This quest has no shortage of things to haunt your dreams
- Victoria. You have to do some pretty spectacular things to make North Korea seem like a nice place to live, but Victoria manages to do all them.
- The backstory section of the quest shows the "true" version of the events described in the novel, and it is made clear that Rumford and Kraft were completely fucking nuts. Their attempt to return everyone to subsistence farming? It killed colossal numbers of their people, and not only did they not care, they helped it along, because it made it easier to justify the points of Retroculture.
- Victoria's obsession with slavery. They make the Confederate States of America look tame here.
- It can be said that at most 10% of Victorians are free.
- At the most basic level, your average citizens are manipulated into corvee labor for the government at risk of starvation if they refuse.
- Prisoners, political or otherwise, are used for labor, and No OSHA Compliance is in full effect.
- All Black citizens of Victoria have been forced into serfdom. Even worse, the man who arranged for this was the one Black member of note of the Christian Marine Corps.
- There's an entire class of Victorians who live as Loan Sharks, forcing those who can't pay them back to be their slaves in all but name.
- Victoria practices blatant Chattel Slavery at a series of foreign resorts, with the majority of the staff being slaves trained to do anything the guests desire. And we do mean everything.
- Female captives taken during war are known as "War Brides".
- Victoria is now the slaving capital of the world, with people being traded there a just another form of property.
- Even the average Victorian isn't spared from this. Most live in a Crapsaccharine World that falls apart the minute the Christian Marine Corps Inquisitors find something that doesn't comply with Retroculture.
- Even living outside of Victoria's borders isn't an escape from them. Those aid workers that help out with medicine and agriculture? They report back if they see anything like a tractor, a machine press, or a television, and then send an army to kill everyone and burn your settlement to the ground.
- And God protect you if you have to host Andrew Division. Even if you do everything right, you best hope that they only take away your children to their private "garden" at Blue Mountain, where they are "weeded" if they step out of line.
- The one thing keeping Victoria a Karma Houdini? The New Russian Empire.
- The Collapse that caused society to end? Russia sped it along, deliberately arranging famines to make things more to their benefit. It is explicitly stated that Czar Alexander IX is the most prolific murderer in history for this.
- Alexander's treatment of Victoria eerily remembers that of an abusive spouse. The Realism-Induced Horror feels worse than if he treated them like a classic comic book villain treated his minions.
- The first major series of battles isn't in Victoria's favor, but there is one case where Victorians win... with heavy casualties. The Victorian commander of the Luke Division, General Nathan Colt, aware he would die if he returned to his superiors, commits suicide because of the Pyrrhic Victory, even quoting Pyrrhus himself, and it's detailed.
