Characters / TNO Taboritsky

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Sergey Taboritsky

Taboritsky, the Mad Monarchist of Komi

Taboritsky, the Blessed Regent of All-Russia

Role: Head of State (Passionariyy election)

Party: Obshchestvo Vozrozhdeniya Rossiyskoiy Imperii^note Society for the Revival of the Russian Empire

Ideology: Clerical Fascism^note National Socialism (façade), Imperial Cult^note National Socialism (actual)

In-Game Biography (Clerical Fascism): ^{Click to Show}The story of Sergey Vladimirovich Taboritsky is as anomalous as his personality and political views. Born to a Russian merchant and Jewish seamstress, Taboritsky was nevertheless a staunch Russian monarchist and earnest anti-Semite from an early age, trying to get rid of the "Cain's seal" inherited from his mother. Becoming an exile in the Weimar Republic following the Russian Civil War, he acquitanced himself with Russian reactionary circles, reinforcing his beliefs and helping to spread the infamous 'Protocols of Zion' in Germany. Along with his long-time friend Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork, he assassinated a former Russian Kadet politician Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov in attempt to bring revenge upon those whom he considered the main instigators of the revolution that ruined the Russian Tsardom. As the NSDAP came to power in Germany, he became one of the most enthusiastic collaborators with the Nazi regime among the White émigrés, hoping that the German dominance would pave a road for the restoration of monarchy in Russia.

Like others, Taboritsky joined Vladimir in Vyatka, but soon he became displeased with who he claimed was the 'impostor Tsar', sincerely believing that the true Emperor of Russia, Tsarevich Alexey, miraculously survived and will arrive to his subjects should they prove their loyalty to their rightful ruler. Few in Vyatka could share his eccentric beliefs, but soon he found his following in Ust-Sysolsk.

A person too unhinged for his enemies and friends alike, Taboritsky, however, succeeded to outplay them all and emerge as the sole ruler of the city, claiming the title of the Imperial Regent for Tsar Alexey II for himself. Few expect Taboritsky's delusions to come true, but few doubt his rule will be anything but ferocious one, as his zeal is fueled by long-standing hatred for Bolsheviks and anyone who betrayed the Russian Tsar in his darkest hour.

In-Game Biography (Imperial Cult): ^{Click to Show}The mask has finally slipped, and the clock now ticks ever forward. Sergey Vladimirovich Taboritsky, formerly the dark horse of the Passionariyy Organization, has finally secured utter control of the state, and his plans for its future could not be any more disturbing - at least to his many detractors.

Once again harnessing the talent for oratory that ensured the relevance of his Society for the Restoration of the Russian Empire even when, by all accounts, it should have been entirely subsumed by the larger Organization, he has now announced that very restoration. Claiming to rule as regent for the Tsar Alexei II, who he states escaped execution by the Bolsheviks long ago, he routinely issues thunderous appeals to those to value traditionalism and Imperial nostalgia, and couples these appeals with open and extremely virulent anti-Semitism.

To those supporters, relatively numerous as they may be, it is as if God himself descended, in the form of Taboritsky, from Heaven in order to save the Empire. To everybody else, he is an abject madman, as unstable as he is dangerous, and as opposition coalesces, both within the state and within his own mind, the question is clear:

How long until the clock strikes midnight?

In-Game Biography (The Silent Regent): ^{Click to Show}A deafening silence fills the airwaves. The clock has stopped, its hands frozen in time. No new missives are sent out bearing the personal seal of the Blessed Regent.

Yet the brazen gears keep turning, grinding heathen corpses into mulch in the name of a lost child. Blood continues to saturate the soil as the Regent's butchers vivisect the Motherland in search of a cancer that does not exist. Ever more skulls are piled high in the ossuary once known as Russia.

On, and on, and on it goes. Every soldier and bureaucrat who chose to follow the Regent's bidding continues to do so. Numbering in their millions, each slathered from crown to heels in gore and reeking of poison, they know there is no choice. They know that the Regent and Tsarevich Alexei are watching. Justice knows each of their names and will hold them accountable for failure. Beneath the guns of fanatical overseers, their nightmarish harvest continues. In time, the Lord will reward them for the sacrifice of their humanity, and the Tsarevich himself will clothe them in golden glory.

But there is no purity left in their wake, only putrefaction and decay. There is no sanctity, only defilement. There is no peace, only the silence of a million mass graves.

Above all, there is only the cold, dead gaze of a corpse, staring out into an empty room through clouded eyes as rot sets into its withered flesh.

In-Game Biography (Radio Silence): ^{Click to Show}

Remain calm.

The Regent endures.

Alexei lives.

The Holy Russian Empire shall endure.

There is much to be done.

Sergey Vladimirovich Taboritsky had devoted all of his life to the restoration of Russia's God-ordained order, an order of faith and loyalty that was ruined and corrupted by Judeo-Bolshevism. In a life of serving God and Tsar, Taboritsky had cleansed his Judaic lineage, brought death to agents of Antichrist, embraced the vigilant ideals of Hitlerism, and joined the war against the false Russia. But they were not enough.

After returning to Russia alongside Tsar Vladimir's expedition, Taboritsky realized the truth to Russia's woes: Tsarevich Alexei, the true Emperor of Russia, had in fact survied the events of 1918, and Vladimir was in reality a treacherous usurper. The Vyatkans rejected him as a delusional lunatic, but his words found a small following in Komi. Yet Russia remains far from saved.

God, in all of his benevolence, has blessed Taboritsky with the path to Alexei's return and Russia's salvation: National Socialism. Nazism brought strength, glory, and purity to Western Europe, and it is only natural that the sinful lands of Russia must be cleansed by its glorious light too. The degenerates, apostates, and subhumans will not taint Russia any longer; the Regency, the Holy Russian Empire, will rule with absolute, eternal magnificence.

---

Tropes for the Blessed Regent

• Absolute Xenophobe: Taboritsky tries to kill every single non-Russian ethnic group in Russia to 'purify' his Empire, and uses chemical terror bombings on villages of Russian minorities as his main method of extermination.
• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • Even though he's the worst possible unifier for Russia, his death is surprisingly tragic. Throughout his reign, he slowly begins to realize how delusional and lost his cause is, becoming more insane in the process and even showing regret when he reminisce about his murder of Vladimir Nabokov Sr. This culminates in his eventual acceptance that Alexei isn't coming back and his efforts were for naught. After this revelation, Taboritsky literally dies from shock, spending his last few moments pitifully begging for Alexei to return.
  • If Taboritsky is successfully imprisoned instead of being marked for death or getting exiled, the Mad Regent will be comforted by a vision of The Virgin Mary and Alexei in his cell. He embraces his delusions and is removed from the political scene in his own, ignorant bliss.
• All Crimes Are Equal:
  • Taboritsky's standards are set so high, even accidentally dropping your tools when working is considered a crime that deserves a forced disappearance.
  • At the superregional level, Taboritsky decides that everyone who enters the courts is guilty of sin and must be punished by death in God's name, and changes every court sentence to a death sentence. Thousands die in a matter of weeks and multiple mass graves spring up to bury the corpses of sentenced inmates.
• All for Nothing: Multilayered. Ultimately, because Alexei is dead, no matter how utterly Taboritsky crushes the life out of Russia to "purify" it for the Tsarevich it by definition cannot ever be enough to bring him back. He ultimately perishes in terror and despair after being confronted by this fact in a vision, which happens shortly after he achieves national unification. After Taboritsky's death, any territory he managed to conquer and subsequently terrorize as Regent will once again collapse, creating a second warlord period even more horrific than the first which forever destroys any hopes of a united Russia. The new successor states are more often than not utterly mad and too weak to try to pursue national unification if they wanted to; many do not.
• Allohistorical Allusion:
  • The sheer, literal insanity of Taboritsky and his borderline omnicidal purges call to mind Francisco Macías Nguema, a megalomaniac of such degree he even forced priests to bow down to his portrait before Mass, before he went full-on A God Am I and changed his country's motto to "There is no other God than Macías Nguema". His paranoia and ensuing violent purges resulted in the persecution of intellectuals to the point where the word "intellectual" was banned, his State Sec haphazardly slaughtering the population in drunken rampages, and the devastation of Equatorial Guinea to the point where even his own guards were forced to scavenge for food. Like Taboritsky in TNO, Nguema's reign of terror led to massive casualties in proportion to the population, with a quarter of Equatorial Guineans being either imprisoned or killed outright, and nearly half fleeing the country. Taboritsky's only saving grace in comparison to Nguema is that as batshit, genocidally insane as he is, he prefers to elevate Tsarevich Alexei Romanov to divinity instead of himself, and while he does also establish a cult of personality based on his own image, it's primarily centered on his role as servant and herald of Alexei.
  • Taboritsky's cultish adoration of the Romanovs has some parallels with the real life heretical Orthodox sect of Tsarebozhiye^{History notes}Tsarebozhiye had its origins in the "Prophecy of Abel" which circulated in the white emigre community in the 1930s (it was even discussed in some of Shabelsky-Bork's works). It became more prominent after the Soviet Union dissolved in the 1990s, with the movement centering on a now-excommunicated far-right priest named Father Sergei (real name Nikolai Vasilievich Romanov). Infamously, the net-famous Russian prosecutor Natalia Poklonskaya was also active in the movement, though she later distanced herself from it.. Tsarebozhiye considers Nicholas II to be not merely a Saint (as recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church), but an outright redeemer on the same level as Jesus Christ, and his death in 1918 is treated as a grave sin committed by all of Russia that the nation must eternally repent for. Implicitly, they consider the Russian Empire to be the Kingdom of God, and the Russian people to be God's chosen people, and somewhat expectedly they have very extremist political views and are very antisemitic.
  • Taboritsky dies from a stroke, with his guards being too afraid to enter his room and intervene, mirroring the death of Josef Stalin.
• The Antichrist: If he exists at the same time as Alexander Men's Divine Mandate, Men will identify him as a more horrific tyrant than Nero, Ivan the Terrible, Elizabeth Báthory, and the Fuhrer of Germany combined, eventually declaring him to be the antichrist after a prayer session, steeling himself for war against what he believes is the worst embodiment of evil that's walked the Earth so far. His own rule has several traits associated with the antichrist as well, namely by bringing about an apocalyptic end to Russia should he succeed, with him utilizing Christ on his flag while quoting scripture to convince Russia of his holiness, when in reality his state is more in practice based on worship towards him and Alexei, false messiahs whose cults will bring about ruin.
• Apocalyptic Log: Taboritsky's journal entries documents his steady mental degeneration from somewhat unhinged dictator to utter genocidal madman, starting out coherent enough, but gradually becoming dominated by rambling tangents about imagined conspiracies, before devolving into a mess of incomplete sentences as the journal becomes his main medium for arguing out loud with the voices and sounds in his head. By the time Midnight happens, a crazed and exhausted Taboritsky is described as being in the middle of furiously scribbling something down in his journal for days on end without sleep, but whatever he is writing by then has long since stopped resembling actual words.
• As the Good Book Says...: Taboritsky's journal entries begin with quotes from The Bible.
• Ax-Crazy: Taboritsky is not mentally well, to say the least, and is the most violent and oppressive Russian unifier, slaughtering dissidents, racial minorities, the mentally ill and disabled, and anyone else who earns his ire with impunity in addition to outright mandating the use of chemical weapons in warfare and against enemies of the state. On a personal level, he is also extremely prone to violent outbursts, and during his more unstable moments he might well strangle or beat someone to death with his own hands. And though able to feign some semblance of sanity in the beginning, he grows increasingly unstable and openly crazy as his rule drags on.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • If Taboritsky fails to take power from a Shafaraveich-Serov coalition, he'll breakdown laughing, making it seem like he's going to turn Ax-Crazy, like he does in every other event where something displeases him. Instead, Taboritsky quickly composes himself, concedes power to the duo, and leaves on his own accord.
  • Most of his focuses do exactly the opposite of what they proclaim, such as Cleansing the Academia, which is described as "improving the academic base modifier", but actually does the opposite.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Taboritsky self-immolates in a little chapel in his "opposition killed" event if Komi's rulers try to hunt down and assassinate him after the coup/counter-coup stage.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Taboritsky seems to be little more than an eccentric monarchist, and while the fact that he's designated as a Clerical Fascist (a subideology of National Socialism) certainly doesn't bode well, he also co-hosts the gossipy right-wing Radio Free Syktyvkar with Igor Shafarevich. This belies the sheer nightmarishness of his policies if he wins the Passionaryy elections and reunifies West Russia.
• Book Ends: Taboritsky's introductory event ends with "God save Russia.", as he prays to God to keep Tsarevich Alexei safe. After Taboritsky unifies Russia, the ensuing world event (which is one of the Holy Russian Empire's final ones, before Taboritsky dies and his nightmarish empire collapses), ends with "God save Russia - for no-one else can."
• Breakout Character: Taboritsky has captured the fanbase's attention and imagination for the sheer bleakness and horror his route contains. It helps that he was teased before release as the worse unifier for Komi and Russia as a whole. The morbid fascination his route draws and all the dread it entails is why he was the first Russian unifier to get post-1972 content, complete with its own update.
• The Caligula: Taboritsky is one of, if not the most deranged and delusional rulers in TNO, beating out other Esoteric Nazis like Josias zu Waldeck-Pyrmont (explicitly stated to be the inspiration for many policies advocated by the Imperial Cult subideology) and Heinrich Himmler in terms of sheer unhinged madness and detachment from reality^note In fact, the only individual who can compete with Taboritsky in the "completely Ax-Crazy" department is Velimir from the Aryan Brotherhood, who still managed to be a little more sane than Taboritsky by offering token bits of Pragmatic Villainy here and there. From the very beginning, Taboritsky displays his fanatical dedication to unreal beliefs like divine purity and Alexei's survival, as well as extreme erraticism and ruthlessness. His ideology, a freakish synthesis of Tsarism, fundamentalist Christianity, and German National Socialism, is a result of fanatical desire to deliver a purified Russia to a near-divine Alexei, and the delusional belief that only fundamentalist National Socialism can bring out this purity. As Taboritsky's sanity continues to worsen, his mental illness escalates into straight-up schizophrenia, as he begins to have and believe in his hallucinations and his writings degenerate into incoherent ramblings.
• Capitalism Is Bad: As a fascist, Taboritsky both invokes and represents this trope. On one hand, one of his journal entries sees him disapprovingly write of capitalism and the idea of economics, frustrated at the very concept of money as he tries to establish an economic system for the HRE to follow. On the other, he himself creates horrific Mega Corps out of political convenience, with them following the slave labor system that Germany has adopted.
  Everything is about cost, about budgeting, about affordability. And the economics! One has had quite enough of those self-proclaimed 'experts' telling one what to do. We are Russia! We don't need Swiss watches or American cars to sustain ourselves!
• Churchgoing Villain: Taboritsky is seen attending church in one of the second Smuta events, content to be just one of the congregation despite the glances he gets. When the priest starts speaking of the value of forgiveness, however, he tunes him out, fuming, and concludes that even men of God are wrong sometimes. The episode foreshadows his eventual conflict with the church, ending with his purge at the Superregional stage and the establishment of the Purity Order to monitor the church and replace dissident priests with his own hand-picked men among the Shturmoviki.
• The Chosen People: According to Taboritsky, the Russians are God's chosen people.
  We - the Russians, the PURE Russians - are the chosen race, as I always believed. WE are the people of Moses, our legacy usurped by Judeo-Khazar mongrels. We are the purest and greatest of all nations, and the others - THEY ARE CANAAN.
• Les Collaborateurs: Before he became what he is now in Komi, Taboritsky was an active Russian collaborator in Nazi Germany.
• Clocks of Control: His campaign to subjugate Russia under brutal totalitarian governance is accompanied by a clock motif; in lore, this stems from Taboritsky's belief in Russia as a singular machine guided by God and Tsar, its individual pieces operating together in harmony like clockwork. It is present in his reunification superevent's music, his sanity is represented by a new decision screen, "The Clockworks", that uses a clock that slowly ticks towards "Midnight", he can hear the ticking near the end of his life, and the collapse into more warlords is introduced with the "After Midnight" patch.
• Composite Character: In real life, Taboritsky's partner Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork was actually the bigger believer of the Alexey survival conspiracy theory between the two; Taboritsky's portrayal in TNO assumes that Taboritsky grew to share Shabelsky-Bork's view after some off-timeline development.
• Control Freak: He believes anything under his standards and methods is ideal, and he tries to exert the most control within his government. The feeling that some things are not within his jurisdiction helps drive him mad.
• Crushing the Populace: After unifying Western Russia, Taboritsky's regime adopts National Socialism of the Esoteric kind, purging anyone who isn't pure Russian, with a special focus on annihilating the Jewish population. For the rest of society that is not immediately exterminated, Taboritsky implements an insanely oppressive rule to purify the Russians in their thinking and behavior, with slave-like work conditions, draconian political oppression enforced by a cruel secret police, enforced poverty on the commoners in order to enrich the Godly elite, and absolute religious insanity. His oppression is so bad, he can get a -100% population growth malus from his constant massacres.
• Cult of Personality: Aside from the Imperial Cult dedicated to Alexei, Taboritsky also creates a cult of personality around himself, the blessed regent of Alexei.
• Dark Horse Victory: Taboritsky is the most fringe of Komi's potential leaders, occupying a minority influence even within the Passionariyy (which is itself weaker than the Communists and the Democrats).
• Death by Despair: When the clock reaches zero (which can be delayed, but not averted), Taboritsky's sanity will drop completely and he will ultimately die of despair due to the realization that Tsarevich Alexei is dead and is never coming back.
• Decapitated Army: When Taboritsky's Sanity Meter inevitably runs out and he dies, it's strongly implied his death is covered up by radio and television by his officers. His leader trait then changes to "The Silent Regent", which effectively paralyzes the Holy Russian Empire, starts to melt his political base, completely stops new manpower recruits and reduces population overall, permanently. This eventually spirals into Russia collapsing so catastrophically that it becomes similar to the wastelands of a post nuclear war world.
• Defiant to the End: In the event West Russian Revolutionary Front under Tukhachevsky successfully invades the Komi Republic, Taboritsky is captured along with the rest of the Komi leadership and subjected to a Kangaroo Court, where it is pretty blatant that Tukhachevsky have already decided before who are guilty of treason and are going to get executed. The only courtesy the defendants are offered by Tukhachevsky is the opportunity to make a single public statement in their defense. Taboritsky decides to use his statement to just coldly tell the Revolutionary Front that he wishes the Nazis had killed them all while they had the opportunity, before he is dragged away.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • He's heavily invested on his end goals but has very little thinking placed into his means, let alone the potential consequences of both. As a result, his governing is usually according to constantly-changing whims, only worsening as his sanity decreases.
  • As stated during the event where Komi prepares to announce their election's winner, Taboritsky anxiously awaits the results since he didn't actually have anything planned out in the chance that he'd claim victory. He even anticipated and planned what he would do in the event of a loss first, which was to hastily drive out of the region as quickly as he could.
• Doomsday Clock: Post-regional unification, Taboritsky gains a new decision screen called "The Clockworks", displaying a time that slowly progresses from the first hour to midnight, and a warning that the time must never reach midnight. It is a representation of Taboritsky's sanity, and various events that appear throughout the game will speed up or slow down the clock, and events unlocked as the clock progresses shows an increasingly unhinged Taboritsky. When the time hits Midnight, Taboritsky dies and the entire Empire meets its doom; recruitable population is set to 0%, unit organization is cut in half, and Esoteric Nazism support gets a popularity drain, likely representing the Empire of nightmares literally collapsing in on itself.
• Dystopia Is Hard: Taboritsky's genocidal purges and genocidal ethnic cleansing will bring crippling penalties to his empire.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: In the already fringe Komi's ranks, he has the least possible support. His crippling debuffs and other issues will slow you down when trying to unify Russia under him. Succeed in doing so, however, and you will have achieved what the devs consider to be the absolute worst ending for Russia and the lead-up to a new era of warlordism.
• Egocentrically Religious: His faith begins to waver when his skewed and fringe interpretation of Christianity does not offer him the return of Alexei II and the ideal nation he wanted, angrily refuting the idea that he could be anything like "Cain" and damned his people when he did all that the "Skeins" asked of him.
• Evil Costume Switch: During Komi's coup-countercoup stage, when Taboritsky masquerades as a "mere" clerofascist, he wears a suitably regal uniform in his portrait. After he reveals his true colours as an Esoteric Nazi, he puts an evil-looking overcoat with really high collars on over this suit.
• Evil Counterpart: To Rurik II. Both of them are despotic rulers of a country who suffer from blatant insanity. Many of their actions and policies stem from their madness and they have some of the most unique and radical unifiers available for Russia. Both leaders also lay claim to a royal position and model their societies after their interpretation of Russia's pre-communist past: Rurik uses Kievan Rus' as his model, while Taboritsky uses Tsarist Russia. The difference is that Rurik II, despite being insane, remains a pragmatic and wise leader, while Taboritsky is a horrible ruler precisely because he is completely insane. Rurik II leaves a united, powerful Russia to his successors, while Taboritsky has no heir who could inherit his empire, and said empire collapses after his death and ends all possibility of a united Russia for good. Finally, Rurik II unifying Russia is one of the better endings for it, while Taboritsky unifying Russia is the worst ending. Even their deaths show this: Rurik dies peacefully, surrounded by his children, with his final words implying his insanity may have been an act. Taboritsky dies alone in his office, undergoing a Villainous BSoD as he finally realizes that Alexei is dead.
• Evil Old Folks: 65 at the start of the game, Taboritsky is the second-oldest unifier in Komi behind Zhdanov and by far the vilest of all of them.
• Evil Reactionary: Taboritsky's beliefs, grossly oversimplified, boils down to him wanting to return Russia to the idealized days of the Russian Empire, when the Romanovs are in power, the people are faithful, and the workers are obedient. His methods to return Russia to that past though are where the Burgundian influences come in.
• Evil Regent: Once Taboritsky reunites Western Russia, he will make himself the Regent of Alexei Romanov (who's long dead), ruling the country until Alexei "comes back". And he certainly lives up to the "evil" part upon taking power, transforming Russia into a theocratic totalitarian dictatorship modeled off of the principles of National Socialism. Unlike traditional examples of evil regents, Taboritsky isn't working against Alexei; instead, all of his insanity is an attempt at creating a pure Russia for Alexei to rule over.
• Expy Coexistence: Despite Taboritsky sharing many similarities to Francisco Nguema, the latter can in fact take power in the nascent Republic of Orungu if the African Collapse occurs.
• Failure Is the Only Option: There is no way for Taboritsky to achieve his goal of creating a 'pure' Holy Russian Empire for Tsar Alexei to rule over. His beloved Tsar being dead (despite what Taboritsky thinks) aside, his insanely repressive rule turns Russia into a Hell on Earth that quickly collapses after his death, and will never become a unified, functional country again.
• Fake Aristocrat: In Real Life and presumably in the TNO timeline, too. He faked being from Russo-German nobility in order to join the SS.
• Foil: To Alexander Men in the Far-East. Both are spoiler-ridden and hidden paths on the opposite ends of Russia that were heavily teased during production. After their reveal, the two of them were shown to be opposites of each other in meaningul ways. Both of their political beliefs are derived from Orthodox Christianity, but their execution could not be any more different. Taboritsky is an Ax-Crazy Esoteric Nazi-monarchist-theocrat trying to make a long dead kid Tsar again, and tries to force his delusional variant of fundamentalist Christian society upon all of Russia and plunges the nation into one of the game's worst fail-states. Alexander Men on the other hand is a Bait-and-Switch Tyrant who acts as a Messianic Archetype in his quest to bring about an egalitarian Russia in a system that combines Christian benevolence with mutualist and borderline social anarchist economics through one of Russia's best paths. Men also tolerates other faiths and walks the path of Christian forgiveness, while Taboritsky believes everyone who slightly crosses him deserves a harsh divine punishment. There is also a unique event should Alexander Men's last opponent for Russia be Taboritsky, where he compares his nightmare to the work of The Antichrist. Both may lead to a shattered order with several warring states, but Men will merely create a couple states at the regional stage following a coup, while Taboritsky will usher in an entire new era of warlordism, inevitably following him unifying the entire country.
• Faux Affably Evil: There are a couple of moments where Taboritsky can feign friendliness, as showcased in his meeting with Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork. However, if Taboritsky is even mildly slighted, he quickly turns nasty and murderous.
• Foreshadowing: He brings about a Holy Russian Empire if he manages to reunite Russia under his twisted system, and the reunification quote in his super event is also referencing the Holy Roman Empire. Guess what's bound to happen in 1972-1982 segment after he dies.
• From Bad to Worse: He rises up during a warlord period in a country that has already suffered a lot of hardships before its collapse, before embarking on a genocidal campaign to 'purify' and then reunite Russia as a regent for a long-dead prince to take over. His reign of terror has ultimately ensured that Russia will never be able to unite and become a functional country ever again.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Starting out as an outsider with little meaningful influence, Taboritsky is one of the least likely of Komi's potential leaders to come out on top in the end. If he succeeds in holding onto power, however, he will turn Russia into a twisted, theocratic Nazi state with all of the horrors that imply.
• The Fundamentalist: Taboritsky is a fundamentalist in his own insane variant of Christianity that ties Tsarist authority directly to divine authority. Jews, Muslims, and atheists are expectedly evil corruptors in his eyes, but he also considers any Christians who dare to speak out against him to be heretics.
• Genre Shift: While the narrative driven TNO utilizes the horror genre for its more dystopian regimes (of which there are a lot in this Crapsack World), playing as Taboritsky switches the game to a Psychological Horror story told via Hearts of Iron, as the player gets to witness not only the horrors of his regime but also the delusions that Taboritsky experiences, all while an ominous clock ticks towards midnight, and his doom.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Taboritsky starts already quite mad and then gradually gets worse. His final revelation during Midnight that Alexei has always been dead causes him to die from the shock.
• A God Am I: While he doesn't consider himself to be the literal Messiah, he does want to be seen as an equivalent to Jesus Christ.
• Graceful Loser: Should Shafarevich and Serov form an alliance to drive out the other Passionaryy members, Taboritsky will briefly breakdown and then concede that he may be wrong or that he at least isn't worthy enough to carry out his ideals. He then asks that Serov and Shafarevich follow "the will of the Skein" in his stead, leaving the scene on his own accord to the sound of his few supporters' applause. Everyone else is left speechless.
• Handwriting as Characterization: One of the signs of his Sanity Slippage is his diary's increasingly messy handwriting. As he approaches his inevitable Death by Despair, his frantic notes become almost impossible to decipher save for his Madness Mantras.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: A few events showcase that it takes barely anything at all to rile Taboritsky's shrieking insanity.
• Hearing Voices: He is motivated by "the will of the Skein(s)", which gives him his goal of "purifying" Russia for Alexei.
• Helpless Good Side: "Good" might be a bit much, but as Taboritsky's mental health collapses snippets of a more sane personality appear in his diary entries, horrified by what he is doing but completely unable to get more than a sentence or so out before being suppressed again.
• High Collar of Doom: Dons one upon revealing himself as a Nazi.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: The real Taboritsky a convicted murderer and dedicated Nazi collaborator with some extremely eccentric (debateably "insane"; one medical examiner described him as "lofty") Monarcho-Nazi beliefs^note He was highly religious, strongly anti-Semitic (despite being half-Jewish), and fanatically monarchist (leading to his assassination attempt on Milyukov). He inexplicably but wholeheartedly embraced Nazism in exile (whilst remaining monarchist), to the point where he rewrote his ancestry and renamed himself Sergius von Taboritzki to get into the party, and he once menacingly boasted that Russia should be conquered and ruled by the Führer for at least 25 years, but he ultimately was little more than a minor player on the grand scheme of things. However, Taboritsky in TNO takes his real life erraticisms into the realm of total dystopian madness, mixing in Burgundian, theocratic, psychotic, and straight-up delusional and schizophrenic elements into his belief system.
• History Repeats: If exiled from Komi, he will journey to the west and try to reach the Aryan Brotherhood, whose rituals involve adopting symbols and culture from Nazi Germany to the point where they will change their names to "Deytsch" monikers, the same thing he did many years ago when first coming to Germany and declaring himself Sergius von Taboritzki.
• Howl of Sorrow: When Taboritsky realizes that Alexei is dead and never coming back, he emits a sorrowful wail in the dead of night before he expires from the shock. It is also the very last thing his thoroughly frightened servants and second-in-commands ever hear from him.
• Interface Screw:
  • After his death, his leader portrait becomes a looping animation, creating the illusion that it is being broadcast by a disrupted signal. After a while it disappears entirely, being replaced by radio silence.
  • Going to his Clockworks decision tab after his death in the After Midnight update onwards, the clock displayed can be viewed, now turned into a glitching mess as Russia enters an epilogue and new era.
• Internal Reveal: He only comes to realize Alexei is never coming back when the clock hits Midnight.
• I Reject Your Reality: Taboritsky does this in spades in his focus tree. Alexei Romanov is dead? Why, of course not: the King in the Mountain is merely waiting for Russia to be purified! "Cleansing the Poor" will just lead to a higher poverty rate? Oh no, it will actually reduce the poverty rate! By the time the clocks hit midnight and he sees the undeniable proof that Alexei is dead in front of him, the shock is so gigantic that he dies from it.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Taboritsky personally kills his old friend and companion Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork during the latter's audience after he expressed his concerns about Taboritsky's erratic behavior.
• Like a God to Me: His devotion towards the restoration of the Romanov's rule through the supposed survival and apocryphal return of Alexei II is all but outright stated to be where is religious motivation lies. His hallucinations show that he views him with as much divinity and importance as the Virgin Mary.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: He creates what he calls "purified imperial architecture", constructing buildings and monuments clad in gold, marble, and other expensive materials, all at the expense of the lower classes being purged. This grandiose display does him no good in stopping Midnight.
• Mad Eye: While it's mostly because of the shading, Taboritsky's character portrait has his left eye looking like it is markedly brighter than his right, and like his eyebrow has a slight twitch to it. It definitely aids in making him look unhinged.
• Master Race: Taboritsky thinks that pure Russians are the mightiest race in the world, and non-Russians in the Holy Russian Empire must be exterminated.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Taboritsky is fully able to reunite Russia under his twisted regime, but his empire of nightmares begins to collapse the second he dies, before he can even think of turning his attention to RK Moskowien.
• Missing Steps Plan: Taboritsky's motivation runs on Insane Troll Logic, prompting this. Believing that Tsarevich Alexei is alive, he thinks that Alexei will only return if Russia is "purified" of its corrupting influences, and adopts genocidal policies modelled on those used in the Greater Germanic Reich. Besides the obvious, this relies on the idea that the two concepts are somehow connected. There also doesn't seem to be any elaboration for what this hypothetical Alexei's rule will look like, other than fulfilling Taboritsky's ideal of a restored Romanov dynasty with a rightful heir at the helm.
• Mouth of Sauron: Not himself, but Taboritsky believes that God speaks through Josias zu Waldeck-Pyrmont to show His followers the true way of governance.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Late-game Taboritsky considers death to be the only judgement that all sinners deserve, becoming even more ruthless in his genocidal purges.
• My God, What Have I Done?: As Midnight approaches and Taboritsky's mental state deterioates even further, a fraction of his psyche becomes horrifically aware of the truth of the monstrousness of his deeds and nightmare he has unleashed upon Russia, but by this point he is so insane it gets smothered out by his more unhinged impulses, unable to change the course he has set Russia upon.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Taboritsky goes by "The Blessed Regent", administering his "Holy Russian Empire" under the ideology of "Imperial Cult". All of these names involve a combination of Pure Is Not Good and Ominous Mundanity.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Taboritsky's ideology is a deranged hybrid of Tsarism, fundamentalist Christianity, and Nazism. Though the monarchist core of his ideology is different from the Völkisch core of Nazism, Taboritsky has embraced the violent totalitarianism and racial purism of Nazism into his ideology, on top of his delusional messianic monarcho-theocracy.
• Nazi Nobleman: Taboritsky is a very unusual case of a Nazi Nobleman; he is a hardcore Nazi monarchist who models himself as a Russian aristocrat. In real life, he fabricated his German Russian noble origin so he could enter the NSDAP without revealing the fact that his mother was Jewish.
• Obviously Evil: A previously eager Nazi collaborationist, an one-time assassin, a fierce reactionary and even the Komi opening screen doesn't attempt to hide the fact that he is insane. Even before he takes power and reveals himself as a mad Esoteric Nazi, it isn't ambiguous that his takeover won't promise anything good.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: After Taboritsky dies, but before total collapse, his portrait as "The Silent Regent" is a loop that blurs, tears, shakes, and briefly flashes to one of Alexei.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Taboritsky hates all Russian minorities, but he has an especially virulent hatred of Jews, which he blames every problem he faces on. He would know, given that he himself is Jewish.
• Principles Zealot: He yearns for a Russia under the Romanov dynasty, a faithful people, and more reactionary beliefs. He is sure that National Socialism is the only way to see this vision complete, and whenever trouble arises, his instinct is to purge the supposed threat. This even applies to his closest friends and allies when some of them try to rein his zealotry in.
• "Psycho" Strings: The superevent that plays if Taboritsky successfully reunites Russia is underscored with this, combined with ominous ticking and discordant piano notes.
• Psycho Supporter: Taboritsky supports restoring Alexei Romanov as Tsar of Russia, and he takes this support to a fanatical level. Not only does he believe that Alexei is still alive (believing that he was just hiding, for almost 50 years), he also wants to create a pure Russia for Alexei to rule over, treating Alexei as some sort of divine entity.
• The Purge: Taboritsky launches genocidal purges targeting anything he considers to be corrupting the Holy Russian Empire. He purges minorities (particularly the Jews); he purges people with genetic disorders; he purges dissidents, the intelligentsia, the poor, the Church, the military, his own paramilitary, heretics, the convicted... nobody, not even children, are safe from his fanatically purist purges.
• Regent for Life: While Taboritsky genuinely wishes to only rule until Alexei "returns", because the boy has been long dead Taboritsky is effectively the sole ruler of a nation for a young prince who is never coming back.
• Religious Horror: In between his Psychological Horror Through the Eyes of Madness and the assorted religious themes (mad visions, references to the Bible, belief he is God's chosen, etc.), it's safe to say Taboritsky's Russia is a case of religious horror.
• Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: Taboritsky's main claims to fame historically was how he assassinated Vladimir Nabokov's father (during an assassination attempt against Russian liberal Pavel Milyukov) and how he faked his German ancestry to join the Nazi Party. Here, he is the insane leader of the "Holy Russian Empire" and a champion of a mad strain of Burgundian-inspired Nazi-monarchism.
• Sanity Meter: "The Clockworks" decisions screen is a metaphorical display of Taboritsky's sanity, with "Midnight" being the point where Taboritsky collapses into a complete mental breakdown and subsequently dying from it. While the clock can be temporarily stalled or even slightly turned back by a skilled player, it will inevitably tick down towards Midnight eventually.
• Sanity Slippage: Though he was never that sane to begin with, Taboritsky becomes increasingly unhinged the longer his rule lasts, as it becomes increasingly clear that no matter what he does, Alexei Romanov is never coming back.
  Taboritsky's Journal Entry in the penultimate Clockwork event before Midnight:
  "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." - Revelation 22:13
  HE IS HERE
  I CAN SENSE HIM BUT HE DOES NOT SPEAK
  SPEAK TO ME SPEAK TO ME
  WHAT WAS IT FOR IF NOT FOR YOU
  I AM GODS VESSEL I AM YOUR SUBJECT I AM THE SALVATION OF RUSSIA
  I AM NOT A JEW I AM NOT CAIN I DID ONLY WHAT YOU ASKED OF ME
  Nabokov, had I known it would lead to this, I
  STOP THAT INFERNAL NOISE STOP THE CLOCK STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP
• Schmuck Bait: Go ahead, take the "Cleansing the Poor" focus which says it will improve "poverty rate", or "Cleanse the Academia from Materialism" saying education standards will improve. It is A VERY GOOD IDEA. Hint: It sharply increases poverty and academic decay.
• The Schizophrenia Conspiracy: Taboritsky's entire ideology. People like Vladimir II in Vyatka are merely pretenders to the throne, as Alexei Romanov II actually survived the Bolsheviks' executions and has been in hiding for decades, and the only thing that will bring him back is if Russia is purged of "impurities". His idea is to turn the country into a massive concentration camp in the style of Burgundy, which in his eyes, is able to bring forth a new era of the Romanov dynasty where the people are faithful and workers are dedicated. The "Skeins" that give him these visions say so.
• Turn the Other Cheek: Exceedingly rare given that he's an insane esoteric Nazi, but Taboritsky is actually willing to forgive those of his fellow right-wingers who ardently reject his ideas, simply because they - especially Lev Gumilyov, who's culturally tolerant to a degree matched only by Svetlana Bukharina - helped get him to where he is.
  "I am more than aware of what my supposed benefactor, the two-faced Lev Nikolayevich, says about me from the safety of exile. He calls me a mere Nazi esoteric, deriding me for crushing his iconoclastic vision of 'Eurasia'. Truthfully, I harbor no resentment towards such men. God would not have sent them to my aid if they were truly evil. Besides, is forgiveness not among the highest of virtues?"
• Self-Immolation: If Komi's rulers decide to have him killed, Taboritsky sets himself on fire before the squads are able to break into the chapel he's hiding in.
• Shout-Out: Taboritsky's Regency contains several references to the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40,000:
  • One focus sees Taboritsky forcibly attach religious elements onto all the factories in the Empire, converting factory buildings with religious imagery and appointing religious officials to every factory who would bless the workers and the machines. This is a reference to the Gothic-Industrial aesthetics of 40K and the industrial worshipers of the Imperium of Man, the Adeptus Mechanicus. The event's reaction quote, "The soul of the machine be with thee", also indirectly references the machine spirits from 40K.
  • One event is named "Suffer Not the Mutant", a reference to an infamous quote associated with the Inquisition in 40K.
• Stay in the Kitchen: A journal entry has him establish policies to enforce this principle of his, writing about how it will address rampant detriments to his idealized vision like prostitution and unfaithfulness.
• Terrible Ticking: The Clock that slowly moves to Midnight can be heard by Taboritsky, which he eventually acknowledges and shouts for it to stop.
• Turbulent Priest: He eventually purges religious orders for resisting and rebelling. As they are also in condemnation of his interpretation of Christianity, Taboritsky later establishes his own unique sect in its place.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Serov and Shafarevich form their coalition, Taboritsky elicits some small laughs with his head bowed before reeling back and roaring with laughter. Afterwards, he composes himself, admits defeat, and abandons his plan.
• Villainous BSoD: Undergoes one in the later journal entries, with the culmination being Midnight. The event◊ "Midnight" has Taboritsky, curled up in a corner, see a vision of a grown-up Tsar Alexei. When he tries to speak, however, the vision changes to that of the dead prince's bones, and he dies screaming.
  He has cursed me! He has given me sight, pried the scales from my eyes, only so that I might behold a blasted wasteland! Russia is the land of Nod, and I? I AM CAIN. I have killed, and ordered killings, and rivers of blood have been spilt in my name. Hundreds die every month for no tangible gain. The only thing that keeps us alive is the knowledge that Alexei is out there somewhere. Is it even knowledge? Am I truly doubting this? I can't I cant I cant
  HE LIVES AS HE MUST
  WHERE IS HE?
• Villains Out Shopping: While leading a movement/religious cult that advocates for a revival of the brutal Tsarist days on the grounds that Tsarevich Alexei is still alive, Taboritsky moonlights, bizarrely, as a DJ for Radio Free Syktyvkar who promotes the Passionaryy's agenda but sounds more like Tucker Carlson instead of the esoteric Nazi he really is while doing so.
• Walking Spoiler: It's hard to discuss any details about Taboritsky without revealing that he is actually a deranged Esoteric Nazi underneath his monarchist surface. Similarly, it's difficult to hide that something happens following his reign.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: When exiled from Komi, an event will describe him wandering west to apparently reach the Aryan Brotherhood, wielding a gun with eight shots loaded. It ends with him having used all of his bullets, and he seemingly disappears into obscurity.
• You Are What You Hate: Taboritsky's mother was a Jewish tailor, and he is painfully aware of this fact, even though he obviously doesn't disclose it publicly. One of his later journal entries encaptures the toll it took on his maddened mind.
  I AM NOT A JEW I AM NOT CAIN I DID ONLY WHAT YOU ASKED OF ME

Tropes for the Holy Russian Empire

Official Name: Holy Russian Empire

Ruling Party: Obshchestvo Vozrozhdeniya Rossiyskoiy Imperii^note Society for the Revival of the Russian Empire

Ideology: Imperial Cult^note National Socialism

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• Allohistorical Allusion: Besides Equitorial Guinea under the aforementioned Francisco Nguema, the Holy Russian Empire can also be compared to Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea state as both it and Kampuchea used its ultra-nationalism to go against its own people. But unlike Pol Pot who was thankfully overthrown Taboritsky caused the Holy Russian Empire to break apart due to his death.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If the Holy Russian Empire reunifies Russia, the game will activate a mission called "The Reckoning", which causes the "clock" to strike once every 6 days and drive Taboritsky mad at a much faster pace. Nothing can be done to slow it down, which is especially helpful for players who are still on the early hours of the "clock" by the time they reunify Russia and need to kill off Taboritsky to access the After Midnight content.

  His eyes shall see his own destruction, and he shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

• Conspicuous Consumption: To show the splendor of the Holy Russian Empire, Taboritsky creates what he calls "purified imperial architecture", which consists of grand architectural displays of opulence created at the expense of the lower class (who are squeezed of their produces and prohibited from becoming rich) and the subhumans (who have all of their possessions confiscated). Taboritsky's own mansion is decorated with huge amounts of gold, marble, and expensive furniture.
• Dark Is Evil: The HRE is of the few countries (along with Omsk and Burgundy) to be painted pitch black on the map, and arguably the most violent of them all.
• Deadly Gas: Taboritsky is by far the most aggressive user of the Syktyvkar Arsenal's revenge weapons. When he coups the government, he attacks the legislative assembly with tear gas. When he is cementing his rule, he can gas Suslov to death. After he declares his Regency, he mandates the liberal use of chemical weapons in battles. He also uses chemical gas bombings in his extermination campaigns, killing entire villages in a manner similar to the German terror bombings. He even creates even more deadly and outright corrosive chemical weapons at the superregional stage, the most notable one being a chemical called Taborite, with one of its ingredients being chlorine trifluoride according to the post-Midnight event "Cold Comfort".
• Even Evil Has Standards: Former head of government Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork ends up purged by Taboritsky because even a committed Fascist anti-semite like Pyotr thought Taboritsky was out of his mind and was taking the HRE way too far.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Exaggerated as extremely as it could be, the nation being ruled by the standards of Esoteric National Socialism and inevitably collapsing. Taboritsky's method of governing is to essentially turn the entire country into a giant concentration camp against the people that he rules over, and long-term planning is not a concept. He detests money and needing to establish an economy, so his main decision is to establish Mega Corps using the flawed slavery system, which all struggle after his death. He addresses poverty and education by purging them, causing a sharp decrease to their bases. All crimes become equally punishable by death, and as time goes on, Taboritsky grows increasingly paranoid and has many supporters purged as well. All of this combined essentially makes manpower nonexistent. His goals can never be achieved, and since everything hinges on his rule and reputation, his death makes the entire empire quickly collapse into a partially uninhabitable anarchy. Overall, Taboritsky's ideology and governing is so bad that establishing it is akin to nuking the territory he takes control over.
• Final Solution: Taboritsky admires Nazi Germany's use of concentration camps and extermination camps to systemically murder Jews and other untermenschen, and believes that the elimination of all subhumans from Russia will make Russia a pure and holy land again. Once in power, Taboritsky follows Hitler's footsteps and carries out exterminations against all non-ethnic Russians in the Holy Russian Empire, considering them to be subhumans who have propagated amongst the pure race for so long.
• Genocide from the Inside: Taboritsky, being a Russian half-Jew, launches what is effectively a massive self-genocide campaign inside his Holy Russian Empire against degenerate Russians (judged using his Burgundian-inspired standards) through his relentless purges, and also genocides Russian Jews as a part of his genocide campaign against non-ethnic Russians.
• God-Emperor: Taboritsky treats the Russian state as a divine machine connected directly to God through Alexei (and in turn, through himself), and Alexei in his mind is a divine figure that all beings in Russia must totally submit to.
• Historical In-Joke: The symbol on the Holy Russian Empire's flag is the symbol of the Pamyat Society, a radically xenophobic and antisemitic Russian far-right organization with Orthodox Monarchist characteristics.^note Unlike TNO's Taboritsky, Pamyat rejects the Romanov dynasty and desires some sort of autocrat that the people must convene and "call upon"; A Führer by Any Other Name, if you will. Incidentally, Valery Yemelyanov, better known in TNO as Aryan Brotherhood member Zigfrid Schultz, was also a member of Pamyat, though he eventually split from Pamyat due to his Slavic neo-pagan beliefs and anti-Christianity.
• Jump Scare: Taboritsky's reunification music is the chilling song Verify Your Clock, which is abruptly cut off by the sound of glass breaking and a man gasping for air, likely Taboritsky himself moments before his Death by Despair or one of his victims. Interestingly, the song (sans sound effects) is from a 1963 Soviet propoganda cartoon of the same name about the virtues of making good use of your time - virtues that Russians under Taboritsky have to adhere to on pain of death.
• Kill the Poor: After uniting to superregionals, Taboritsky begins an extermination campaign on the poorest bottom class, seeing them as degenerate beasts who are poor because of "impiety" or "Jewish subversion", and must be dealt with as with any other subhumans corrupting Russia.
• King in the Mountain: The regime officially espouses the belief that Alexei Romanov, who has been dead for almost fifty years by 1962, is still alive and in hiding, and he will come to his subjects if they prove themselves to be righteous.
• Light Is Not Good: While the map colors the HRE pitch black, the In-Universe aesthetic of the country utilizes a lot of light themes. The flag is mostly yellow with an icon of Jesus in the middle of it. It builds giant expensive buildings of gold and marble labeled "purified imperial architecture". The state regularly invokes religious themes, venerating a Christian martyr as its God-Emperor. All of this takes place while the HRE creates the single cruelest and most bloody regime possible in Russia.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: The HRE creates what Taboritsky calls "purified imperial architecture", constructing buildings and monuments clad in gold, marble, and other expensive materials, all at the expense of the lower classes being purged. This grandiose display does him no good in stopping Midnight.
• The Necrocracy: While in fact a monstrosity headed by Taboritsky and his twisted Imperial Cult, the Holy Russian Empire is nominally a monarchy under Tsarevich Alexey Nikolayevich, who died back in 1917. In turn, after Taboritsky himself dies, high ranking officials desperately try to hide his death, hence "The Regent endures" from the broadcast, before the nightmarish Empire collapses.
• Non-Standard Game Over: While all Russian unifiers' content is planned to last until the game ends in 1982, the Holy Russian Empire will never have more than 10 years of content, since it is doomed to violently collapse in 1972, ushering in a second warlord era. Each of the new warlords only has a few events and no focus tree, cannot unify Russia through regular gameplay, and definitely will not get to fight the Second West Russian War.
• Persecuted Intellectuals: Taboritsky conducts a nation-wide purge of intellectuals, believing that they are a fifth column that teaches evil ideas like equality, Bolshevism, and capitalism.
• Player-Exclusive Mechanic: The Holy Russian Empire is designed to be only able to unify Russia when controlled by a human player.
• Polluted Wasteland: Part of why Taboritsky's government utterly destroys the Russian nation is that the very land ends up poisoned from his constant chemical attacks; the poisons seep into the earth and kill everything, rendering vast territories uninhabitable for decades. Post-collapse events speculate over 10% of Russian land is contaminated to some degree by the end of it all, and 0.4% of Russia is uninhabitable.
• Red Scare: Of a more old school (read: violently antisemitic) variety. Taboritsky is convinced the Judeo-Bolshevik menace has corrupted all of society from Russian women, to the working class, to the Orthodox church, to even his own loyal army. The only way to save Holy Rus is to purge them and cleanse the nation - so the ever-paranoid Regent says, at least.
• Rightful King Returns: Taboritsky wants to restore the long-deceased Alexei Romanov as Tsar of Russia. Needless to say, this can never happen.
• Salt the Earth: When Taboritsky dies and the HRE collapses, the HRE makes one last suicidal all-out chemical attack on all the rebel groups inside the country, aiming to destroy every region that may harbor partisan holdouts.
• Secret Police: Taboritsky restores the Okhrana and makes it even more insanely totalitarian than its previous iteration and the Soviet NKVD.
• State Sec: Created by Taboritsky, the Imperial Shturmoviki is the HRE's answer to the SS, an army of fanatics dedicated to the Emperor deployed to cleanse the Empire of its impurities. As Taboritsky's Sanity Meter drops, he purges them as well.
• The Theocracy: The Holy Russian Empire is an utterly screwed up monarcho-theocracy whose ruler believes that he is acting out divine will, and he must cleanse the holy nation of its impurities.
• Tick Tock Tune: Taboritsky's unification theme is the infamous "Verify Your Clock", a chilling mix of discordant piano notes, shrill flutes and "Psycho" Strings backed by a ticking clock as percussion. Considering the kind of ruler he is, Tick Tock Terror might also be appropriate.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The Holy Russian Empire takes several story elements from Warhammer 40,000's Imperium of Man, a hyperfascist dictatorship based around the worship of a secretly dead immortal sovereign.

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