The Ascent of an Emperor

[Kelly the Mad]

Omari Gowon was a poor student who had taken the money his small Congolese community could spare and went to university in the newly rising Greater Romania. After his four years of education, he found his calling in the military and soon rose to the rank of colonel. His charisma brought him to widespread popularity among the enlisted men, to a point where the at the time Commander of the Army Vlad Dracula came to personally speak to him. Over drinks, they talked about each other's pasts and especially Omari's hometown he had fled for higher education. He insisted that education and healthcare in the Congo were so dismal, no country could hope to grow in the same conditions, regardless of the rigor of the people. Their talks drifted to the importance of a powerful government and military, and the prospects of Moldovan land. They concluded a night of drinking with pledges of loyalty to each other and parted ways until a year later. When Vlad took over as dictator of Romania, there was a jubilant celebration in the armed forces. They knew that their new ruler would treat them well, having come from the same background. When Vlad debated who he would elect as Commander of the Army, he passed over Omari. The Congolese man came to Vlad in a fury, demanding an explanation. In response, Vlad told him that he had bigger plans for him. Packing him up on a ship with a bodyguard of other African soldiers, he sent him back to the Congo with plenty of funds to start building an army. Under the claim that he was a long-lost descendant of the former native monarchy that ruled over much of the Congo, he established a following of diehard supporters from the fringe rural areas of the country, and slowly but surely expanded his influence into urban areas. With help from several Romanian soldiers, he trained his growing force of armed men as a professional army, as well as a guerrilla force.


His first major breakthrough was when he deposed a major drug trafficking gang in Kinshasa, the capital. Through armed force they slaughtered many of the gang members, taking the rest prisoner and burning their supplies. He continued going through the capital city, a major source for drug trafficking due to corruption and lax restrictions on shipping, breaking up gangs of drug smugglers, and executing the "enemies of the public". Soon more people, some from opposing gangs and some from the general populace, joined up with his own group to help fight the countries corruption. At this point, he adopted a name for his group: The Congolese Peoples Guard. The CPG wreaked havoc within the city criminal hierarchy, in return making it a very large target for other gangs, hired guns, and bribed police officers. They were seeing constant fighting, and the land they controlled would ebb and flow.


They began expanding back into rural areas, and after busting up several other armed groups, spread to the city of Lubumbashi. Here, they excelled, with less competition they recruited from the small gangs and grew immensely, and took over the majority of the city. With this new influx of fighters, they managed to control the situation in the capital, blowing the other groups out of the city within months. Now uncontested, they began exporting to the smaller cities and chasing down the remnants of smaller groups. Then, the Greater Romanian Dictatorship collapsed in the wake of the Moldovan war, and with it came an influx of discarded weaponry and out-of-work soldiers to third-world countries.


Capitalizing on this, and using the leverage he had within the Romanian armed forces, Omari procured massive amounts of weaponry and vehicles, enlisting several former soldiers into his force. He then, using this force, took the city of Bokoro. Facing little to no resistance from the government, they went on the warpath: taking city after city in a chain towards the capital, they finally attracted attention. In their first major battle against the Congolese army, their professional training and new era weaponry led them to a quick and crushing victory. They slew most of their opponents and chased the rest down for over a week. By the end of 1997, they had taken over most of the provinces surrounding the capital and beat back most incursions by the Republic against them.


Everywhere they went, they shared what they could with the locals, offering assistance in farming and construction of infrastructure, raiding the rich plantation owners' homes, and redistributing the wealth. They became the friends of the people.


And then, they committed to assaulting the capital. Using their pre-established network within the city, they lay waste to the support structure of the besieged units there. Water supplies were poisoned, communications jammed, important roads blockaded and light harassment kept them constantly moving about. Then, at midnight in March of 1998, the CPG performed a full-scale assault of the city. Thousands died, and fighting quickly came down to house-to-house warfare, booby traps taking out many of the CPG soldiers. They suffered not only from the opposing side but also from friendly fire due to the lack of an identifiable uniform.


Despite these difficulties, the fighting raged on, and by the latter half of the year and months of combat, the CPG forces had finally captured some more advanced mortars and rocket launchers from the republic. Between July and September, the attacking forces mostly hunkered down, building up defensive positions and bringing up more small-scale artillery. Though the major fighting had slowed, sporadic gunfire was still keeping up at nearly all times in the streets. Thanks to the heavy regulation put on the use of artillery and explosives by both sides, the city remained mostly intact.


Finally, in December of 1998, The CPG forces broke the last government-held stronghold, and the bulk of their remaining armed forces surrendered. For the next half a year, the newly established emperor and his army would campaign through the remote regions of the country, bringing under his control many provinces still controlled by gangs or government holdouts.


In August of 1999, Emperor Omari Gowon finally declared his empire a sovereign state. Still, armed groups existed deep in the Congolese jungle and hidden in gangs in the streets- but that would be dealt with at a later date. The most prominent known organizations are the remainder of the DRCs army, holdouts who still lay claim to the name, as well as the notorious youth gangs that have always plagued the streets of urban cities in Africa.


Now, the Emperor himself, built on a false claim backed by a fallen foreign dictator, rules over the entirety of the country and is tasked with bringing it back from the brink of social, economic, and political disaster. To bring forth the first true superpower of Africa.

 

[Baer]

Nigerian Security and Intelligence Services are PRIVATELY monitoring the situation in the Congo.

 

[Kelly the Mad]

The day was a quiet one. Somewhere in Kinshasha province, a man by the name of Beno was returning from a day's expedition searching for suitable building wood. He had lived in his village for all thirty years of his life, and along with its other hundred or so inhabitants, never planned to move away. Though the air was muggy and bugs bit him anywhere they could, it was how he had grown up. Doing hard work for his people was the greatest gratification he could achieve as a person.

He was with a group of ten men, all bearing cumbersome bundles of high-quality dry wood they had traveled far to gather. Their village was on the Congo river, and as such dry wood was often hard to come across. A heavy storm had just recently blown through, tearing away their light homes and breaking up the small bridges they had made to cross narrow creeks and facilitate the hunting that not only fed them but also provided their only income. After many hours of travel, they had discovered a dense grove of Mahogany trees that had managed to mostly withstand the storm, and that provided good hardwood for repairs. Now, they were finally approaching the village, and he could hear the sounds of children playing and smell the savory dinners being prepared by the women.

He swung the wood down onto the ground next to a hut- he would have to prepare it for construction later. Now, it was time for him to eat. He picked a wooden bowl out of a stack of dishes and a spoon from next to it. One of the women poured a hefty serving of stew and handed him a jar of Lotoko, and he gave her a hearty grin and thanks. He reclined on an old lawn chair they had salvaged from the river propped up next to their only vehicle, a collapsing pickup truck. He let the smell of the stew waft around him, taking it in before beginning the meal.

Then, he heard the rumbling. It started slowly, quietly, far away. He wondered in a panic if this was an earth tremor, something he had heard only rumors about but that he knew brought destruction and death with it. The rumbling grew louder, closer, and as the inhabitants of his village gathered close in the main clearing, they spotted the origin: Four massive metal machines on tracks rolled around the bend, plowing straight towards the village along their washed-out dirt road. They came to a stop just outside the clearing, and as the villagers huddled in fright, a man emerged from the top of one of the machines.

"Under official order by the Emperor himself, the land you live on is to be seized and converted into an airfield for the Congolese Air Force. Therefore, you are required by law to relocate, by choice or by force. You will begin now." He then followed this by translating the same message into french, and then two more languages Beno could not understand. They all stood as they were, dumbfounded by what they had just heard.

The soldiers ducked back into the machine, closing the hatch behind him, and without further notice, they forged ahead. The tracks dug into the wet soil of the clearing, spitting it up behind them, as they rolled over their flimsy and already damaged buildings. People scattered everywhere, some running into their homes to gather personal possessions and food or out into the woods to escape the churning treads.

Beno watched as the nursery, a longhouse containing four infants and their mothers, was plowed over no doubt with the occupants still inside based on the dismayed screams cut short. They rammed through homes and store places without slowing down, compacting their highly valued truck in ten seconds flat, and in the space of minutes, only he and a few others stood amid the destruction to watch the same soldier get out, along with some others, and set fire to the rubble. They turned guns in his direction.

"Go! Get away! You have nothing here anymore, go settle in another worthless pit!" He fired a warning shot just above their heads, and the men scattered, many fearful for what would come. Without their small fields and weapons, they had no method to provide food for those who remained. And how many people were crushed, he could only imagine...

But for now, he had to move, and fast. He would have to get his people back. He would have to take revenge.

 

[Drivindeath]

The Mexican International Commitee would be privately and secretly monitoring the situation.

Kelly the Mad

 

[Kelly the Mad]

The messenger looked up at the magnificent white building coming off of the dirt road. It was incredibly unusual, a building of such grandeur stranded in the midst of a jungle with no nearby civilization. He kicked out his kickstand, setting up his motorbike alongside a ditch. The small green satchel slung over his shoulder was heavy with reports, photographs, and documents on construction progress. He walked up the wide steps up to the porch, knocking on the solid wood door. After moments of waiting, a white man armed with a submachine gun opened the door. Speaking in broken French, he welcomed him in.

The interior was just as lavish as the outside, luxurious furniture and paintings that the messenger could hardly guess the price of. All throughout the house were white men in finely tailored suits and foreign officers' uniforms. They climbed a long spiraling staircase, coming onto the second story and entering a study. The room smelled of smoke, and bookshelves lined the walls. Knick knacks were scattered across desks, and a large globe was displayed prominently. Across the carpeted floor animal skin rugs were sprawled out, and elephant tusks, as well as antlers, hung from the unoccupied walls.

At one end of the room sat a badly scarred white man in a decorated uniform, smoking a large cigar and reading through another set of papers.

"I have a message from the Engineer Corps for The Bat? Regarding construction in multiple regions, there are papers and pictures." spoke the messenger. The white man reached out, and he handed over the satchel. After looking over the papers and observing the images of burning homes and cleared jungle, he took a moment to write up his own report on an old typewriter. He called over one soldier, who took the paper and, reading over it, transcribed it into French. He sealed the paper in a wax envelope and gave it back to the messenger.

He spoke a foreign language that the messenger simply couldn't discern, holding up an image of a dozen bodies lain out inside shallow graves. With a slight chuckle, he turned to the messenger. "Take bag to capital, yes? By the airport. Officer is there, he will take it. Good?"

After a moment of setting his instructions straight, the messenger nodded, taking the satchel and heading back out. He had met this officer before, and it turned out he wasn't a soldier at all, as he had first thought, but a member of the Emperor's Own court. After the ride there, he handed off the envelope.

********
​

The Emperor's personal secretary received the envelope and opened it.

Dear Emperor Gowon,

The relocation process in all three prime locations for the
Airstrip project has gone excellently. All local peoples peacefully
left the area and have moved into accomidations we arranged for just
outside the area. We have supplied them with non-perishable food
until they can re-establish their farms. They have also been compensated
financially for the lands worth, as you have ordered. Total construction
should be completed in two months time, at which point you will be
able to move your aircraft from the commercial airports to the sites.

Your Friend and Benefactor,
THE BAT

After looking over it a second time, the secretary filed it in a secure locker under his desk to be delivered to the Emperors office to await his arrival. Though he officially never read through any correspondance, he had been following the relocation orders given for this new construction, and was glad none of the tribals had been harmed.

----
Drivindeath Baer

 

[Kelly the Mad]

Vlad watched as the messenger walked out of the room and off the property. He poured himself a glass of bourbon, before taking another look at the images splayed out on his desk. According to the reports he had skimmed, the land for the three new airfields was now well and cleared from any intrusive natives' eyes. He had been appointed the Emperor's Chief of Projects, a mundane job, with no publicity. He said it was a favor considering Vlad had put him in power, but that if he overstepped his bounds he would be stripped of his job and titles. This suited Vlad fine, considering all reports to the Emperor came directly from him.

For the last year since his exile from Romania, he had come down on the natives of the Congo with an Iron fist. Utilizing his good relations with members of the Congos army, he managed to acquire the service of a handful of their tanks and crews. Under hefty payment, both in money and the women they encountered on their missions, they agreed to do his bidding. He had reclaimed large swathes of the jungle from these natives, claiming peaceful relocation when in reality he had quickly torn through villages, burning, looting, raping on his way. Often his fellow Romanian exiles would be granted the land for mines and farming, instead of it going up for purchase in the capital to provide a boost to the economy. Once having claimed this bloody land, his Romanians would enslave natives for labor. Harsh punishments were the norm.

As these plantations and mines began to pour in money, Vlad began to invest into the new gang that he ran: The Iron Watch, a play on the Romanian Iron Guard. While not directly leading the gang, he financed the majority of their weapons and played around with its leaders behind the scenes.

He placed a phone call to the colonel of the 2nd Integrated artillery regiment. Once he was done talking, he placed several more calls to the Iron Watch's regional leaders. His preparation phase had begun.

Drivindeath Baer