Part 16: First Blood
Momentum shifts as nations call up their reserves, leaving our imperiled world like so:
Initiative for this, the very first round, goes to...
A tie! Damn the luck.
Sorry Somerset, another 5 just won't do this time around...
It began in Lusitania.
Grand Admiral Hero, flamboyant hat in hand, boarded his glorious flagship and bid his navy set sail for the opulent lands of the east.
His stalwart men, alternately paddling and bailing seawater at a furious pace, sluggishly sailed their rickety fleet across the Mediterranean towards the shores of Palestine. They were on no less than three occasions successfully outflanked by driftwood.
Arriving upon the shore, Admiral Hero disembarked his men and bid them march inland towards the great golden cities of Mesopotamia.
Unfortunately, the Admiral quickly discovered that deserts, contrary to his estimation, were rather quite hot and dull. Navigating largely on the basis of vague hand gestures and phrases such as 'head for that dune, the sandy one', his force quickly found itself hopelessly lost.
Things may have only gotten so bad had it not been for the Admiral, in his frustration, making an offhand remark that the only treasure his men would see on this journey was in one another's fillings.
The ensuing bloodbath decimated his forces.
Anticipating its Wurzellian defenders would be distracted by their comrades in the west, Lusitanian troops in China moved on Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, with the Admiral's defeat by the forces of oral pillaging, the Lusitanians merely produced the sound of one army clapping.
Moving south from Kamchatka, quite possibly the only territory in the world with less treasures to loot than Mongolia, Lusitanian land forces mounted a daring raid on armies of Greater Somerset to their south.
The invasion of Mongolia had the effect of complete surprise, in that the local Wurzellian commander was completely surprised anybody would want it in the first place.
Lusitania takes Mongolia!
In Quebec, Esteemed Gentleperson Herr Zwiebel moved the full force of his steam-powered army, hissing and creaking hazardously, into neighboring Ontario.
The Kamigonians defending the region were quick to surrender at the first sight of the Brazens' mechanical spider division.
Whistling and clanking, a cloud of steam in their wake, the Brazen army continued southward in the hopes of outfoxing the lone division of Lusitanians to the south.
Unfortunately, the calamitous clanging racket of Herr Zwiebel's experimental army was carried for miles around, affording them no element of surprise whatsoever.
That combined with the observation of the defending commander that the Brazen tanks, when shot properly in the boiler, were prone to explode fantastically, doomed the operation to failure.
Brazen takes Ontario!
His investors' patience with stalled negotiations over alpaca farming rights in Argentina at an end, Chairman Pinchy gave the order for his force of armed, indentured wage-slaves to vertically integrate their southern neighbor with a free market exchange of bullets.
Vynnland takes Argentina!
Riding high atop the head combine, Grand Wurzel Sebzilla led his force of pitchfork wielding simple folk two divisions strong southward into Brazil.
The Vynnlandi defenders, unprepared for such an assault, quickly found their high-powered corporate legal team to be of little use, and were swiftly dispatched.
Greater Somerset takes Brazil!
Himself fed up with the towering pile of resolutions on his desk from the League of Nations regarding whom he should and should not be torturing, Most Peaceful Slaan massed his troops in the Congo and launched a most peaceful assault on South Africa.
Despite deploying a fierce flurry of surly letters indicating Slaan's invasion would make them 'very angry' and that if he didn't stop they would be left no choice but to 'ask him to stop again, sternly', League peacekeepers in the region were unable to hold their positions.
Moving to capitalize on his swift victory, Slaan then ordered an amphibious assault on the nearby territory of Madagascar.
Unbeknownst to him, however, the Wurzels had re-enforced their positions, and the assault was handily beaten back.
Kamigonia takes South Africa!
Hearing rumors of Grand Wurzel Sebzilla's raising of an armed mob in Venezuela, the League of Nations moved swiftly to initiating the months-long process of preparing a Joint Policy Statement Indicating a Combined Wish of a Plurality of Member Nations to Turn Back Aggression and Restore Peace and Due Process.
Peacekeepers were eventually deployed from Peru, just in time to be too late to stop anything.
This shifting of territory would be the third in what future historians will undoubtedly refer to as 'The Great South American Circle Jerk'.
League of Nations takes Venezuela!
Summary
Truly an indecisive round. In South America, Vynnland seized new territory only to lose the old to marauding Wurzels, who in turn lost their own territory to the League of Nations. Neither Brazen nor Kamigonia were successful in their bids to seize more than one country, and of all the nations only two experienced any net change in their total number of territories.
What lies in store for round 2? Stay tuned!
To be continued...