2020-04-20 - RECAP

It all started with the return of Erlo Jinwald to Loaf City in the summer of 1158.

The Holy Empire of Loaf had been remarkably quiet considering it had just fought its first war against its own rebelling soldiers. Sure, politics went on as normal, but life returned to normal surprsingly quickly. This was unsettling to the Loafians. For hundreds of years the nation had existed in a state of imperfect pacifism, having to put down armed squabbles between kingdoms or with other states, but no kingdom nor the whole federated Holy Empire ever declared formal war on another, or built up an army.

The Holy Empire had killed more people in a year than it had in all its history and life just went on.

Perhaps I owe a recap.

Five years ago, in the year 1153, the beloved Ambassador Frazzleburn was murdered by a mysterious agent, causing the Loafian state to prepare response to a terror threat. Far later, the assassin was connected to the far-right Imperial Coalition party in Parliament - but before the connection was discovered, the Imperial Coalition formed a governing coalition with the Loafian Democrats, raised an army, secretly ordered an invasion of neighboring territory, then explicitly annexed the land once the invasion became public. Once the connection was published, and the plot was unraveled largely due to the loose lips of populist firebrand Injibin Aster, the arrest of Imperial Coalition party members was inhibited by the mutiny of the entire army, which was loyal to the Coalition rather than the Holy Empire. The army declared independence in the invaded territory, and Agatha Sneath vowed to declare war and remove the terrorist threat before it could harm anyone else. Uprisings occured in Flen, aided by the Itheri Black Star. And the Loafians defeated both insurrections at great human and moral cost.

The Loafians mourned their comrades on both sides of the war, and lamented that their peaceful nation was brought to war. Ceremonies were held to commemorate those killed in the war - foreign civilians, rebel soldiers, and the entire population of Imperial City, a rebel base which was firebombed to rubble by hastily retrofitted cargo airliners in what was widely seen as the cruelest act of the war. But they found that the loss was not physically tangible, and that the Loafian economy kept plugging along as usual. In fact, it was slightly boosted by the war effort. The only monuments to the first war of the Loafians were a few thousand headstones in the ground, commemorative structures in every provincial capital, decommissioned arms factories standing derelict in the countryside, and a scar in the minds of millions.

Ambassador Erlo Jinwald was the face of the Imperial Coalition during its rise to power. A promiment defender of the party, he espoused its ideals publicly in the National Assembly to tens of ambassadors and thousands of television spectators. To most outside the Holy Empire, Jinwald _was_ the Imperial Coalition. When it was revealed that his party had committed bona fide assassination, and that he probably could have stopped it, he renounced all ties with the organization and left the public eye, leaving Laurie Slana in charge of diplomatic affairs and assisting the Loafian Armed Forces with intelligence in defeating the rebels. And after the rebels were vanquished, Jinwald vanished.

Until today.

Ambassador Emeritus Erlo Jinwald drove back to Loaf City on the 9th of Disummer, 1158, to complete two tasks. In his lap was the final manuscript of _Empire:_ his memoir of 1153 and 1154. He had held the manuscript for months, not wanting to publish it, but he felt the time had come. His vehicle stopped outside a promiment publishing house, and Jinwald handed the manuscript to a man in a suit, who nodded and walked into the building.

This was the first task. The second task would wait until tomorrow, and it waited in the halls of the Regional Assembly.