Ireland, Scotland, and Greenland, and was only stopped from degenerating further through the formidable will of the 99th Emperor, Charles Di Brittania.

… Their Knightmare Frames proved to be effective enough on the field of warfare to hold against larger and more resource rich powers in the past, however, an invasion from Japan, launched from their base on the continent Yamato on August 10, 2010, ended the long independence of Eowyn's kingdom in a swift, bloody war…

… One point of continued speculation, however, remains as to the true casus belli, given that just a year before the invasion, the Crown Prince of Japan, the young Kururugi Suzaku, was sent to Brittania as a political hostage of the Brittanian Imperial family to foster trust and strengthen relations between the two nations… though some question the logic of sending the heir presumptive to a foreign country, the lineage of the prince has been called into question in the past, due to his unknown mother, leading some to speculate that the prince was considered expendable, or at the least an acceptable loss…

…While Japan's reasons for invading were numerous, from a desire to capture the Knightmare Frame technology that made Brittania powerful enough to stand on the world stage to the need for a forward base to use against the European continent proper, without the buffer of Russia or the Mediterranean Pact to interfere, their official statement, regarding "the right of conquest" of the Japanese Emperor under the guideline of "Tenchuu", or "Heavenly Justice", is the only casus belli that the Empire gave at the time… of special contention is the fact that the young prince Suzaku was recalled just two weeks before the invasion, which, along with the size, ferocity, and coordination of the Japanese forces, gives vast implications as to the degree that the invasion was premeditated…

Excerpt from The Fall of Arthur: Collected Essays on the End of the Brittanian Empire, edited by H. Short, 2015

…The invasion itself, now retrospectively referred to as "The Three Month War", was a bloody affair, one of the worst in recorded history, matched by the Unification Wars that mar the history of the Eurasian Federation and Japan's invasion of the Asian mainland that resulted in the capture of most of East Asia. Though a short war by any standard, the fierce, often urban nature of the fighting led to a tremendous casualty rate on both sides, likely due to Brittania's advanced Knightmares compensating for their lack of overall numbers against the more numerous, yet technologically inferior, Japanese machines…

… The shortness of the war is attributed to the sudden death of the last of the Brittanian Emperors, Charles Di Brittania in the closing weeks of the war, which is especially noted also for having kept the death toll from reaching catastrophic levels. He had been the driving force of the resistance, a towering figure in global politics- without the Emperor and without an officially recognized heir to rally behind, all will to fight in the Brittanians was extinguished in the confusion, their chain of command suddenly incapable of asserting authority, which had been centralized upon the throne for so long. Speculations regarding the causes of death range from assassination by Japanese sympathizers to his own children aiming to succeed the throne…

… Within a three days of his father's death, the Prince of Wales and heir presumptive to the throne, Odysseus eu Brittania, with the consent of his royal siblings and the Imperial Council, approached the Emperor of Japan, suing for peace, which was accepted on the condition that Brittania become a province of the Japanese Empire, ceding its sovereignty, along with a number of other stringent conditions to ensure loyalty… The Crown Prince agreed, and Brittania surrendered on November 12th, 2010 with the ratification of the Windsor Treaty…

…While the Brittanian's army had likely the strength to continue fighting for several more months, it would have been a grinding campaign of attrition. As it was at the time of the official surrender, Bristol was already burned to the ground, along with much of Southern England, and its armies, for all intents and purposes, annihilated in the opening month of the invasion. Much of the northern Brittanian military was prevented from reinforcing their southern allies due to the siege at Birmingham creating a blockade that would take longer to circumvent, and the Brittanian Navy was all but in ruins after a disastrous attempt to break the blockade surrounding Brittania proper that left most of their ships in ruins, leaving the bulk of the forces outside of the Brittanian homeland unable to return and reinforce their faltering comrades. All the while the greater portion of the Japanese force were practically battering at the gates of London, with only the comparably insignificant standing army stationed at the capitol standing between them and the Emperor…

… Despite the crippling blow to morale and outrage felt by its people, it is the academic field's general consensus that if the war had gone on but a month longer, the already horrifying eleven percent loss of the population and nearly sixty billion pounds in economic damages would have increased to irrevocably crippling levels, leaving Brittania a ruined husk of its former self, victory or not, and easy prey for the other world powers…

Author's Notes

Despite how much I wanted to have Chapter 3 out before the end of this year, I know I won't, considering I'll be leaving the country for a few weeks and won't be back till January. But in the spirit of Christmas, or at least the holidays, here's a special interlude chapter.

I've always loved this kind of storytelling mechanic, and considered using it in the story proper, but it just doesn't work quite as well with how I'm telling this (not every chapter needs an excerpt, plus I already use quotes). So, therefore, I decided to just dedicate a whole "mini" chapter to the backstory and timeline of this story, a la the Commissar Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) novels, with probably additional ones in the future as they become necessary to explain certain events without breaking the normal flow of the story with lengthy exposition.

Astute readers will notice a great deal of foreshadowing in this chapter (not to mention the numerous shout outs to other works) that will give you certain clues as to what will happen in the future. Or at least help you guess.

You guys can also tell that I am absolutely enamored with the study of history. I could spend hours watching the History Channel when I'm bored. Plus, applying my university education is oddly satisfying- even my business degree is being useful in writing this, which has never happened to me before.