Main Characters
Five students in Miss Altman's class on 2 August 1962, the day of Canada's first public nuclear test.[[Spoiler: during the ninety minute period between Canada's first public nuclear test, and the American invasion of Quebec. Their town of Motherwill was in the direct path of Army Group Rockwell, and their teacher, Tosia Altman, and her friend, Ulrike Meinhof, were forced to evacuate the five of you themselves, which they did over a frantic two month period.
Important events: hearing the detonation of the nuclear weapon near Niagara Falls, the one month odyssey of Altman and Meinhof's effort to get you to a major city under Canadian control so you could be reunited with your families (right after a peacetime gas shortage! and later, you find out, Altman's near court-martial for going AWOL to save you), that first moment you saw your parents again, and the cacophony of the Battle of Motherwill, when the American forces came very, very close to encircling the town before you you could have a chance to leave it.
How the students remember these events, whether those recollections are accurate, and how they feel about them varies wildly with the student.
But life goes on, and so too, they moved on with it. It is two years later. Canada has reentered a state of normalcy, Motherwill Grey is opening its doors, and these same five students are now residents at the same dorm entering their Senior year. They may have kept in touch. They may not have communicated at all. But no one forgets.
For a variety of reasons, they are the only members of their class to have returned to Motherwill Grey.]]
- All of the Other Reindeer: All of them have something that isolated them from the rest of their peers, or alienated them from their community. For some, this can be as straightforward as being away from their parents. For others, it can be considerably more dramatic. Their personalities don't necessarily need to be as serious or as funny as whatever happened in their lives. There is always that relationship between the outside and inside, though.
- Character Development: Yes
- Fire-Forged Friends: At bare minimum, since they were in the same classroom during the Battle of Motherwill. The extent to which this friendship manifests can vary wildly-shades of Vitriolic Best Buds, Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, or even mutually nurturing friendships without any displays of emotional hostility. On some level they all make the same distinction between the other four that were there, and the billions that weren't.
- Implausible Hair Color: Dyed hair does exist in the 1960s of this setting.
- It's Personal: Different characters have this towards certain issues, individuals and nationalities. Unlike OTL, the psychic and cultural wounds of the Second World War are not merely fresh, they are being actively cut. If a character is an absolute exception to this rule, this is the result of something else going on with their ideology, psychology, or upbringing. And everybody feels some kind of way about the Americans.
- Meaningful Name: Averted for the most part: Sophie, Delilah and Susan do not seem to have any specific meaning behind the names they chose (unless history has recorded them wrong). The other two are yet to be seen.
- Nice Guy: So far, Susan is the only one that seems to fit this category, to the unending skepticism and exasperation of Sophie and Delilah.
- Non-Uniform Uniform: The Motherwill Grey School implemented school uniforms as part of the Diefenbaker government's overall move towards introducing 'defense readiness' into Canadian society. That being said, there is enough leeway for each character to have a spin on what they add or modify about that uniform.
- Opposing Sports Team: The Brauston Mages are the rival football team to the Motherwill Watchmen.
- Power of Friendship: Implausible, but whether it is actually impossible has yet to be seen.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Not emphasized, but not unheard of.
Sophie [Last name needed here]
Delilah [Last name needed here]
Susan [Last name needed here]
Percival Crate VI
Nate [Last name needed here
Canada
Halifax's peace agreement with Hitler may have bought the British Empire a decade more of borrowed time, but it cost the respect and loyalty of its Crown Dominions. Nowhere was this collapse in esteem more catastrophic than with the Dominion of Canada, who promptly abolished the monarchy and broke all ties with the Empire. Finding himself Premier of a brand new country, and suddenly having to account for the loss of the British Empire's diplomatic and military cover, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King made a number of decisive moves to capitalize on Britain's failure, from a highly ambitious refugee resettlement program, to using British military defectors to spearhead a rearmament program. As the pre-eminent leader of the anti-fascist cause, Canada historically rivaled the United States as the destination of choice for fugitives from Europe.
And not long afterwards, the United States.
Economically supercharged by the influx of talent and population, but politically fractious, and embroiled with their southern neighbor in something that is increasingly indistinguishable from a Cold War, Canada marks 1962 with its greatest and most provocative move yet: the live broadcast of its first detonation of a nuclear weapon.
Political Parties
The Progressive Conservative party
- Batman Gambit: Crate's strategies often make assumptions on how his latest target will react to an extreme provocation. He may not always get the optimal outcome from the reaction, but he's positioned to emerge better off from the outcome.
- The Chessmaster: Widely perceived as this due to his migration from his radicalism to Tory conservatism. Most of his critics are convinced he's still a Fascist in Tory colors. Potential area of insecurity for him is the extent to which he's either this or just Born Lucky. If the former, a glorious future awaits him. If the latter, he will only last as long as that luck does.
- Did Not Think This Through: As a Senator, Percy term of office ends with mandatory retirement at age 75. He is considerably younger than that. As a result, he enjoys tax-payer funded proximity to the levers of power for the duration of the best years of his political life.
- Since he doesn't have to worry about reelection, he is electorally impervious to the kind of bad luck that can generally imperil a politician, and he doesn't have to worry about keeping his base happy either.
- Additionally, he has plenty of actual power at his disposal, since the Senate can veto legislation it deems inappropriate.
- Kicked Upstairs: Was appointed to the Senate of the Federation on the Advice of Premier John Diefenbaker. It is very likely this was done to make sure he could never become Premier.
- Xanatos Gambit: Many of his political strategies are failsafe, and will often boost him no matter what happens. His current role is the result of one such contingency-as an MP, Percy Crate could have challenged Diefenbaker for control of the Tories and the Leadership. But because Diefenbaker named him to the Senate, he now is effectively in office for up to the next 35 years, and his seniority as a ranking member of the party will only continue to increase. Diefenbaker's Tory critics worry that he took a fringe possibility of a Crate Premiership and turned it into a solid likelihood.
The Liberal Party
The Social Credit Party
- Heroic Fatigue: Running an entire Province would be a large task for anyone, but Senator Manson's insurgency and the far-flung nature of So Cred's demographic means Manning spends much of his life in 1964 failing to sleep in train cars. Aspects of Premier work are compounded in difficulty with Ernest's attempts to juggle them while on the road. This is just one more sign that things in So Cred are coming to their boiling point, and he and Manson both know it.
The Continental Communist Party
'The teachers'
In fact, only Tosia is a teacher between the two of them. The students' constant description and address of Ulrike as a teacher is a misconception that Ulrike loves to humor and Tosia gave up correcting. They were teaching a remedial history class the students were in at the time World War II broke out, and moved heaven, earth, and Miss Altman's extended stay in a Canadian military jail getting them home. Things are back to normal: Miss Altman is a teacher, and Ulrike Meinhof still lists Miss Altman as a reference on her resumes.
Tosia Altman
A history teacher at Motherwill Grey. She seems very easily overwhelmed by her job-and in a world where almost nothing is known about the European conflict that isn't curated by one fascist government or another, history, is universally agreed to be the murkiest part of the high school academia. What makes her situation especially interesting, however, is her incredibly proximity to that history: she is a Polish-Jewish refugee widely known for participating in the only successful military insurrection against the Greater German Reich. In other words, the textbook example of a primary source to a lost history.
Definitely retired from the socialist/zionist nazi-fighting business.
Also a first lieutenant in the Canadian Reserve Forces.
- Blood from the Mouth: In 2 August 1962, she has a coughing fit that is sudden and forceful enough that she can't cover her mouth in time, and the blood she coughs up actually splatters the desk. For now, it's hard to say if it's indicative of anything physical: that incident ends that chapter; the following chapter delves into the nature of Lord Halifax's psychosomatic stomach pains; and the next chapter picks up right with Tosia and Ulrike attempting to explain to the class what psychosomatic ailments are.
Ulrike Meinhof
Tosia Altman's acquaintance. The owner of the television set Tosia borrowed for the class to watch the Prince Charles Island nuclear test. Sometimes mistaken for being a teacher or teaching assistant at Motherwill, Ulrike is what Tosia derisively calls "a professional hot mess". As one of a mere handful of German political refugees, she is the direct witness to Western Europe's eventual embrace of the Third Reich's brutality.
After a short but widely publicized career in activism-notably shooting the German minister of Propaganda and using her journalism job as a cover to jailbreak Tosia Altman from likely deportation to Germany-it seems Ulrike's political terrorism days are behind her. What, exactly, she's running towards is a mystery.
Also is a Sergeant in the Canadian Reserve Forces.
