Kaiser Lane: The Fanfic's Fanfic
Bad news. The brainrot has reached the point where I have twenty-five chapters of weapons-grade rot. At this point, it's probably best to have a briefing and table of contents here, so the enterprising HMS Enterprise or Argus fan isn't left searching through a sea of (in my opinion) cool chapter titles to find the character they like.
Some chapters can be read on their lonesome but some run off of previous assumptions/use characters mentioned or explored previously without expanding on how exactly said characters got that way (a lot of Kaiserreich lore is kind of taken as a given, I expand on it a bit more a little further down the page). Feel free to review or comment with any questions, I'd be glad to talk my head off about this lore.
Chapters (with major character death marked in bold), Season 1:
Oisin's Return: Starring Belfast as a cruiser of the Irish Republican Navy, with a brief appearance from Lizzie at the end.
Auld Lang Syne: Langley, Massachusets, and Ranger are carriers on a journey to visit a certain person who greatly influenced their lives. Passing mention of Constellation.
Green Mountaineer: Montpelier is a cruiser of New England alongside Canadian gals like Foxhound and Eskimo (brief mentions) and she has a run in with her sort-of-sister Cleveland. Minor fight part way through, blood. Brief mention of Lexington as a Pacific States flagship.
Laudato Si': Conte di Cavour thinks about her place in the world and the Two Sicilies in the aftermath of the Weltkrieg. Passing mention of Caesar, a bit of time with da Vinci.
They Go Wild: Nelson and Rodney are battleships of the Union of Britain, occasionally going by the names of Yew and Whitebeam. Features an OC Anson aka Birch, and Rodney dragging Nelson to a party.
Patrie: Focuses on Royal Navy Enterprise after her being sold to the French exiles in Algiers. Written pretty far before we got Italian Naval canon worked out (we still don't lmao) so I focused on a blurb from the Kaiserreich naval files about the Algiers French having two Littorio analog battleships from Trieste, or something like that. Focuses on an Enterprise Vittorio relationship.
Saxon Foemen: Ark Royal as Rebecca, syndicalist carrier. Brief mention of Jamaica as Samuel Sharpe, plus a return of Irish Belfast from chapter one. Battle scene at end, minor violence.
Looking Kindly Down: Constellation is a sickly aircraft carrier, and she gains an OC captain in the lead up to the Second American Civil War.
The Pelican & The Kingfish: New Orleans contemplates her role in the American Union State and the morality of her duty as a warship. Brief visit from California, brief mention of some 1930's American south unpleasantness at the end. Also, CS Lewis radio speech.
Russians Among Prussians: Sevastopol and her sisters- Gangut, Poltava, Petrovpavlosk (OC)- are press ganged into the German navy before a big confrontation with the British navy. Sevastopol drinks. First introduction of the Bayern class (more OCs) and some considerable angst about the upcoming battle.
Seydlitz Goes East: Seydlitz sails to Haifa in the Ottoman Empire to meet with their battleships for training. All three are OC's: Goeben aka Selim, Agincourt aka Osman, and Erin aka Resadiye.
Just After Jutland: Mostly focused on another OC: Derfflinger, who is Lutzow's sister. She's visited by her sister, Friedrich der Grosse, and the OC Bayern. Kind of foreshadows Derfflinger's eventual role as the 'first bulin'. Brief bit at the end about Queen Elizabeth going to a post Jutland funeral with some very exaggerated damage counts, nothing like the Jutland Sev is planning.
Young Fritz: Baden (OC) learns the art of being a flagship from Friedrich der Grosse. Has some battle aftermath, but largely focuses on Baden's character and her relationship with her mentor and sisters.
Panoptes: Argus as a Canadian carrier going on a mission to Panama. A lot of references to Greek myth, brief appearances from Ajax, Warspite, and Revenge.
The Import's Tale: The story of Kongou as Japan's first Kansen. Swiftly joined by Hiei, the two go off to England to repay their British benefactors for giving them wisdom cubes. Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, and OC Malaya show them around a bit. Brief OC POV from Inflexible.
Reconstruction… Again: Focuses on Lexington as a head of the Pacific States Navy, and her attempts at mending fences with the American Union State's Ranger and Tennessee. Some implied character death.
Saxon Sunbeam: Bayern and Sachsen meet in German Mittelafrika to pick up a mysterious Congo cargo… Also, a brief moment with Derfflinger.
Rebel Girl: A certain American Syndicalist battleship by the name of Pennsylvania… (Blood, trauma, brief mention of Chicago.) Mentioned MCD
Christmas in Canada: Set in Canada 1925, the first Christmas abroad after the fall of Britain to Syndicalism. Setting is a Christmas party that Warspite attends, before excusing herself to hang out outside where she is joined by Hood. (Who is sick like Amagi because of construction shenanigans.) Brief mention of Valiant and Queen Elizabeth.
Dynamic: April Fool's chapter based on a running Kaiser Lane discord joke about the abundance of historical characters who need to be introduced for this fic. Not available on FFN because it utilizes a picture.
Transcendental Etude No. 4: Focuses on OC Austro-Hungarian battleship Szent Istvan and her interactions with Sevastopol and OC Volia. (Russian ships brought to Germany, some mentioned character death of Sevastopol's sisters.) Focuses on Szent's covert Hungarian nationalism, her playing some Liszt, and the start of a friendship with Ukranian nationalist Volia. Mentioned MCD
In the Cards: sans-Yugioh Hermes uses tarot, and does some readings during an ill-fated party with the Queen Elizabeth class girls: Lizzie, Warspite, Valiant, Barham, Malaya. Focuses on pre-civil war animosity. Brief mention of OC battleship Saint George who is just there as Hermes' roommate.
Let Man Not Separate: Character-focused chapter on OC Wurttemberg, exploring her role as youngest sibling and her interactions with the King of her namesake state.
The Lovely Bloatfly: OC's Brummer and Bremse, German minelaying cruisers, and their raid on British shipping. Done to flesh out two characters on the very long list of German ships bouncing around in the Kaiser Lane verse. Chapter themes of death and violence, minor use of historical figures with almost no writing about them and their personalities. (Captain Leonhardi.) Brief mention of Regensburg and her OC sister Graudenz.
Flower on the Amur: From POV of OC Pallada, a sibling of Aurora, who is currently hanging with Volga (named Amur) in the Transamur Republic, a tiny little exile state next to Manchuria.
The Carpenter: Giuseppe Garibaldi and her sister as ships of the Socialist Republic of Italy.
Sisters Gracchi: Uses same setting (and the established characterizations) of The Carpenter, but focuses on the Socialist Republic's pair of battleships: Tiberius and Gaius, aka Roma and Impero. Depicted MCD
Blood Oath: OCs Szent Istvan and Cetingrad swear a blood oath together, for the sake of Hungary. Blood, obviously.
All Quiet: Craven loses one of her crew in the Second American Civil War, and tries to deal with it. Discusses death from a naval accident (steam) but the details aren't elaborated on.
Chain Gang: AUS ships Tennessee and North Carolina find themselves breaking cornbread with workers on a chain gang after the car they were taking breaks down. Some discussion of race relations during the period.
Trinacria: Leonardo da Vinci and her siblings play host to the German carriers Weser and Graf Zeppelin.
Cassandra: C-Class cruiser Cassandra (OC) is... a bit of an odd duck. Thoughts on her from the perspective of Centaur, Beatty, and Malaya.
Let Your Schemes Alone: OCs Malaya & Ramillies have a chat with Renown; Repulse meets Nelson and Rodney at a celebration of the recent revolution.
This Darkness Light: Ulrich von Hutten, here known as Prinzregent Luitpold, contemplates her recent introduction to the German fleet. Guest starring OC battleship Bayern.
Lines: Malaya, Barham, Sachsen: What it says on the tin.
The Younger Sister's Tale: Sequel to the earlier Kongou chapter, focusing on the eventual arrival of Haruna and Kirishima in Britain.
The Goddess in Ezochi: Longest chapter yet, a personal favorite, and responsible for several fun new tags. Focuses on Hiei in 1924 and a visit by a touring American fleet consisting of Nevada, Arizona, and Oklahoma. She plays host to them in the northern land of Hokkaido, and contemplates her part in the world and the empire. Mentioned MCD
Apiary: The return of Enterpise/Mirabeau from the earlier chapter "Patrie", where she contemplates her place in the world and encounters some political issues at a party.
The Orange and the Green: The famed cruiser of the Emerald Isle, Belfast, attends a Mitteleuropan naval party and meets Prinzregent Luitpold (Ulrich von Hutten) and the Dutch coastal defense ship De Zeven Provincien.
OVA 1: A sort of breather chapter or in-between season break with a few smaller stories. Also includes some images on Ao3.
Season 2:
We Proudly Present: A Series of Presentations About the Kansen...: A sort of in-universe exploration of art/writing about Kansen, from the perspective of a world where the Sydnicalists won the Second Weltkrieg.
Nine Tails, Seven Branches: IJN battleship Kaga contemplates the history of Japan and the nature of power, while her aide Dai-11 (Oite) delivers a letter for her lady.
First Mover: French Commune battleship Provence (based on Azur Lane's Marseillaise) wonders about the origins of shipgirls as a whole, and tracks down Malaya in hopes of getting some answers. Worldbuilding likely not permanent lol.
'Pennsylvania': A Commander on a normal Azur Lane base in modern day OTL summons a certain 'Pennsylvania' from the Kaiserreich timeline. Expands on ideas in previous chapter Rebel Girl.
Lavender: Carrier conversions Langley and Argus bond in the interwar years. And they were very good friends. Very good friends.
Innocence Is Drowned: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH, PROBABLE SPOILERS. Ahem. The aftermath of the Battle of Texel, including some potential spoilers for Kaiser Lane. Kind of late for me to start worrying about this sort of thing... but you know. And seriously, I really mean that major character death warning.
One Week In Algiers: Épée angsts in the lead-up to the National French joining the Second Weltkrieg.
Trieste: Austrian ship Vltava (OC) entertains a Levantine guest in the city of Trieste.
The Twentieth April of RNS Valiant: Based on a certain idea in Innocence is Drowned (so beware mentioned MCD), explores Valiant's typical scheming and plotting in a Syndicalist context instead of a Royal one. Some random thoughts on the government of the Union of Britain, absolutely nothing certain.
Cokaygne (In Wilhelmshaven Town): Friedrich der Grosse and her comrades celebrate their first Christmas, during Germany's infamous turnip winter. Their Christmas feast may not be extraordinary, but at least it's with friends and family, like Prinzregent Luitpold (Ulrich) and SMS Kaiser (OC).
Mr. Romanov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich: Russia falls to pieces, and the recently cubed battleship Volia (OC) tries to make her peace with working for the Germans. She meets some important Russians and a new generation of 'Russian' shipgirls... some of whom have ambitions far beyond Volia's.
Old Man River: Perspectives of several battleships (and a battlecruiser Shangri-La as Constitution) in the midst of the American Civil War. Introspective, even by my standards. In addition to fleshing out several OCs, two other canon ships are there: WeeVee as herself and Pittsburgh as USS Idaho.
Singapore Sun, Navy Blues: German carrier Weser spends her days in far-flung Singapore, waiting for the Japanese hammer to drop. Magdeburg and Elbe are there too!
Something Rotten: Something might be rotten in the state of pre-Revolution England, but that isn't important right now. We have a production of Hamlet to put on! Starring Malaya as the Prince of Denmark, Barham as Horatio, Royal Sovereign as Claudius, etc. MCD carried over/mentioned from Innocence is Drowned!
The Taiwan Exposition: It's Taisho 10, and Kongou brings Mutsuki on a little adventure at the Taiwan Exposition.
Shinobiyori: A look at the life of Japanese destroyer Akatsuki, and her secret quest to pursue the way of the shinobi.
Strange Bedfellows: Interwar Britain, from a slightly different angle. Elizabeth and Malaya discuss politics and an upcoming marriage among the nobility, and the whole gang attends said wedding. MCD carried over/mentioned from Innocence is Drowned!
Bầu cua cá cọp (and Other Losing Games): Raleigh and Aylwin, recent transfers to the Asiatic fleet, introduce themselves to the other fleets of Southeast Asia in Batavia. The return of De Zeven Provincien from Orange and the Green, plus a shipgirl of the Thai navy.
Tellspiel: In the early days of the kansenized Austro-Hungarian navy, the ships (Z1, Z2, Z23, Prinz Eugen, and the established Tegetthoff OC's) get together for a contentious dinner.
Ta-Seti Tablesetter: The birth and early career of the patchwork Tribal class destroyer Zubian, born from the combination of HMS Zulu and Nubian. Focus on the game's HMS Nubian, with appearances from C-Class Centaur and Matchless.
Malayans, Misunderstanding, Marienbad: Malaya meets a famous 'Malayan' who served in the navy a bit before her time and talks about Jutland. Later, King George V attempts to speak with Regensburg, a recent prisoner of the British. Later still, HMS Hood and SMS Prinz Eugen bump into each other in a little town called Marienbad.
Ich dien: The Royal Navy gets back on their feet after Jutland. Elizabeth meets new faces... and is haunted by another one. Some Ajax, Australia (OC), and Royal Sovereign/Arkhangelsk, plus some Barham (OC) later. And a surprise guest...?
Valiant Gets Crabby: Valiant gets press-ganged into a PR stunt with another 'shipgirl' - although Valiant wouldn't really consider her an equal. R101 of Cardington is unlike any of her comrades so far...
Some general notes/assumptions about the 'verse:
Several of my earlier chapters (first to about seventh, I think?) run off of Azur Lane game/anime assumptions, where rigging is a sort of combat suit that lets the girls skate over the water as they fight. That's not how Kaiser Lane is planned to go, so my later chapters tend to cut that out.
Speaking of later chapters: From Chapter 10, Russians Among Prussians, and onward, you'll start to see a lot more OC's in major roles, especially the Bayerns, the beloved brainchildren of us Kaiser Lane loonies. They are: Bayern, Baden, Sachsen, and Wurttemberg. In several ways they're kind of a parallel to the Queen Elizabeth class: young looking battleships, but the Bayerns prove cohesive while the misfortunes of the Kaiserreich timeline tear the Lizzies apart.
Kaiserreich Overall:
Divergence from our timeline is mainly Germans choosing not to do unrestricted submarine warfare- a decision that might be influenced by wisdom cubes in the Kaiser Lane universe- which keeps the United States from coming into the war and leads to an eventual Central Powers victory.
After Weltkrieg end in 1919, French general strikes explode into violence that leads to the formation of the French Commune. On the other side of Europe, the communist experiment in Russia fails, leading to a White victory that seems to show that French syndicalism is the future of the radical left in the Kaiserreich verse. The end of 1920 sees an Austrian backed Italian Federation dissolving into pieces: the syndicalist Socialist Republic of Italy in the north, an Austria aligned Italian Republic near Venice, the Papacy in Rome, and their protectors the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Sardinia is under the control of the exiled Sardinia Piedmont.
Sardinia-Piedmont is aligned with remnants of the French Republic, which survives in exile in Algieria and portions of French Africa. (Although certain colonial assets like Indochina were seized by the Germans as parts of Mittelafrika or Ostasia.) The third member of their Entente is the British monarchy, who reign in exile in Canada after a syndicalist revolution in 1925. With the revolution, much of their Empire fell apart: India is divided between British loyalists, a Princely Federation, and a Commune around Bengal. Much of British Africa has ended up under German or Ottoman control, barring the Dominion of South Africa.
America suffers from serious political instability, and a civil war over the results of the 1936 elections is practically unavoidable. Will Huey Long's American Union State triumph, or perhaps the Combined Syndicates of America? Will the Pacific States preserve democracy if MacArthur throws a coup?
Wisdom Cubes and Such:
Wisdom cubes are the magic ingredient: just one easy use and your boat now has an anime girl. Our current thought about cubes is that shipgirls can produce/crystallize them after combat and after training exercises, although the former is a lot more efficient than the later. Still, you need a shipgirl to get the process going, making it something of an exclusive club.
Britain and Germany receive theirs from Sirens at similar times a bit before Jutland, with first shipgirls being Queen Elizabeth and Lutzow respectively. Seydlitz follows close behind for Germany, and the numbers are fleshed out a bit before Jutland, which gives a lot of cubes to throw around. (Maybe ten for the Anglos?) Eventually people realize that just spamming cubes on batteleships isn't meta, so we do get cruisers.
Britain passes off four cubes to Japan for their Kongou class to guarantee help against Germany, while Germany slips some cubes Austria's way for the Tegetthoffs (including Prinz Eugen). America is also a beneficiary of the Sirens, who give them cubes interwar so the American navy gets fleshed out. It's possible Russia doesn't have any until the Second Weltkrieg. This means that you need to be on good terms with a shipgirled power to get one for yourself, generally. France probably gets theirs from Britain, but the Syndicalist powers probably seize/convince their shipgirls over.