Don't worry, someone has already done this for you. Ettin is great.

http://challengerating25.blogspot.fi/2011/03/stealing-from-real-life-is-just-better.html

The danger of an Orwellian nightmare was not the cameras or the secret police. The true danger was the fact that a part of the citizenry honestly believed that it was the right thing to do.

A Secret policeman is one thing, but your neighbor's five year old child is one of them too.

>>31411948
>King who enforces an idea of godlike reverence of himself
>Laws that are restrictive
>Always talking tough to other countries

Aaaand done.

Vampiric thrall state - vampires run the goddamn country, they're diseased as fuck, not thinking straight and keep the populous just under their control via nightly orgies of feasting in select areas by themselves are their brutish personal guard. They make it look they're dealing with the vampire menace via public executions of infected peasantry. Since most, if not all of the population are made vampires by the vampire rulers, they have a dominance in them.

One vampire ruler, bleeds into the water supplies (maybe not all of them, though, your call), everyone who drinks the water is this one vampire's thrall. Same method of showing control as above: public executions of infected individuals.

Best part is all of this is domination, not mind control. The thralls have their own personalities, but their wills are weak, and the head vampire(s) can read their thoughts.

>>31411948
Have a small, isolated kingdom situated in mountain passes, like Switzerland or Afghanistan run into the ground by an overpresent and highly powerful lich God-king who employs an army of servants to keep watch on the unsuspecting populace.

Meanwhile there should be a heavily stratified society with the elite actively supporting the regime. To do this, they need to be closely tied with the dictator; maybe by being heavily brainwashed or something?

>>31411948

uhh.... basically just North Korea? How it is? It's tech is so shitty that you could easily replace any modern thing there with malfunctioning magic. And it's governmental structure is basically feudalism in it's most Absolutist phases. The peasant folk devote everything to a small noble elite who "repay" the peasants by maintaining the army against the nations enemies.

Basically, just give an industrialized nation with enough enemies a very undemocratic power structure and there you go.

>>31412068
>>31412096

Lets combine these two ideas.

A highly powerful undead leader at the top with the control and utter domination of an elite horde of vampires that in turn dominates most of the populace. The state is located in a far off mountain pass where logistics are difficult and it would be hard to both invade (dissuading any would be heroes/horde from just going in there and deposing the regime) or travel, making it easier to keep track of who or what goes in and out.

>>31412175

This is painting anything inspired by North Korea as a legible threat. This is hardly acceptable.

>>31412203
Well, this *is* fantasy for a reason.

Although I suppose we could just give this kingdom a powerful backer like the modern day PRC or the former Soviet Union.

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>>31411948
make sure they have some kind of bullshit ideology like socialism/communism that makes the people believe their slavery is in their best interest

>>31412175
Seeing as the local powers have very very good knowledge about what's going in and out, they can set up the following in advance:

The only stories coming out of there are the stories of rampant vampirism. Any do-gooder paladin type who hates the undead gets super butthurt when learning of these rare tales in isolated inns, told by some freaked out trader. Paladin-man decides to serve justice, goes to this remote town and the entire place is against him, secretly. Go 'Shadow Over Innsmouth' style. With an outsider in town, they put up an inn, a place to eat, locals wander around, but everything and everyone is being watched. It's all facade to draw him in and kill him, make sure no one's looking for him, either.

>>31412003

This.

>>31412021

Not this.

The clue is in the name: Totalitarianism. The State is everything. If you're going for the immortal/undead ruler idea, you could borrow Louis the 14th's line effectively: "I am the state".

Anything that is not expressly permitted by the state is forbidden. Any relationship that the state does not control or sanction, any center of power that does not serve the state is to be co-opted or destroyed.

Start thinking in those terms: Inns? You need travel papers to stay there, they compile reports on travelers and send them to the secret police. If they don't they know they'll have their doors kicked in at three AM and dragged off to god knows what.

Guilds? Guilds maintain the rolls of people licensed to work in each job and report same to the state.

Also, start thinking in terms of how much power this gives the people running the show and how wide the scope is for abuse. Every petty official you meet can potentially have you dragged off to die.

If you've ever read the Gulag Archepelago, there's a scene where someone at a meeting calls for applause for their absent leader (Stalin), and he gets a standing ovation. But no-one wants to be seen to be the first one to stop clapping. So it just drags on and on and on...

Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down.

...

That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:

“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.”

>>31412311
>Quoting a Chicago Boy
>The most hypocritical quote a Chicago boy could come up with
top lel

>>31412334
Hmm... this state will need a well developed bureaucracy...

Oh, one more idea to throw out:

The remote mountain state is controlled absolutely the regions very ancient tribal gods who, in a fit of desperate nationalistic fervour, have claimed the region as theirs and their peoples. What little power they have goes into making this place as idyllic as their eyes see fit, as it should be, not how the modern people necessarily want it. You can have roundings up and mass killings of mixed-blood natives, outsider families, whatever, it just has to relate to those who are native to the region, to the people of the ancient gods.

What they see as ideal could be anything - maybe it was a society of honourable, warrior glory-whores - the mountain gods send hordes of monsters for the population to defeat. Maybe they desire austerity and puritanism. They they desire human sacrifice or anarchy, maybe it's a Call of Cthulhu job, the gods will come down and make us like them and it's terrifying.

>>31412274

I like this idea, not enough fantasy has solid politics.

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>>31412311
a religion would work also. turnt he leader into a god-king / god-emperor

>>31412334

Yeah, old school Feudal Absolutism is actually a great place to look for ideas for a latter style totalitarian regime. Just imagine what a total Absolutist Divine Right Monarch would do with a full bureaucracy in place and the technology that would allow him and his elite to control everything.

>>31412518
Why not both? Look at Stalin and the Korean Kims. It's very easy for communism to turn into basic deification of a man. If this is an undead run kingdom, it's even easier - he's so infallible he can't even die and has all the time in the world to consolidate the cult of personality. The only thing that stopped Stalin, after all, was his own death.

>>31412573
Lich Stalin sounds like an amazing idea.

Which reminds me, this state needs gulags and reeducation camps outfitted with mages trained to torture, mind control and break people into loyal citizens.

>>31412424

Yeap. That's part of what makes such systems work (at least for a while) the functions of government are so huge, employ so many people, and typically is the only possible place of employment for anyone with any education or drive, that rebellions are very hard to get going.

"Overthrow the tyrant? The tyrant signs my paycheques"

That might be another good thing. Coins made of precious metals are outlawed. (Happened in the Soviet Union as well foreign currency was illegal). Some system of magically certifying cheques is required for all purchases (officially, there'd be a huge underground economy) so as to ensure that money is controlled; and if they want to, they can just send a message down to the bank and lock your account. Essentially making you a criminal or starving you to death.

This could also be a clue as to why the kingdom survives, to maintain this kind of bureaucracy, they need a lot of magic items and equipment. So they train a lot of mages. Which means when they go to war they have a fuckton of magical support, in addition to the usual overgrown military apparatus such kingdoms always sprout.

>>31412624

Exactly. Lich-Stalin, as we can refer to him here, started off as part of a revolution removing a previous system - this gives the emergence of a "stock enemy" that can be recalled again, even after it's demise. This also plays a vital part in the communist dictator emergence story - him as a Hero. In this case, Stalin-Lich could weave a story about him conquering any sort of foe, ideological or national - Monarchists, Humans of another nation or Orcs or Elves or Dorfs.

From this point of him as a Hero, all it takes is careful removal of all other potential threats - very easy if he is a Lich. Then he can develop a cult of personality - you know, Lich Stalin with some adorable little living girls sitting on his lap or something. He is now a Great Leader as well as a Hero - if he keeps the fear stoked with demonization of an outside force, his immortal lifespan would let him rule forever unless there is a severe shaking up of the system.

>>31412671
Don't forget about the mountain passes making logistics a bitch (hell, lets add swamps there too for extra benefit. Also fits in with the vampire and undead theme) and a strong backer that doesn't want this state to fall for whatever reason.

>>31412724
Making a Lich lovable to the population might be hard. It would have to be a big cultural thing - the living population has a large culture of ancestor veneration - think Egypt, or Day of the Dead gone to a ridiculous extreme.

Actually, he could use his age to play up on this - sort of like the whole "Good ol' Uncle Stalin" thing. Set himself up with a public face as a wise, grandfatherly, paternalistic figure.

>>31412737
>>31412321

I see one potential problem with this, one that also plagued the Soviets in their later years: Food security.

A small hermit kingdom in the mountains and swamps will have a tough time growing foods, especially if they are as closed of as North Korea. This is going to be a problem for the bloated vampire elite, mages and military forces, who need to feed and train all those troops.

>>31412811
Ah, but the major concern of the otherwise diseased and nutty vampire elite is to make sure that they have cattle to feed off of, so that means they gotta be alive and strong enough to make babies. Maybe a little necromancy is involved in the agriculture, they're grinding up the dead to make evil fertilizer.

Hell, maybe all the peasantry DO is farm, day in day out, forever. It's an enforced idea that farming here is hard, damn it, so farm more and more and more, but the vampires are making sure they're actually getting a useful harvest.

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>>31411948
Testing file size difference.

>>31412724

"But he's a Lich, they're pure evil, like literally pure evil"

"I wouldn't expect an outsider to understand; our dear leader wanted nothing more than to rest in the soil of our beloved motherland, having seen his dream of a prosperous kingdom made reality. But we are beset by enemies on all sides, as we cannot rest, he refuses all rest, even that last sleep of death. It was not by choice he became a lich, it was by necessity, out of obligation to his kingdom"

Of course that's what they'd say if someone else is in the room or they didn't trust you. If they're modeled on Russians, they'd probably tell you a dark joke about what he did to become a lich.

Some Stain era jokes:

Stalin reads his report to the Party Congress. Suddenly someone sneezes. "Who sneezed?" Silence. "First row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot, and he asks again, "Who sneezed, Comrades?" No answer. "Second row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot too. "Well, who sneezed?" At last a sobbing cry resounds in the Congress Hall, "It was me! Me!" Stalin says, "Bless you, Comrade!"


Apparently Stalin liked to tell this one about himself:

A Georgian delegation comes to meet Stalin they come, they talk to Stalin, and then they go, heading off down the Kremlin's corridors. Stalin starts looking for his pipe. He can't find it. He calls in Beria.

"Go after the delegation, and find out which one took my pipe," he says.
Beria scuttles off down the corridor.
Five minutes later Stalin finds his pipe under a pile of papers. He calls Beria:
"Look, I've found my pipe."
"It's too late," Beria says, "half the delegation admitted they took your pipe, and the other half died during questioning."

>>31412880

It's not unheard of for a communist system to attempt to de-emphasize the industrial aspects. The best example of this would be Cambodia under Pol Pot, where people were forced back into agrarianism whether they wanted to go or not.

>>31412888
wow, 1/5 the size. amazing. webm is like..... sliced bread but for porn

>>31412888
lol it made my chrome crash

>>31412785
>Making a Lich lovable to the population might be hard. It would have to be a big cultural thing - the living population has a large culture of ancestor veneration - think Egypt, or Day of the Dead gone to a ridiculous extreme

The guy is a lich. A lich. He can easily make a spell that keeps him right around 60 or so and not have his skin fall off. Hell, he probably powerful enough to have a beauty team figure out the spells for him.

I think the issue here is we need to decide if this Lich is terrifying Stalin levels of power, or crazy but dangerous but mostly sad levels of Kim power.

Plus, as evil as Stalin was, he was clearly more intelligent than all the Kim's put together. Personally I find Kim-Lich that much more hilarious in what he would try to do.

>>31412811
What if thats how their backer controls them, via food imports?

The threat of starvation is one the few leverages they have against Lich Stalin, who, the pragmatist that he is, begrudgingly complies with.

>>31412962
>using chrome
do you enjoy google having a direct pipeline for harvesting your information? how the fuck did you find 4chan if you arent savvy enough to use firefox?

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>>31411948
Aztec Necromancers
>Group of Necromancers get together and start a cult
>There's an all consuming God that demands sacrifices to turn its gaze away from the mortal world
>They start by demanding villages give them a share of their crop to appease the God.
>Villages which refuse are struck by plagues or the undead
>They start to demand more and more as time goes by
>Soon, everyone lives in complete terror of the consequences of breaking religious taboo
>They march to war to capture prisoners to sacrifice.

>>31412334
One might look up the idea of Sacral government, that being the mode of society present in ancient Summeria and The Old Kingdom of Egypt. Beyond the leader simply being a god with absolute authority, every aspect of daily life, particularly social hierarchy and the allotment of farming land, was imbued with a sense of sacredness. Barring some isolated coups, which were driven by court intrigue rather than popular revolution, the state was an immutable entity which no-one would even think to question.

>>31412811
There are ways to increase agricultural efficiency, via terrace farming, crop rotation, heavy plow, etc.

Its not a perfect system, but if we're dealing with someone as pragmatic and forward thinking as Stalin, he'd do anything he can to reduce his dependency on another power.

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>>31411948
By high fantasy, do you mean "wizards and knight on a horse" or do you mean "setting based on the past with some form of magic"? If the latter and depending on what system you are using, you could have your state use D&D psionics as a means of maintaining control.

You have telepaths as thought police that can arrest you based on intent. You will be dragged out of your bed in the middle of the night because the state seers predicted that you would become a revolutionary in a few years, even though the thought never crossed your mind. Children and teens are culled since they have the potential to be wilders, and any psionics not sanctified by that state is illegal.

For the human elite, they are transformed into elan so that they are immortal and even more separated from the peasants since they are not bound by food and drink. The resistance cells employ a lot of anti-psionic feats and psibane weapons.

Riedra in Eberron is basically psychic North Korea but successful if you want to look at that to get an idea. There is also Praetoria from City of Heroes, with thought police and tampering with the water supply.

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>>31412983
Kim-Lich would need some sort of geographical barrier to help him out, or a bigger nation as his safety guarantor that just wants him as a buffer state, just like with China, though that's more of a case of just having a friend and preventing a unified Korea.

Maybe Kim-Lich is a disciple of Stalin Lich, except his nation isn't as successful as mentors

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>>31412671
>>31412334
If we combine these Lich controlled nations with these ideas on beuaracracy, I can see a way to ensure total loyalty to the Dear Leader forever. Naturally, you'd want the undead to be the beuraucrats. You can pick and choose the loyal ones, and they'll be with you, steadfast till their bones are dust. But Venerable Uncle Joe can make that even more personal. Venerable Uncle Joe can have your dead dead family members are part of the beuaracracy in your village.

Your dead grandmother keeps an eye on you to make sure you don't start spreading subversive ideas at home. Your cousin that died at the factory is your manager at the communal farm. Your undead great-grandfather will discipline you if he catches you smuggling goods across the provincial border. But as Venerable Grand-father beats you with a wooden rod, he tells you how very proud he was when you passed the academy exams at the top of your class, and how disappointed he is to see you being a subversive. Then he will tell you that he still loves you very much, and that is why he is sending you off to re-education camp, to talk to Venerable Ancestor. And Venerable Ancestor will teach you to love Venerable Uncle Joe again, like you did when you passed the exams

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>>31411948
Monsters, OP.

You need lots and lots of monsters.

Imagine you're just some peasant in a fantasy kingdom. There are dire wolves, witches, trolls, orcs, ogres, wraiths, and all other manner of horrifying monsters just outside the safety of your pathetic little village. You're a dead man the second you walk off into the woods.

The only thing keeping you safe is a king and whatever gaggle of murder hobos he decides to hire. Your wife was killed by goblins. Your neighbor was carried off by cultists. The next village over was taken over by a vampire. You're too terrified to even think about tomorrow.

One thing to think about is how, despite being at peace, kind of a requirement since every vaguely good country would want a piece of it were it at war, it's going to be operating in a constant state of war economy.

Firstly, due to the country's own natural defenses, strict border controls and unpleasantness to visit it's not getting any trade. So it's going to have to rely on whatever it can produce which means rationing. This also helps cement the states control, just look at what an 'increase' in the chocolate ration does for morale in 1984.

Secondly, even though they aren't sending anyone out to fight they're still going to be sending dissidents to gulags and their deaths in their thousands every year. In North Korea it's estimated that 200,000 people are being held in gulags, nearly one in one thousand. Meaning everyone will know someone who has disappeared one night. This rate of population turnover is also going to have an impact on the way people see relationships, similar to how people saw each other during something like the First World War.

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>>31413512
And in four decades, you will tell your granddaughter how proud you were when she passed the exams at the top of her class, and how disappointed you are to see her being a subversive. Then you will tell her you love her very much, and that is why you are sending her off to re-education camp, to talk to Venerable Ancestor. And Venerable Ancestor will teach her to love Venerable Uncle Joe again, like when she passed the exams

And in seven decades, your granddaughter will tell your descendant how proud him she was when he passed the exams at the top of his class, and how disappointed she is to see him being a subversive. Then she will tell hem she loves him very much, and that is why she are sending hem off to re-education camp, to talk to You. And You will teach him to love Venerable Uncle Joe again, like when he passed the exams

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>>31413512
Glorious.

Bump.

Is it bad taht this has inspired me to start building a campaign around an evil immortal godking in nWoD who has as parts of his beaurocracy the Seers of the Throne from Mage the awakening, the Lemurians from Genius the Transgression, and maybe one or two factors from Vampire the Requiem to fill out the more savvy bits. Back before the plans of the Exarchs and the World-story of the Lemurians got derailed, just before the industrial revolution, at the end of the renaissance and the beginning of something like the conservative victorian era. Knowing my players, they'll rip the world apart, and I'd enjoy watching them do it.

Apologies for sucrrying slightly off-topic, but it just seemed like a fun thing to put out there.


P.S. If you are a nWoD player and you don't know Genius the Transgression, shame on you.
https://sites.google.com/site/moochava/genius

>>31413531
All good points.

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>>31413568
>>31413512
Oh my.

>>31414759
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgHNtzxO0y8

>>31412203
It could have been built over some incredibly powerful magic macgruffen perhaps?

>>31413512
>>31413568

This is great; it combines the personal small town authoritarianism of a feudal village with the massive evil totalitarianism of an industrial state.

It also helps with the food issue, undead don't need to eat, so you only have to feed the living population. It also sort of re-enforces the "Nothing is yours, not even your mind or your body" level of totalitarianism.

"There are no lawful graves in the kingdom; there are no lawful graveyards. The dead are embalmed, preserved, and interred in The Vaults. To fail to declare a death or to bury a relative with the old rituals or old blessings is a severe crime. Destroying the property of the state."

The vaults are basically giant warehouses filled with mindless embalmed undead. Something like a mummy (maybe they have huge drying kilns to dry the flesh if the climate won't work, or bury them in anerobic peat bogs, and take them out before the acid weakens the skeleton too much.) Usually near the border, in the event of a war they crack open the vaults and just aim wave after wave of undead at the enemy. Just to wear 'em down a bit before the actual soldiers arrive.

>>31416294
Also, they work the fields and run in treadmills to power the mills and looms.

Necro-industry.

>>31416294

I imagine these "dead warehouses" are treated by neighbouring countries similar to North Korea's missiles and armaments.

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>>31416294
There are probably tiers of undead too

>The Honored Dead: Rank and filed undead. Have little authority, work in the factories and mines, and make up the rank and file of the army
>The Venerable Dead: Those loyal and smart enough to useful in local administrative roles, army service, research and particularly dangerous labor for the living
>The Most Hallowed Dead: High level undead, like regional Directors, officers, and the upper portions of the Beuraucracy, along with Uncle Joes Personal Friends

The most honorable and prestigious a living person could get under such a system would be having a place in espionage. The dead can't really infiltrate the Sacreligious Nations, so only the most trusted of the living could be allowed to leave the State. And this might be of even greater importance to the people of the State, since anyone of any age that is still living might be seen as a child by the undead, not yet ready for full responsibilities till they pass on.

>>31416511
"In the Accord of 1253, the State and the High Kingdom of Syzril agreed to remove all armed forces from a twenty mile area long their shared border. The State emptied its Grand Crypts along the Syzril border, and relocated them to Metro-Area 8. Syzril inspectors have long insisted that the State did not fully comply with the Accord, stating that "hidden graves" were scattered all across the border in groups of twenty or less. However, Syzril has not yet been able to substantiate these claims, so the Accord still holds to this day"

>>31416511

That was pretty much the idea. They're the equivalent of the ICBM forces of the Soviet Union, or the thousands of artillery pieces that the North Koreans have trained on Seoul. The "Fuck you" button, for if a war goes badly.

>>31416657

I kind of feel like the lower levels of undead should be mindless and wear out pretty quickly. The Vaults are a kind of strategic reserve, and they keep a lot longer in there. The venerable ones hang on quite a while since they're likely to have the spirit of the human they were before they died still animating them, and the most hallowed can basically only be destroyed by massive application of magical and physical violence.

The problem is that if all the dead stick around forever, the dead will eventually be almost equal in numbers to the living. It looses some of its totalitarian vibe then, particularly if they're the ones doing most of the actual work.

"Tyranny you say? How can you tyrannize one who cannot feel pain?"

I always thought Yang had some good ideas, honestly.

>>31413313
North Korea tried all of that as well. The problem is that very little of North Korea is suitable for large-scale farming to begin with and the heavy plowing and terraced farming made the fields vulnerable to landslides. Plus the main benefits the USSR gave North Korea were advanced chemicals and military security. The latter is the real nitty-gritty of the nation and its benefactor. Fantasy Korea is a buffer state designed to blunt any military advance into the benefactor nation. In return Fantasy Korea get supplied and reinforced.

>>31416811
The government lies. They don't animate EVERYONE, it'd be too expensive and difficult to maintain, and skeletons wear out under hard labor. So everyone THINKS their dead are going off to the glorious proletariat work camps or the next villiage over, when they're actually ground into bonemeal.

Maybe the "face" undead have to be...rotated, or retired after a few centuries. granny revenant might still have echoes of human empathy. Great granny revenant can still fake it. But great-great-great granny views everyone around her (it) as disturbingly-warm chattering goo-bags. Which is a fine attitude for a bureaucrat, but eventually they're going to have to be...retired for a fresher corpse.

I'd liken sentient undead to fantasy full-body-cyborgs. They live forever, but their psyches eventually become unidentifiable as human. Fuck, they're probably less well-adjusted than actual AIs.

>>31413531
If we're running a full undead bureaucracy then there is no need for re-education camps or gulags. You simply killed the dissidents and reanimate them as mindless undead.

I once had an idea for a "necropunk" city where horse breeders only let horses live long enough to be slaughtered and skeleton-ized, the average pleb is worth more dead than alive, the military uses powered-mech-suits made out of ogre corpses, and the "vampire subculture" is a huge societal blight. Not totalitarian, but related to this thread. The Lich-stalin angle is way, WAY better than my idea.

>>31416811

Well, what's rate of attrition due to execution for sedition? Are the undead immune to that as well?

>>31417094
You can't just kill everyone, though. Eventually you run out of people. You need the re-education camps to give people "a fate that's arguably worse than death." If you just fucking kill people, you breed resentment and resistance. If you drag them off to a hellhole for 10 years and then release them later as an empty-eyed husk, that gives the dissenters pause.

The problem with "death penalty for everything" is that it turns mind dissenters into rebels. "in for a penny, in for a pound."

>>31417045

Or they do animate everyone, it's just that most of them are entirely mindless, get worked until they collapse and then get ground to fertilizer. Either way they keep the numbers down.

And undead that have reached the "disturbingly-warm chattering goo-bags" could be where they get the security forces from. Granny gets bolted into a suit of serviceably menacing black armor, is given a skeletal horse, and moves from "supervision and chastisement" to "Smashing down doors in the dead of night and dragging screaming goo-bags away to prison".

Basically undead Oprichniki (you could probably work something in with pole-arms in place of the brooms and severed, magically animated dogs heads if you wanted to make it really literal) or Dragoons who are the sharp edge of the security force.

They'd also make up the backbone of the "real" army. The ones who go in after the conscript undead have done their work.

>>31417037
So is Fantasy Korea's benefactor state another undead state or another sort of totalitarianism?

>>31417227
You're not killing people faster than you can produce them. Hell, you could keep them around long enough for them to procreate, and maybe even incentivize it to the inmates, then kill them after a baby has been produced. Killing dissidents and turning them to mindless undead immediately works just as well as waiting ten years to spit them out as broken shells.

"Either you think correctly or you do not think at all."

>>31417185
Depends on what kind of undead we're talking about. There's so many kinds.

There's "ensouled" undead like liches and some versions of vampires (maybe ghouls). These undead are literally the same person they used to be, just dead. They retain their memories and personalities, but steadily loose their humanity as time goes on.

There's intelligent undead like Mohrgs, Wights, and maybe ghouls, which don't have the original person's soul. They're animated by a dark spirit of negative energy, but since they're living in the dead guy's body and using the dead guy's brain, they think they're the same person. maybe these types of undead don't have "free will." Their undead brains are soul-less rotten bio-computers (since this is a fantasy setting where souls exist, sentient creatures with no soul actually are monstrous unfeeling robots).

>>31417300
It doesn't really matter. It doesn't even have to be totalitarian. All that matters is for one state to see a good reason to support or subsidize Fantasy Undead Korea.

>>31417185

Once things are up and running, attrition among the living it should be fairly low. As for the undead, the bulk of the undead aren't going to have enough of a mind to understand the concept. The intelligent ones are going to have been so loyal and dutiful that they get chosen to be made undead, and are going to be in a position of authority. So not many; there will always be some executed in internal purges or power struggles but ones who are actually working against the state should be pretty rare.

>>31417360
Arguably the greatest internal threat would be personal ambitions of those who raise the mindless undead as they're in a prime position to undermine the authority of the government by working hidden controls into the reanimation process.

>>31417315
Things are getting a bit "logans run" then. Its generally not a good idea to try to excise basic human stuff from your population; if you take away the incentive to make families have loved ones or whatever, then who do you torture to gain their compliance?

If we're going to talk about what'd make sense, then it would make sense to not be such assholes, or to just kill everyone and use cow skeletons for heavy lifting, and kidnap people from other countries when.you need sentient undead.

I think the answer might be that Lich-Stalin would rather rule over living people than dead ones. Puppets that obediently serve your every whim are boring.

>>31417456
I think you're misinterpreting my post. They're not disincentivizing birth, marriage, or whatnot. I'm just saying that it's far simpler to kill dissidents and turn them to mindless undead than running a system of gulags and re-education camps, which weren't really designed to have many survive their sentences. If for whatever reason you want to keep them around, then give the prisoners incentives to have children so that you can offset the absence of the prisoners from productive society and maybe even set up a government institution to turn children of dissidents into obedient populace.

>>31417413

That'd organization would probably be like the old KGB/NKVD, total fucking paranoia all the time, and usually turning on themselves. Deliberately cultivated so that anyone who thinks about subtle controls also thinks about everyone he knows selling him out and being tortured for as long as they can keep his body and spirit together.

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>>31417568
I was thinking Lich-Stalin would want to keep as many breeding age people alive as possible to expand the population as rapidly as possible. Vast population means lots of people dying means lots of undead soldiers to spread the Revolution of Undeath. Sort of like an evil version of that pic people keep posting that's about the necromancer that set up strong, stable democracies powered by undead laborers

For example

"Now dear, there's no need for us to kill the subversives! Why, they just need to speak with their venerable ancestor at a re-education camp. It's not that they don't want to love Uncle Joe, they just forgot why they should love him.

Remember dear, we want to kill family. We just need to remind them why we all love Uncle Joe. Then they can go back to their village, and raise their own family. Maybe someday a subversive we save might become a venerable ancestor! Wouldn't that be nice?"

>>31417300
OP here, I wouldn't think so. Just a large, important state doing questionable things to keep its buffer. Hell, the other state might not even know what truly goes on in fantasy Korea.

>>31417848

Problem is, overpopulation would be a big problem in such a mountainous and constricted country due to that food issue

>>31418214
We're talking about a mountainous country? Well, that changes things I suppose. Fortifications "grave traps" and lots of ambush sites would probably take up most of the borders of UndeadKorea, with plenty more spread across the interior

And if Lich-Stalin is having problems with population, he can just have a "Veneration Lottery" and I think we all know what I mean by that

Cause I mean he'd kill thousands of useless individuals and put their corpses in unmarked graves along his border with a nation he has rocky relations with so he can respond rapidly to an invasion by that nation with surprise zombies

>>31416511
Question: why not just set the undead to dig themselves deeper, then turn and dig tunnels to underneath other nations where they could surface and attack at an order?

Different angle: Uncle Joe is alive and well, and genuinely is a former monster hunting hero. That was a century ago. He beat the big bad vampire, and freed the people. Then the Necromancers Guild told him that vampire blood in sufficient quantity is exactly what they needed to complete their youth potion. So instead of finishing off the vampire, he's now chained up in a dungeon, being bled out.

That was a century ago, and Uncle Joe shows no signs of leaving the throne. His descendants are divided into many generations, he has children, grandchildren, great grand-children, and great great grand-children under the age of fifteen. His descendants between fifteen and thirty are fighters and adventurers, which means murderhobos in this country. Older than that, and they are given land or a job somewhere, and become tinpot dictators or tax collectors for a while. As they get older still, they compete viciously for the few larger titles and offices. Those with less than 1/16 Uncle Joe in them aren't considered part of the family.

>>31419535

The North Koreans are rumored to have had the same idea.

>>31413350
>that image
A flood of City of Heroes memories came rushing back. Curse you anon, it still hurts.

>>31418666
That's assuming he doesn't kidnap members of other countries for use in the fields to enhance the workforce. After embalming who's to say they aren't from another province?

>>31419595
Not enough undead in there. But I like the explanation for murderhobos


OP, are you still here? How much of what we we've come up with do you like?

>>31418666

I'd argue that it should be a mountainous country that has a part that descends down to swamps, wetlands and then the ocean, if only because oceans mean infiltration and I want to see ships crewed by the undead.

>>31419535

Well, because of the politics. It's why North Korea just pushes the limits but doesn't dare do anything serious. Yet.

>>31420957
Everything is glorious. Although I am trying to figure out a way to tie into that original vampire thrall idea into the setting.

>>31427432
Vampires could be the upper level of the State government, while small-town and low level things are handled by thralls and undead family members. Capable thralls become Venerable dead after they pass on, allowing them to serve Uncle Joe forever. And the thralls that excel in espionage, or at least return, become new vampires to replace any losses

And then there's Grand Crypts and unmarked graves that hold hundreds of thousands of corpses along the border

>>31427432
>>31427645
Why not have the vampires as leaders and controllers : major, more powerful, "purest" vampires as state leaders, and minor vampires as political commissars with extended powers in localities. The bureaucracy and day-to-day management is being done by the boring, unimaginative, thralls with no empathy nor ambition, make sure the peasants toil the earth and breed like rabbits so there is enough new blood to keep the system running.

The vampire compete between themselves to go from commissar to proper nobility, and nobility fight among themselves for power. The losers are either killed or pushed back to become backwaterville (read : anywhere but the capital) commissars.

>>31427925
Also, the reason those commissars are effective is because the vampires are prone to recompense snitches by small favours, like having you moved out from your shitfarm to a better shitfarm, some medicines, or a fifth bed so your 8 daughters aren't forced to sleep on the floor.

The reason why the soviet regimes didn't crumble faster was because everyone could have access to higher education, provided you wasn't dumb as a brick and your parents were loyal. So ultimately people had hope for their kids and stayed in line.

>>31428078
Maybe make necromancy universities, where gifted kids go there to become the next generation of necromancer thralls running the administration.

>>31428142
>>31428078
>>31427925
"Uncle Joe says: In the State, all children have a future! No more do kings and nobles push the noble farmers son into the dirt! Now even the poorest child can become a Venerable Commissar!"

"Parents that send their children to the Academy receive more compensation than parents who do not. Regeister at you local academy today!"

You could even use the school system to keep everyone registered and tracked, which is a big thing in a fantasy setting. The High Kingdom of Syzrils government may not even know of Johnny Dirtpoor as a citizen, but the State does! And Johnny Dirtpoors kids can go to school, and become Venerable Commissars, Farm Directors, State Researchers or even join Uncle Joes Family!

>>31428382
That's brilliant propaganda, but you should use "People" more.

You have technical schools, where kids get a quick education on how to be a good shitfarmer/woodworker/miner and how Uncle Joe is great. There is schools like this in small villages too. This is also used to keep track of the most gifted.

The latter get send to the People's University in the capital, where learn how to become necromancers under the watchful eye of the Undead KGB (who also recruits the best and most loyal of them, turn them into vampires commissars). The rest become the nomenklatura of the nation, some of them going back to their villages to become the new mayors, some being necroengineers, specialising in undead workforce, some being generals, specialising in armed undead. Even becoming thralls don't cut all their ambitions, and thus they are permanently under the watch of their immortal and bloodthirsty secret police.

>>31420957

I was thinking the King would have all the undead support in the rest of the thread, just their living family takes the role of the 'day' nobility. They're the ones you pay taxes to, they're the ones who frequent the brothels and alehouses, they're the ones who'll demand to spend the night with your wife or daughter, they're the ones who'll take your first-born and make him join the army, and all the standard nobility stuff.

The Master Vampire, for example, could be chained up in silver, but might still produce and command lesser vampires. They feed on human blood, the master feeds on their blood, and the guild takes his blood, and the King gets immortality and eternal youth.

>>31424471
Basically as-is nobody wants the ruin of having to fight a war with them, but if they start attacking they'll get drowned under waves of paladins?

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>>31428661
Surprise : not a single undead attacks you, they are all working in the fields to feed and equip a living army.

>>31428682

>I won't eat any food picked by those abominations
>makes you sick
>makes you dumb
>makes you half-dead in life!

>>oh, grandad, you're just old-fashioned
>>if you studied necromancy like we did you'd understand they're all safe

>>31428795
>Having recently seized the power by a military coup in the Kingdom of Asdor, the Order of the Blinding Light attacked the damned undead country of North Aerok to consolidate its power.
>The Order was fielding entire legions of paladins, holy men able to banish the undead, because as everyone could tell you, Aerok was a Vampire tyranny where the undead ruled and the living toiled in fear
>They expected skeletons, they had to fight the best-equipped human troopers the world ever saw
>The Aerokian troops were wearing the best steel armor, the best crossbows, the best pikes, the best halberds and the best words ever made, all of this forged by skeletons under the command of expert necromancers.
>Even worse, the Aerokian troops were backed by entire corps of sorcerers from their famous People's University.
>However, their logistics train was entirely undead. Entire legions of skeletons, building paved roads as fast as the living armies were advancing, building forts and camps and barracks overnight, carrying food tirelessly from the swamps of Aerok to the well-fed soldiers.

>>31428994
When the motherland is threatened, the People has to fight to defend it. All the People.

>>31412203
North Korea is a threat, at the very least in that no one wants to actually fight them because then they'll have to clean up the mess.

Just throwing my idea into the ring

In the aftermath of the War of the Immortals, a powerful vampire lord arrived with his undead host into the land and drove from the field, the evil and manipulative elven empire. Their reckless use of magic, manipulations through academia and nonsense such as limited monarchy or liberal democracy would have driven the people of the land into eternal damnation.

Thankfully, the noble lord vampires arrived to stop that nonsense and thankfully we are so blessed they are that they will FOREVER remain the land's chosen guardians and keepers.

Unfortunately, the elves constantly seek to disrupt the lands with false promises of "freedom" and "equality". These agents and the weak willed traitors who follow believe must be eliminated. Thus eternal vigilance by the citizens must be maintained in order to help our godly defenders.

Every citizen must give their all for the kingdom! Every last drop of blood!

>>31429068

I understand that that's a concern for China and South Korea, but "if I die I'll get blood on your shoes" is not a threat.

>>31429203

Even now, the enemies of the Kingdom surround and plot to invade. The power hungry Elven Empire, greedy Dwarven Guilds and decadent human republics.

All wish to undo the great works of vampire civilization.

However, the dear lords have concocted a weapon of unimaginable power to shake these tyrants in their slippers!

The Ritual is a powerful locally crafted weapon of mass defense. Accumulating generations of blood from the citizens of the country and diluted with the holy blood of the Vampire Primarch. This concoction would be taken by every single citizen. Turning the entire population into a lesser vampire.

Without any humans left in the city, the only course would be a full out undead kamikaze attack. Such a thing horrifies the outside world but is looked at nonchalantly by the vampire elite. They rather not expend effort to build another vampire kingdom so for nowthis suffices.

>>31429221

Would the removal of South Korea from the world economy for ten years make any difference beyond 'messed shoes'? I think it probably would.

And Japan would probably have to take at least one nuclear or multiple chemical strikes, and then there would be the cost of the war itself.

>>31428994
I'd imagine that skeletons could be doing the hard work (cultivating the land, mining, fishing, building) and the humans could basically be living in a post-scarcity state, except they have to provide their bones and their blood to the ruling class when they die. Also I think the women would be somewhat forced to have a kid every year, and everyone would be highly educated to be more useful.

>>31429312

So how does it become fucked up?

>we need ten thousand new skellingtons to build the new road by the deadline
>but only five thousand corpses are available this season
>I guess nobody will miss the villages of the Eastern Province?
>it's not like they're doing anything but sitting around enjoying skellington labour
>so they really owe us bones, if you add it up

>>31429372
I guess in the end nobody would even live in the countryside.

The best way to achieve a sustainable spooky economy would be to make the dumbest people soldiers, invade other countries and steal their bones. Or kill every useless person.

>>31429412
>Or kill every useless person.

But you can't, because then they'll stop having children, and you won't have enough corpses to replace the undead means of production.

If the undead wear out at a certain speed, maybe you get five years of labour, or a season of fighting, out of each one before it's shredded, and it takes highly skilled churgeons and necromancers to Frankenstein them into something useful again, then you'd need replacements constantly. This might still be enough to keep everyone from having to work the fields, but a huge amount of people would need to learn the skills of dealing with the undead, and they'd have to die at a constant rate to replenish the undead.

The angle I'm going for with this is that it's sort of like the promise of communism, but the country, and the technology/magical knowledge just isn't up to providing it yet. So instead it shambles along, the whole country is in a half-dead state; and the King is probably trying his damnedest to make it work, to restore the country to eternal youth rather than decrepit immortality.

>>31413053
Who the fuck tries to hide they go on 4chan?

>>31429312
Of course, to make everything dystopian, such progress must have a price.

And the price is death. Lots of death. Painful, terrible, drawn-out death. Today, we have more and far more painful deaths than ever.

With one small problem: It's not working as nearly well as it used to.

>>31429563
>The worker's paradise, just a vague memory in the oldest functioning creations, is falling apart.

>>31429518
>highly skilled churgeons and necromancers
that's not a problem when you have a massive idle population centralized in cities, you can educate them.

In terms of uselessness, everyone who can't reproduce and don't have any useful skills for the society is useless.

However, that's the "perfect" necrommunist ideal state. That's after the transition from the good Old Uncle Joe dictatorship of the skeletariat.

Depends what OP wants as a state, something archaic or something well-ordered.

>>31429612

It's a problem when the Necromancers Guild is still protecting their own little fiefdom, and restricts the number of students they train to this level each year, keeping wages up for each of them. You CAN educate them, if you can convince the guys who know how to actually DO it. This is one more thing the King is trying to deal with.

>>31429563
>the Ministry of Death is announcing the toll
>"This year, we have a lack of 215.843 skeletons for the 100-year plan."
>"153.101 unemployed people, criminals, retired people and beggars have been judged antisocial and are going to be turned into useful workforce."
>"To fulfill the plan, 62.742 citizen need to give up their right to live. Report to your nearest Death Office to turn in."
>"If the quotas haven't been met by the next month, we will need to take deathly measures accordingly. Be social, if you feel useless, report to the Death office, citizen."

>>31429312
How long does it take for a skeleton to fall apart past usefulness anyway?

>>31429945
Depends on how well-maintained he is I guess.

>>31412624
Time for a hero to arrive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyR-_OqC5SQ

>>31429945

If it's a skeleton they're being magically animated, there are no muscles pulling to make them move, it's all just telekinetic movement of bones; so maybe forever.

If it's a zombie type, it could be that the muscles are being magically animated. So in this case, it's until the muscles degrade. You could take figures for real decomposition if you wanted, or fudge it by saying the necromancers know how to preserve them just after death to make them last longer.

>>31429945
Until the magical energies that are keeping it animated are spent

Elves. Just elves.

Look at the smug sense of racial superiority, Isolationism, lack of infrastructure, disdain for surrounding countries, and the talk of superior culture/armies/people that might just be propaganda. All that's missing is a Dear Leader Who Has Never Lost A Game Of Ping-Pong and some State Security dragging people to gulags.

>>31430515
So, basically the Thalmor from The Elder Scrolls?

>>31429263
"Do you remember the time before the Uncle Joe and his family came? I do. It was horrible. The elves subjugated us all, human, dwarf, and even the hill elves. The Empire built mines to plunder our wealth, and sent us to die in the mines. Then Uncle Joe and the family came, and they brought the Revolution.

I remember when I first saw a Brother. We had just killed the mine overseers, just north of this village. We were all huddled up on a barricade we had made of boxes, dirt and stones, hoping to repulse the Imperial Police when they came, but they didn't come that night. Only Brother Fredrick Honstenein came up the road that night. He strolled up to the barricade, and asked us to let him in, for he would bring us magics to help fight the Empire and heal our comrades. We were scared and tired, and the underseer we'd captured was threatening us all with painful deaths, and I dare say I believed his threats. So we let the man in. Maybe he might be a real mage, maybe he was just as phony as his fancy clothes. But the moment I shouted "Come on in" he started chanting. Chanting as he walked through the gate we'd made from the outhouse door and a wagon. Chanting as he walked up to a recent landslide that had killed my cousin.

He just stood there, chanting for an hour, till I saw a hand with only three fingers burst through the rock and soil of the debris. Then I saw another hand. Then more. Then cousin Johnnys head popped out and he gave me that stupid grin he always gave the girls.

Johnny got burned by the empire in the Battle of Yorzak Valley, but I'm still here. And Brother Fredrick is still here. And the family is still here. And Uncle Joe is still here. We're all going to be together forever."

>>31428994
Before the war with Asdor, the northern kingdom of Aerok could only be called archaic. While the seeds for the current organization were there, nothing was handled efficiently.

Everybody expected Uncle Joe to do like every other Dark Lord ever did : to send his massive swathes of skeletons to raze Asdor to the ground. Even considering the paladins the Order was fielding, it would have worked.

Instead, he asked a mobilization from its peasants, and he went to great lengths to convince them. Their living families would be relocated in comfortable cities built by the hundred of thousands of skeletons redirected from other projects. The same skeletons would later reap the harvest and thus provide the food for the advancing armies.

By the end of the war, the only people living outside of the major towns were the necromancers in charge of increasing the farm outputs. Uncle Joe and his administration tried to make sure every living or dead assigned to a piece of land was actually born or lived there before. Maybe this effort was essential in the acceptance of this new order.

>>31429518

That'd really work. Going back to Solzhenitsyn again, he referred to Russia as (I think) "The land of crushed dreams".

So you have this idea of a utopia; unlimited undead labour means humans just have to study necromancy to keep the machines running and can then live a life of luxury.

And you have the reality of grinding hardship and terror as the system just barely shambles along.

The other thing that would be great is once you're undead, once you've given up your humanity, warmpth, touch, all that to try and make the dream work, you are not going to let it go without a fight. So where the Soviet union eventually just kind of dissolved, because no-one was that willing to kill to keep it together, the way the system is set up there's always going to be a terrifyingly strong cadre of the undead in place to keep it going.

>>31429762

They'd also need something like Pic related. "The Order of Maternal Glory" Given to Soviet women who had 7+ children. Apparently there was a version for 10+ children that came with improved pension rights and social position.

Thinking about it some more, men and infertile women would be kind of on the bubble in this society. Pre-menopausal, fertile women always have a place raising children, they're always going to be judged 'useful' unless they're explicitly subversive. Which adds a nice level of dehumanization to how the women are dealt with and stress and terror to the lives of men.

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>>31435152

Forgot pic.

>>31430974
I demand more writefaggotry of this setting.

I felt compelled to break the monotony of our ride by speaking "You know, I still think about my father."

My companion turned, slowly. "He'd have been from the old days... What did he do?"

"Blacksmith... " I began, my companion interrupted me. "You come from good proletarian stock then."

I reflexively I scanned the words for traces of irony. They were as sincere as we could be, given our position, so I continued. "Could barely write, knew enough math to figure dimensions, knew the old holy texts and not much else besides. Still... smarter than I'll ever be, could look at any tool, any machine and tell you everything about it. Never had two pieces of silver to rub together, between the dwarven rates for iron, and the taxes to pay for the tributes and ransoms for the nobles' wars..." I paused, why was I saying this? What was the point? The story was in my file, it had helped me immensely in the early years of my career.

"I was too young to remember the revolution. I remember helping my father in the forge, carrying coal, water, putting away tools. One day he sent me away. Before he did he sat me down, and said 'Son, everything's changed, everything's going to be better, and you're going to get the chance to help make it better. I'm too old. I know that. But you have a chance. Never forget that. Never forget you're building a better world for everyone.'"

We were nearing our destination now. We dismounted the things of bone and steel that had once been horses, and went on foot.

>>31442384

"And?" My companion asked, apparently as confused as I was about why I had felt the need to recount the story.

"And I don't know. Just passing time. Anyway, we're here".

My companion drew back a fist clad in black steel, sickly green light flared under the visor of her helmet as she smashed down the door of the hovel, at the same time I went through the wall, shoving cheap brick and mortar aside and hearing it rattle of my own metal carapace. We caught caught our target coming out of the bedroom, blind in the dark, half naked, scrabbling for some illumination and only finding the emerald glow that served as our eyes.

He may have tried to fight. Regardless, we frogmarched him out, bending his arms back just enough to let him know that if he shouted or strugled, we would tear his shoulders out of their sockets. I was glad he stayed quiet, damaging the bodies we brought in always meant a memo from the necromancers.

My companion recited the standard formalities. "Alexi Kim, Your presence at the district office of the department of rectification is hearby requested by order of the commitee for the preservation for state security, in order to assist us with inquiries into the following matters: Recent episodes of sabotage of the state's productive capacity by the improper diversion of foodstuffs to non-productive members of society; recent episodes of subversive co-operation with external agitators promoting anti-state ideologies and specific anti-state beliefs and practices; persons within the state who hold anti-state ideologies; and your connections to any of the above items. We appreciate your co-operation".

Before long we reached the things that had been horses, waiting like statues where we had left them. We bound our target hand and foot, threw him over the back of my companion's mount, tied him to the saddle and rode back. On the way back we rode in silence. I was wondering why I had been thinking about my father.

>>31412203
North Korea can be plenty threatening in a setting where worshipping a ruler as god really works.

>>31442979

Or if you happen to be North Korean, or share a border with the mad bastards.

>>31411948
Falkovia

Considering the things they say about the Kims in North Korea I can only imagine the propaganda hype around Uncle Joe.

>>31412624
I would say either no mind control or limited mind control (at least of the magical kind)
you need to make people surrender their free will to you voluntarily.

>>31412343
Explanation?

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>>31412925
>Stalin reads his report to the Party Congress. Suddenly someone sneezes. "Who sneezed?" Silence. "First row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot, and he asks again, "Who sneezed, Comrades?" No answer. "Second row! On your feet! Shoot them!" They are shot too. "Well, who sneezed?" At last a sobbing cry resounds in the Congress Hall, "It was me! Me!" Stalin says, "Bless you, Comrade!"

Crazy fucking Russians.

>>31442979
Going against the grain of the thread a bit, imagine when God-Kim then starts granting Detect Sedition spells to his inquisitor-apparatchiks.

>>31443482

Essentially the economists aligned with the University of Chicago's school of economics provided intellectual justification for dismantling the depression era and postwar regulation schemes, that had kept the economy basically stable on the theory that the markets were efficient and self correcting. If you believe the "Saltwater" economists from the east coast, this had lead to the total stagnation of wages, increasing economic instability, and rising inequality.

The poster was saying that the Chigago school had lead the charge to replace a regulatory scheme that largely worked with an idea (perfectly efficient and self correcting markets) that sounded good; and someone from the Chicago school talking about that as a problem was highly ironic.

>>31443714
Yeah I see your point though wasn't that system they replaced having problems (stagflation and that) and also wasn't America's post-war success more due to it being the last man standing after world war 2 of all the industrialized economies of the world at the time rather then because of any government intervention?

>>31443801

That's kind of the cycle in industrial America. We do well for a while, figure we can relax the regulations, and then when it bites us in the ass we pile on the regulations again, then we do well for a while so we figure we can relax the regulations, ad infinitum until China murders us all. We never learn.

>>31443596
Here's another.
A judge comes out of the courtroom laughing his ass off.
Another judge asks what happened.
First judge says "I just heard the funnest joke."
"What is it?" asks the second judge.
"Can't say," replies the first. "I just gave someone ten years for telling it!"

>>31443927

A frightened man came to the KGB "My talking parrot disappeared."

"This is not our case. Go to the criminal police."

"Excuse me. Of course I know that I have to go to them. I am here just to tell you officially that I disagree with that parrot."

I also like this one:

Stalin is dead and things have begun to lighten up a bit relatively speaking. An old couple live in an apartment in Moscow and she sends him down to buy some meat for supper. After queueing for the obligatory three hours he gets to the counter and the woman says 'No more meat, meat finished'. He cracks and starts raving 'I fought in the Revolution, I fought for Lenin in the First World War and for Stalin in the Second World War and we are still in this shit?' One of the leather-jacketed brigade takes him on one side and says 'Look old man you know you can't talk like this. Just think, a few years ago you would have been shot for saying these things.' The old man trudges home. His wife seeing him empty-handed says 'Run out of meat again have they?' He says: 'It's worse than that, they've run out of bullets.'

>>31412311
American style Laissez-faire Capitalism is the way to go then.

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>>31443801

Yeah; the nicest thing you can say about it is that it was an over-correction.

On the other hand, you can say it was a group of paid whores providing intellectual justification for suppressing wages and effectively stealing trillions of dollars.

Your millage may vary of course.

>>31444045
Yes, except the free market loves to shoot itself in the foot. Go look at one of those factory towns from back in the 20s where everything was owned by the people who own the factory/coal mine/whatever. There's no difference between that and the average soviet village.

>>31444011
Haven't heard the last one before.

>>31444320

It is 1982. A Polish man goes to the government bank with 300 zlotys, but he cannot decide if he wants to deposit it. "Why are you so worried?" asks the teller.
"What if you go bankrupt?"
"Your deposit would be insured by the Polish government!"
"What if Poland goes bankrupt?" asks the man, still worried.
"We have the guarantee with the whole socialist bloc backed by the Soviet Union!"
"What if the Soviet Union goes bankrupt?"
"That wouldn't be worth 300 zlotys to you?"

>>31444382
>zlotys
10000 of those to 1 modern one, so yeah, that'd be worth 300.

>>31444213
That was the observation yes, that American laissez-faire capitalism was just as much a slave system as Russian stalinism just better press.

>>31444533
>looks at who'se getting replied to in that post
oh
i have a derp

>>31411948

Quite simply you need to exchange elements for high fantasy elements.
> Glorious leader Kim | Glorious God Leader Ketzal the undying
> Thought Police are watching your every move | Mind Mages are always watching
> Generous use of lobotomization and torture | Same thing, just needs more magic
> State is in a perpetual state of war | State is always raiding neighborhood tribes
> Pogrom of constant traitors
> 90 percent of population is dirt poor
> Violence in the streets
> Cult of personality
etc. etc.

>>31446728
no, because NK is never actually at war. (The fact that the korean war never technically ended doesn't count.)
They bluff, but that's all it is. Bluffing.