The Great Dictator

For the wargame, John's Fighting Ships, set in the 19th Century:

 

Gaius Nero (1829-1883) was the face of Perceptum's Second Revolution. His charisma and masterful skill as an orator made him, and his monobrow, famous across the world. Born into a poor family, he experienced firsthand the life of a commoner in the late Perceptan Empire. A perceptive and academic child, Nero developed a powerful hatred for the purple banners, ivory towers, groping priests and political corruption that characterized his country. It irked him to no end to read and hear the stories of the greatness of his nation whilst the majority of its people would never experience its riches for themselves. Bullied and ostracized at school for his academics and eccentricity, Nero would develop a powerful sense of indignation that would last for years, his sensitivity and injured pride would later harden into excessive paranoia. When he was ten, his father saved the life a businessman from a pair of thugs; the grateful aristocrat became Nero's patron, paying for his schooling where his excellence and charming nature booked him a place in the prestigious Imperial College of Nacivitas. There, studying as a lawyer, he became a political activist outspoken against the old regime. He was teased ruthlessly for his monobrow, political inclinations and relative poverty by the other scholars of the college, fueling his rage further. But what truly crafted him as an individual was his dedication to excellence- he graduated university with the highest distinctions accomplished by a Perceptan law student in eighty years. He regularly outperformed his peers despite their ridicule. The idea that he was a superior individual, that the jealous opinions of his tormentors were ultimately irrelevant in the face of his own accomplishments, would root a deep superiority complex within his psyche. He was a lion; everyone else was a sheep.

 

During his studies, his politics would be cemented; he dreamed of a nation where personal excellence, not cronyism and high birth, dictated policy. Where wealth would be shared equally, where people didn't have to put up with perverse priests or backwards politicians. And most of all, where men as brilliant as himself would rule, crafting a better world for all. Disillusioned by the false promises of monarchy and democracy alike, he became a member of the growing National Party and frequented the political meetings of a range of other parties to sample their ideas. His cunning, remarkable sense of charm and ability to speak sense in stirring orations that preyed on the psychology of his listeners allowed him to rise quickly through the ranks of the Party elite, gaining a cadre of followers and hangers-on. When the First Revolution broke out in early 1874, Nero became the figurehead of the National Party, now holding a minority in the Imperial Senate and maintaining stern criticism of the coalition government that was taking form to represent Perceptum as a constitutional monarchy. Although the government made several attempts to quell his protests, he succeeded in ramping up support for his cause among the downtrodden populace. He accused the government of basing its rule upon compromise rather than results, of not meeting the needs of the people or their expectations for a righteous society. He portrayed himself as a representation of the common man; downtrodden, bullied, ridiculed, ostracized and denied the opportunities available to those in power. He convinced that the Perceptan people, like himself, were victims of an unjust system that needed to be overthrown. His powerful voice and the red-hot anger of his words stirred the hearts of a people who, by this time, had had enough of the old way of life. The mass political rallies that he organized, the modernist, progressive identity he crafted for his party and multiple shows of force, usually with his private army of Blackshirts, fanned the flame of his insurrection.

 

In late 1874, to the horror of the world, Nero staged a coup. Exactly how he accomplished the overthrow of the Imperial government, gained support in the armed forces and defeated the garrison of the capital, Nacivitas, remains a matter of debate to this day. Nero wasted no time in declaring himself the Empire's Supreme Leader, creating a regime more autocratic and totalitarian than anything the world had seen before. He completely rewrote the constitution to do away with the old system forever, styling his new code of law off advances made in Columbia and Vinland yet rigging it with fascist clauses that would ensure his complete control. Hand in hand with the reforms, came the Terror. Blackshirts roamed the streets, tearing down old statues and torching anything that symbolized the old regime. Nero's government outlawed all religion, sanctioning the arson of the Citadel of Saint Julius and countless other churches. He confiscated huge tracts of land formerly owned by the aristocracy, reformed the armed forces and began the forced modernization of the economy. But worst of all were the purges. Thousands of people; aristocrats, business owners, old military men, priests and all kinds of political individuals were lined up before a massive group of guillotines erected in the old parade ground. But in the eyes of his people, he was a Saint. He maintained a powerful cult of personality the likes of which the world had never seen before. Nero would increasingly think of himself as godly; he had a grand vision of the future of the world, and he would not permit anyone to stop him from realizing it.

 

But the more Nero got done, the more shrill, proud, stubborn and foolhardy he became. He believed he was incorruptible, insurmountable, unrivaled; a living god. He could never be wrong. He could never lose. This was not a healthy mindset, and would spell disaster for Perceptum during the Eight Years War. For while the Imperial homeland had been wracked by Revolution, many of its colonies had been pushing for independence, hosting little revolutions of their own. Some of the Empire's primary rivals, like the Order of Achatius, had been funding and supporting these movements and even minor countries like the Kingdom of Kahili had begun encroaching on the Empire's turf whilst the central government had been preoccupied. Having declared hostilities on multiple countries he perceived as threats, Nero insisted upon directing the war effort himself, and began to draft plans for a post-war world where his Empire held complete supremacy. Nero was not a military man, and neither were most of his staff. Even though Perceptum's military was truly vast, almost as big as those of all its enemies combined, it had been handicapped by Nero's purges. Most of the intellectuals and officers of the old Imperial Navy had been axed (literally), forced into exile or demoted. The loyal men Nero installed in their place had more spirit then sense, and were often downright idiotic. To make it worse, Nero had a horrible method of dealing with opposition and failure. In the past he would shout down, discredit and punish those who opposed them, taking credit for the actions of his subordinates and readily scapegoating them when things went wrong. This trait translated badly into military matters: He would ignore the reports of his spies if the information they provided displeased him but would be quick to blame them for failing in their duty whenever things didn't go according to plan. He would demote or execute officers he felt threatened by, dismiss strategies that didn't conform to his own purely academic understanding of combat doctrine and passed maniacal commands like forbidding retreat that would get thousands of men killed. He, and many others, thought Perceptum was invincible. The newly christened National Armada was, on paper, nearly twice as powerful and far larger than the combined navies of the Order and its Allies. The fact that the majority of its ships were undermanned, badly supplied, outdated and/or poorly captained was not taken into account. Perceptum was not ready for war, much less the global conflicts of the Eight Years War, and Nero's leadership only made the outcome inevitable.

 

The turning point of his idiocy, and the war at large, was the Battle of Sanct Alban's Bay. The events of that foolish battle- when he led his Armada into an obvious Allied trap, would change him. Having witnessed his fleet being butchered, hearing the cries of dismembered men, watching the detonation of his flagship (after he abandoned it) and seeing the body-counting of the aftermath shook him to his core. Nero would return home a broken man; it was said that he hardly uttered a word from Sanct Alban's Bay to the end of the war. The news of the Armada's defeat was met with shock and disbelief. Public morale became suicidal; Perceptum had owned the greatest navy the world had ever seen, and now it nearly ceased to exist. Without his grand speeches and mass rallies, Nero's place in the public eye disintegrated. The great dictator spent his remaining years in power skulking around his palace while the military picked up the slack, trying in vain to prevent the complete destruction of the Empire. Nero would not even name a new leader for the military to follow, resulting in debilitating infighting amongst the Armada, eventually crafting an awkward command structure that hobbled their efforts. Neither would he contribute to further planning or sue for peace, leaving his government at a loss for what to do. In fact, the most he did was call for food and copious amounts of alcohol. Having heard nothing from the Supreme Leader for nearly two years, the military elite declared him deposed. This was the Third Revolution; the government disintegrated without a fight, and the people welcomed the prospect of peace after what seemed like a lifetime of war. When the Revolution came for him, Nero was drinking himself to death in his study. The sight of the broken man in a puddle of wine, who didn't so much as whimper on the way to the guillotine, was a sobering experience for all involved. In the end, Nero's was the last head of thousands to roll from under the blade. The great tyrant was finally dead, reduced to a blight on the pages of history, but his ruinous legacy would haunt the psychology of the nation forever.

 

The Perceptan Empire was dismantled in the peace that followed. Almost all of Perceptum's colonies either declared independence or were taken from it by the victorious allies, resetting the world's balance of power and ending an era defined by Imperial hegemony. The Empire, that had once covered half the global, was replaced by the Grand Republic. Its new government of generals, clergy and businessmen who had survived the Terror would spend the next fifty years trying repair what Nero had done.

 

But some scars are too deep heal.

 

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Sorry for the word wall, but Nero is a critical figure in JFS lore. I based his bio on aspects of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Maximilien Robespierre while naming him after one of Rome's maddest emperors.

 

I think I did good. I'm just kinda annoyed that I can't figure out my POVray settings enough to avoid those stupid reflections and glares.

 

Done