As the Teutonian forces retreated back to their festungs, they made a habit of destroying anything that could be used by the undead. Fields were torched, villages were razed and the very dirt paths beneath their feet were ripped up as they fell back. All of Teutonia was in a mass pseudo-exodus to the great fortress cities that had been constructed over the past 1500 years. Numbering thirty-one in total, these festungs/ fortress cities made up a last line of defense against any foe. Built to be knockoffs of the great final bastion of Albion, each festungs was loosely symmetrical and had walls that were far thicker and higher than those of Ma-Ginnote. It was almost as if the Teutonians were compensating for something.

Unfortunately for the civilian population of Teutonia, the thirty-one fortress cities were already nearly full, leaving them with no other recourse than to camp outside the walls in tent cities. This was a cruelly calculated move on behalf of The Leader and his Purity Council. They had fully devolved into the same madness that had claimed the group they were loosely based off of, now viewing their own ‘Pure’ citizens as ‘impure’ for letting such disaster befall them. They, in their crazed foolishness, would let millions be butchered and raised by the undead, just so that the ‘loyal and pure’ Teutonians would survive to repopulate the world with their ‘refined and noble bloodlines.

Basically, they would let everyone else die off and then let their inbred children inherit the world. As any student of history could tell you, human eugenics is a bad way to keep humanity going. In real life, you need merely look at the Hapsburg Dynasty for an example as to how poorly that can go. Unfortunately for the Teutonians, they didn’t see things that way. They were, like the rest of the Confederacy, still utterly convinced that ‘bloodline purity’ and ‘noble superiority over lesser groups of people’ were legitimate things that existed. This was one of the reasons why The Leader and the Purity Council were doing this; they were, by this point, damn near batshit crazy due to centuries of inbreeding and the stress caused by the invasions.

What the Teutonian forces had not known was that Krueger had predicted this move, and all the craziness that went with it. As a former Field Marshal of the Teutonian Knightly Junta he was aware of the plans that his former nation had put in place for the event that was happening. He knew the exact amount of land available for farming inside the fortress cities, he knew the number of layers of fortifications and their possible weak points.

He also knew that if he could convince the people camping outside each of the festungs that they were better off living under Darksol’s banner then he would have dealt a massive blow to the pride of his former master and his brown-nosing, sycophantic Purity Council. He knew they secretly wanted the invasion to peter out and retreat, thus letting them keep their mindless masses and build up again at a faster pace, thus removing the ‘mindless masses’ from their influence would be a devastating blow to Teutonia’s morale. A new way forward had to be made, and Krueger had just the idea he felt would turn the masses away from the Knightly Junta.

…

Proselytizing.

It was something Kain hated with a passion. The idea of going out and trying to force your beliefs onto others was something that the New Kain found abhorrent. Still, this just meant that he was being a hypocrite, as his own subordinates were going out and spreading the ‘good word’ about him, Alexis and Zalga. Kain had done and said many hypocritical things, which irked him to no end, but he had always rationalized the things he had done as being for the greater benefit of those around him and those who lived in this world with him. So, when Krueger had come forward with the idea of waging a propaganda war against the Junta inside their own lands, Kain was unsure of how to respond. Ideally, he would like to avoid unnecessary deaths and gain a stronger foothold in the center of Europa, but the idea of using the propaganda Krueger was talking about rubbed him the wrong way.

Krueger’s plan was to undermine the control of the High Command of Teutonia through directed smear campaigns using a mix of controlled truths and blatant lies, pseudo-religious political indoctrination, staged and scripted debates and more. To Kain, this was hitting a little too close to home, as such things had become more and more commonplace on Earth, and now it was seeping into his own nation. He had found out that schools were deviating from what had been mandated and had effectively become similar to schools in China and North Korea; places to instill political and religious ideas into the impressionable minds of the youth, just with a great deal more education regarding Math, Norma (the common language), Science and greatly edited History.

So, with all of this going on, Kain was apprehensive about Krueger’s plan. However, convincing from Alexis and Alistaira (among others) helped sway his mind. Giving the go ahead, he added a condition to the plan, or rather, an objective. Teutonia would not be absorbed into Darksol proper if the edited plan worked out. While Krueger was at first unsure of his new role being a good fit, Kain insisted that if Krueger wanted to make a nation of fanatics he had to start with his own birthplace. With this new plan of attack the invasion became one not of conquest, but one designed to puppet Teutonia itself. Krueger would become the new Leader of a new incarnation of Teutonia, one built not on racial purity, but on merit and merit alone.

A new nation was being formed from the dying husk of the old one. Villages were rebuilt, fields replanted, road fixed and improved and running water and electricity was set up for each village. People in the crowded shanty towns outside of the walls slowly became aware that their former residences had been reestablished and greatly enhanced due to word of mouth. No one knew who started the rumors, but they soon spread like a storm.

“The undead are not here to slaughter us, but to serve us!”

“There is a Former Field Marshal who is forcing them to work for Teutonia’s benefit!”

“He was betrayed due to caring for the people, regardless of their blood purity.”

“He was sent to die along with his entire army because he wanted to give common people a chance.

“He wants to remake Teutonia into a nation where effort makes raises you up, not birthright.”

These rumors and more began to circulate, and nothing the Teutonian military did could seem to stop it. As a month passed, most of the shanty towns began to slowly empty as people cautiously went back to their old homes. As no rations had been given to them and they had burned through their own foodstuffs, they could do nothing but go home and hope they did not die. A week after that and the only traces of the masses that had once surrounded the festungs that remained were the crude tents and shacks that had been left to fall apart in the elements. When a scout came back from a risky expedition and reported that the villages were fully repaired and thriving, even the infallible and all-knowing Leader could not understand what had happened.

The villages were flying a new flag, one whose colors were black and grey, rather than the red, black and white of the Teutonian flag. On the top and bottom of the flag were two thin strips of black, with a grey/ silver middle which was adorned with two swords flanking a stylized black plus sign. Hung on a separate flag pole at the same height was a flag whose colors were light grey, deep blue and black. It had deep blue as the main color of the flag with a center circle of grey and a black sun in the center. The second flag was that of Darksol, the first was that of the new nation.

It would only be after the thirty-one festungs were taken that the new nation would truly begin its meteoric rise as the home of the most well-oiled military under Kain’s control that was not Darksol itself. The ‘Greater Teutonian Union State’ had taken its first steps towards greatness.