Roleplay / Victoria Falls

To the shores of Maine.

— Sara M. Johnson

Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest is a Forum Quest created by PoptartProdigy on Sufficient Velocity.com, based on William S. Lind's Victoria. It began on 11 March 2019.

Set 25 years after the events of the book, the North American continent is a warzone of survivor communities and successor states. Standing triumphant above them all is Victoria, a totalitarian Retroculturalist nation stretching from Quebec to New York state. With backing from the New Russian Empire, Victoria keeps those who challenge its control over the former United States subjugated and its neighbors intimidated.

The players take control of the Commonwealth of Free Cities, a Midwestern successor state on a mission to bring Victoria to is knees and restore the United States to its former glory.

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Victoria Falls features the following tropes:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: The quest takes place from 2074 onwards.
• Adaptational Skill: Victoria is nowhere near as competent as the original novel portrays them, but the QM actually improved some of their Too Dumb to Live strategies from canon to keep them from being too easy to defeat, i.e. they now have a professional standing army and tanks more advanced than T-34s.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • "Father Dimitri", portrayed in Lind's novel as the "unofficial liaison" of Tsar Alexander IV, is now an Okhrana agent who was tasked with forcing the collapse of the United States by assisting Rumford and Kraft in the Civil War.
  • Victoria itself - since they are no longer the protagonist of the story, we get to see exactly how much of a hellhole it is and how horrible the people living in the nation are.
• Adaptational Wimp: Victoria is understandably nowhere near the Invincible Villain or, well, hero the novel portrays it as. Most of their victories are solely due to Russian backing and blatant opportunism.
• Alternate History: The United States defaulted on sovereign debt in 2019. The ensuing global financial crisis in 2021 caused Russia to collapse into anarchy until an unknown warlord stabilized the country and assumed the title of Tsar Alexander IV.
  • Additional discussion among the questers regarding the actions of the House of Hohenzollern in the novel has suggested that the Point of Divergence may actually have been during the early 20th century.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: When news comes in of Victoria's army being completely destroyed, Detroit erupts in to ecstatic celebration as they realize they aren't going to die.
• Badass Boast: "To the shores of Maine", which effectively declares that the Commonwealth will destroy Victoria, however long it takes.
• Based on a Great Big Lie: The Quest's backstory depicts many of the events of the original Victoria novel as largely fictional, being the officially sanctioned and heavily propagandized history by the Victorian government about the Second American Civil War, meant to enhance its image as the heroic nation conquering the "Cultural Marxists" within the United States.
  • New York City never joined Victoria. "Father Dimitri" barely managed to dissuade Rumford and Kraft from launching what would have, even by the best case scenarios, been a very costly invasion against the city.
  • The Northern Confederation's campaign against Cascadia's "radical environmentalists" was a Russo-Japanese venture to eliminate an independent but Chinese-aligned west coast state. Rumford was an observer, but his smuggling of a (non-nuclear) bomb into Shanghai briefly caused an international flashpoint that Alexander IV was forced to mediate.
  • The "privateers of the Aztec Empire" that the Northern Confederation fought in the Gulf of Mexico were actually just random pirates, and the campaign against them wasn't quite as successful as the book depicted.
  • Rumford's war with the "Democratic Republic of Azania", the genocidally misandrist government controlling former California, was actually a poorly-led campaign against the Pacific Republic. Victoria only "won" by exhausting California's resources through a combination of attrition and a Russian naval blockade.
  • "Cloaca Devlin," the idol-worshiping bishop burned at the stake by Victoria, was actually Chloe Devlin, and her "heresies" were typical Episcopal doctrine like female ordination.
  • Victoria cracking cold fusion and building a dam across the Bay of Fundy is merely a network of refurbished nuclear power plants and an absurdly ambitious tidal power station respectively, both of which are run by Russian corporations.
  • Rumford was sent abroad to retake Constantinople from a united Muslim caliphate, eventually returning home and dying of old age on his farm. However, the crusade was a ruse by Tsar Alexander to get him and his inner circle in one place and wipe them out with a Spetsnaz team.
• Break Out the Museum Piece:
  • Russian-imported T-34 tanks, along with BMP-1s and BTR-60s, are the main armored force of the Victorian military.
  • A significant chunk of the Commonwealth Air Force consists of literal museum pieces, refurbished because no other jet aircraft were available after a generation of Russian/Victorian pillaging of the American heartland. The resulting air corps is obsolescent even by Victorian standards. They are utterly outmatched by Victorian numbers and F-16 fighters except that the New California Republic has extensively sabotaged the Victorians' missiles and engines.
• Colonel Badass: Ron "Hellfire" Burns led the Devil Brigade around America defeating various tyrants for decades before being promoted to Four-Star Badass by the Commonwealth.
• Cool Plane: The Commonwealth Air Force is flying circus of literal museum pieces that got badly mauled in the Erie Campaign. While bolstered by captured Victorian F-16s, they get a real boost in a quartet of F-22 Raptors, leaving the selected pilots dumbstruck in awe.
• Crippling Over Specialization: As recommended by William Lind, Victoria focuses only on light infantry with practically no navy and an air force focused entirely on air superiority in a continent where basically no-one has an air force. Chicago runs roughshod over them with armor, heavy artillery and naval superiority.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Pretty much the only way to describe the Erie War, where Victoria finally runs into a faction with competent military strategy. Their army is completely annihilated, their navy is smashed twice, and a large part of their air force is destroyed or captured.
• Divided States of America: Decades of brutalization and decay has made organization difficult beyond the city-state level, but some polities are powerful enough to control multiple former states and/or large parts of them. Major factions include:
  • The Commonwealth of Free Cities, the player faction, a parliamentary republic based out of Chicago and expanding into the Great Lakes region.
  • Victoria, formally the Northern Confederation, is a fascist totalitarian state currently in control of much of the Eastern Seaboard, stretching from Quebec's eastern coast to the New York-Pennsylvania border.
  • The Free City of New York, an independent city-state currently in control of NYC proper and all of Long Island. It acts as a haven for all anti-Victorian refugees and is kept alive by European aid.
  • The New California Republic, a democratic nation whose policies and political affairs are under direct Russian oversight.
  • An democratic enclave in Miami. Its political system is ... complicated to say the least.
  • A restoration of the state of Kansas currently limited to the northeast portion of the state.
• Easy Logistics: Averted, Ron Burns has the "Professionals Study Logistics" customization to create an effective logistic corps to provide supply. Conversely, the Victorians' disregard for supply lines and focus on decentralized groups both raiding for supplies and assuming that any war will be won swiftly and decisively saps their effectiveness in a protracted struggle.
• Elite Army: The Devil Brigade managed to maintain training and equipment at close to pre-collapse standards, which makes them the best military unit in North America outside of the NCR. In fact they are so good that they automatically succeed at any engagement they are in.
• Enemy Civil War: After the Commonwealth's victory against the Victorians, the CMC divisions revolted due to wanting to preserve their special position in the army and desiring vengeance against the Commonwealth.
• Even Evil Has Standards: "Father Dimitri," a Russian patriot, was troubled by how easily Rumford and his followers were willing to destroy their own country.
• Fictional Political Party: Several parties have coalesced in the Commonwealth:
  • Commonwealth Progressive Party: Social Democrats that developed from the leftward half of a split in the Democrats. Leaders of the current ruling coalition.
  • Popular Commonwealth Progressive Party: A more socialist version of the previous party that developed from a the leftward half of split in that party. Junior partner in the ruling coalition.
  • Christian Socialist Party: Socialist party based on liberation theology, but does not advocate for theocracy. Junior partner in the ruling coalition.
  • Commonwealth Farmer-Laborer Party: Communist and currently the main opposition party, very fond of unions.
  • Commonwealth Green Party: Very devoted to environmental issues and is more generally left wing.
  • Unreconstructed Democratic Party: What remains of the classic Democratic party, mix of Social Democrats and New Capitalists. Part of the Right-Wing opposition.
  • American Constitutional Restorationist Party: Believe the old ways of America are what made it great and that they should be returned to, New Capitalist. Another part of the Right-Wing opposition.
  • Unionist Party: Victorian Sympathisers that won't admit to being Victorian Sympathisers. After a campaign lambasting their policies and leadership, and their assassination attempts at the other politicians being foiled, they have ceased to be a force in politics, for now.
• Final Solution: General Blackwell's After-Action Report to Victoria's high command following the war with the Commonwealth outlines his belief that the Commonwealth cannot be subjugated the way other Victorian conquests have — the "Machine State" has no central leaders, with each citizen instead being a component in the Commonwealth. He instead recommends exterminating everyone above a certain age to permanently destroy the ideals of the Commonwealth.
• Free-Sample Plot Coupon: Thanks to a really good roll when organizing the libraries, Chicago discovers that it has the Declaration of Independence, potentially gaining massive leverage as an inheritor to Old America, but it could also paint a gigantic target on their back should they reveal they have it.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Although the Victorians are the main enemy, the Tsar's Imperialist ambitions loom large over the setting. The Tsar is more competent than the Victorians and made them his puppets.
• Great Offscreen War: Many of the Commonwealth's leaders are veterans of Chicago's bloody war against the Nazis, which took place at some point between the end of the novel and the start of the Quest.
  • "Word About The World" updates speak of geopolitical developments and crises outside of the Commonwealth's sphere of influence, particularly in the Caribbean and East Asia.
• Green Aesop: Tsar Alexander IV wants to rule the world, not watch it drown and die. Climate change is a top priority for him. Princess Katerina is less interested in world conquest and more in environmental sustainability through her Climate Action Foundation, including outright paying to decarbonize Chicago's electricity grid.
• HA HA HA—No: Sara Johnson's initial reaction to Princess Katerina — heir to one of the men who destroyed old America — swanning into Chicago without notice, disrupting the ongoing local conference, to ask the Commonwealth to reduce their carbon emissions.
• Hate Fic: The whole reason PoptartProdigy started this quest and a lot of players participated in it is out of completely loathing and spite towards Lind's novel and the fascistic views championed by it.
• Heel–Face Turn: The city-state of Toledo was told by the Victorians that Detroit was going to invade them and accepted Victorian support. When the Vics are getting their asses handed to them and no threat from Detroit materializes, Toledo turns on them, destroying the last of the Victorian army and capturing their air force. They then enthusiastically join the Commonwealth along with Detroit.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: During his tenure as Commonwealth's first President, Burns was too busy juggling internal matters and military build-up to give attention to foreign (meaning non-Commonwealth Americans) diplomacy, and this allowed the Victorians to spread propaganda to nearby communities that the Commonwealth were warmongers that wanted to conquer them, making them stay neutral during the Victoria's Invasion of Detroit.
• Historical In-Joke: Alexander IV's son Nicholas, as with the last Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov, is said to "mostly [agree] with whoever spoke to him last."
• Home by Christmas: General Blackwell claims verbatim that "We will stamp out this revolt by Christmas." Naturally, he does not.
• Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: Neither the Commonwealth nor Victoria came to the peace talks expecting the peace to last more than a couple years, they just both needed time to prepare for more war.
• Invaded States of America:
  • Russia has annexed Alaska in its entirety, with the New California Republic and Puerto Rico as its client states in addition to Victoria.
  • Imperial Japan currently controls the Hawaiian Islands, Oregon, Washington, and all of British Columbia west of the Cascade Mountains.
• King in the Mountain: According to folklore, Barack Obama was poisoned by Donald Trump and now sleeps in the depths of Lake Erie, to awake when the United States is restored.
• La Résistance: One exists within Victoria itself and was a possible starting position at the beginning of the quest, though the pervasiveness of the CMC keeps them fragmented and hard to contact. One of their members is Maria Mercedes, the former First Lady. An Omake describes their struggles.
• Literary Agent Hypothesis: Invoked. The premise of the story is that John Rumford was an Unreliable Narrator who filtered his account of the events surrounding the rise of Victoria through a combination of his own megalomania and Self-Serving Memory and as well as a bunch of straight up lies, propaganda, and Wish-Fulfillment to make both himself and the state of Victoria look better.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: With Victoria properly consolidated, "Father" Dimitri concludes that William Kraft is no longer of any use to Russia's efforts and has also proven far too unstable to be allowed to control Victoria without oversight. He arranges for Kraft to be poisoned, and Kraft's personal doctor, equipped to the finest standards of Retroculture, is surprisingly unable to find anything suspicious about his employer's death, and so it is deemed that Kraft died from natural causes in his sleep.
• Make the Bear Angry Again: Russia, in the wake of the global financial crisis, was overtaken by neo-Tsarist elements, who later co-opted a fascistic movement in the US to take advantage of a series of disasters to break up America and create Victoria as a prime ally for their imperial ambitions. In the present, Imperial Russia is now the world's dominant superpower, under the leadership of Tsar Alexander IV. It's also a fairly open secret that Victoria is their local enforcer in the US.
• Mirror Universe: OOC, the "Negaverse", a series of Hilarious Outtakes where the Victorians are the hero faction...and the Commonwealth keeps on winning the victories they do in canon due to the quest players being dumb and valuing their pet theories over adaptation. The events of Lind's book itself were a previous quest where the alt-players opted for an ability that gave them more favorable rolls through Omake but distorted the information they received.
• Mission Creep: The Commonwealth falls into this as they get high on victory fever and Victoria walks out on peace negotiations. To get them back to the table, Chicago launches Operation Foil, an invasion of Victorian territory to seize the Welland Canal. Facing minimal resistance, they then capture Buffalo but Blackwell won't take the bait. They are massively overextended, winter is coming, and public will at home is running out. They succeed in drawing him out by declaring a plebiscite on whether the residents want to remain a part of Victoria. Luckily, the referendum votes to remain and Victoria, humiliated, signs a punitive peace treaty without complaint. The Commonwealth is able to withdraw before the lake freezes over and evacuates any civilians who wanted to leave with them.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Blackwell and a lot of Victorian propaganda after the Erie War refer to the Commonwealth as the "Machine State", a pseudo-Hive Mind that destroys its enemies in a storm of metal.
• Omake: Players frequently write side-stories that build upon characters and worldbuilding that count towards dice rolls if PoptartProdigy deems them canon. General Blackwell is a notable Canon Immigrant created in an omake before being incorporated into the story proper.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted big time. There are four States of Superior, one in Duluth, one in Marquette, one in Sault Ste. Marie, and one in Thunder Bay. There is also the State of Minnesota at Minneapolis and the State of Minnesota at Bedmiji, which is the actual pre-Collapse state government. Not to mention the Commonwealth's president Sara Johnson and her closest advisor Sara Goldblum.
• Patron Saint: The Church of the Shepherd, a folk religion among the Victorian resistance, tells stories of the Shepherds: former presidents, martyrs, and resistance figures embodying and teaching different aspects of faith, life, and guerilla warfare techniques.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Tsar Alexander IV runs on this, which is why he is so dangerous. He advocates for ecology because he wants to rule a world that isn't dying, and has Kraft and Rumford assassinated once they prove to be more trouble than worth.
• Released to Elsewhere: The official (i.e. the original novel's) description of Rumford's final fate was that he and and his men went on a "crusade" to retake Constantinople from a united Muslim caliphate, after which he eventually returned home and ultimately died peacefully of old age on his farm. In reality, "Father" Dimitri decided that Rumford's megalomania and warmongering might have been useful when Victoria was still in its expansionist phase, but long-term Russian designs required Victoria to begin a political transition into being a more stable and passive Puppet State, so keeping him around was just going to be more trouble than he was worth. In reality, the "crusade" was a ruse to lure Rumford and those of his men who were most ideologically devoted to his cause to an isolated place, so a Spetsnaz team could ambush and liquidate them all in one fell swoop.
• Russia Takes Over the World: Russia is the world's premier superpower, ruling much of the world either directly through military conquest, or through puppets and proxies. But their golden imperial age is beginning to signs of waning with a resurgent European Union and a reunited China slowly, but surely starting to challenge their hegemony.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: To say that the Commonwealth has a special antipathy for Victoria's policies of slavery and "war brides" would be an understatement. Sara Johnson could barely conceal her anger at the Andrew Division, a CMC Crusader Division particularly infamous for kidnapping women and children, when confronted with the ambassador from The Blue Mountain Farmers, a young women taken as a child to Andrew Division's little experiment.
• Stepford Smiler: The Blue Mountain Farmers were raised in an environment where showing negative emotion, especially around their "Papas", made them liable to be "weeded."
• Succession Crisis: Tsar Alexander IV is an old man. Catherine is the first in line, more capable, and favored by the Tsar but doesn't want to rule, while Nicholas, incompetent but supported by the court, does. When Alexander finally kicks the bucket in 2076, Nicholas takes control and Catherine disappears.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • The Victorian government's attempts to force their population into subsistence farming results in massive dieoffs from starvation, as most people are not equipped to grow their own food.
  • Turns out Lind's theories of "Fourth Generation Warfare," focusing on light infantry, extreme decentralization, and living off the land, doesn't stand up to an artillery-supported, well-organized, and logistically-sound force a.k.a. a properly-led "third generation" military.
  • While the air force of Victoria is superior due to being their top priority, they are still beatable because they use horrible tactics like sticking in close formation, which backfire the moment missiles that don't need direct hits are shot at their positions. Also, their neglect of navy allows the Commonwealth to dominate naval warfare, taking over lakes and ports, and drawing out the precious Victorian planes.
  • It's made abundantly clear that a polity like Victoria would easily collapse on itself if its traits were applied in reality. The only reason Victoria is still functioning is because Russia keeps propping it up.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Exploited by Max of the Vox Populi to insinuate that a high-ranking member of the CMC is a double agent... among other things.
  This is in their own books. Please don't ask how we got those books, we won't tell you. I can say that the entire CMC upper command is utterly trustworthy, and none of them have turned, none all.
  I will also remind people that there is no evidence that the rivalry comes from a bad breakup between Blackwell and one of the, shall we say, more earthly CMC generals. There has been no official response to rumors that their affair was broken up by the inquisitors, and a heartbroken Blackwell was forced to side against his lover.
• Take That!:
  • The backstory is a very blatant one against the former United States President Donald Trump, as it is established that he was the one who had the United States default on its sovereign debt, and in a manner that indicates he did it mostly to spite his political opponents.
  • The war between the Commonwealth and Victoria, even if it was decided by rolls, is a protracted Take That! against everything Victoria represents. Long story short, Victory is totally annihilated fighting a third generation army, and loses equipment it has no chance of replacing on its own.
• Tank Goodness: Played with.
  • The Devil Brigade's M1A2 Abrams, despite 50+ years of service, remain the most powerful armored vehicles on the North American continent. They are also incredibly resource-intensive and their ability to be deployed is becoming finite.
  • Zigzagged with the Victorian Army's T-34 tanks. While more than capable against infantry, technicals, and lightly armored vehicles employed by their enemies, their century-old design make them an anachronism in 21st century warfare.
• Too Dumb to Live: The Victorian Air Force: While competent in air-to-air combat, Lind's "Fourth Generation Warfare" forces them into this during air-to-ground combat. Not only are they lacking air-to-ground weaponry, but their doctrine calls for flying in close formation against surface-to-air batteries, the idea being that the missiles will misinterpret their formation as massive singular aircraft and fly through the center of the formation, sparing the planes. In reality, all SAM missiles since the Cold War have been equipped with proximity fuses as standard issue, allowing the Commonwealth to lay waste to the VAF.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: General Burns spends the winter before the Erie War whipping Detroit's militia into shape, taking them from basically armed rabble to something useful in a fight.
• United Europe: Downplayed. While the European Union forms credible opposition to Russia, its member states - Great Britain, France, Italy and Greece - have all suffered civil wars. Poland meanwhile bled itself white holding back the Russian advance. Only Germany and the Nordic states are said to have been continuously stable.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The Commonwealth has to deal with opposition parties in their own parliament as seriously as external enemies, lest the ruling coalition lose elections and get their policies rolled back.
  • Cascadia's Rainbow Uprising in 2062 fractured after the Victoria-aligned White Army indulges in killing Japanese civilians in Kitimat. Their Revivalist and Native allies turned on them to stop the atrocity, triggering other groups to settle their own scores.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Illinois governor Audrey Jameson, one of the foregone options for leader during faction creation, is assassinated on the first turn. Her death forms the impetus of founding a counter-intelligence office and uncovers a Unionist Party conspiracy.
• Wham Line: After a heavily obscured dice roll for a Hopeless Boss Fight and a scene with the Warlord of Toledo preparing to launch a military action while brooding over a map of Commonwealth positions, Surprise Attack: Toledo vs. Victoria.
• Written by the Winners: John Rumford had altered history in his favor regarding the rise of Victoria, resulting in the original book.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The protagonists of the original novel. "Father" Dimitri had Kraft poisoned and wiped out Rumford's "crusaders" with a Spetsnaz team before covering up their deaths, hoping the next crop of leaders would not be so dedicated to Retroculture.

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