“Jesus almighty…”

The Scotsman stood there, bewildered at the sight he beheld. The afternoon light reflected off the galvanized metal of the armored cars which held the markings of antediluvian governments, indicating that their presence was rarer than most other things in the wild, wild wastelands of the Lowlands. The uniformed official raised the helmet off his head and began explaining to his commander what all this meant for the Fife Army.

“There’ll be enough cars here to carry hundreds. It’s just a matter of securing the resources to do so… All these cars are empty or rotted of fuel, so we’ll probably have to go south and bring it back, though realistically much of it will become scrap... Sir?”

The commander’s eyes were glazed over at the thought of his new mechanized army. These armored cars hardly had a scratch on them, and all they needed was fuel… They ought to explore these abandoned compounds more often…

[Kingdom of Fife adds 10 HVAR, 10 LVAR, 5 HINA, and 10 LINA of Quality Equipment to its reserves.]

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The recent rapid expansion of the Commonwealth had left many ambitious adventurers scrambling for their own piece of the Cumbrian pie. Hundreds flocked to the new islands, quickly establishing small, unofficial settlements which focused on resource extraction and land exploitation, neither of which was very conducive for sustaining positive relations with the small, tight-knit clan communities that had been developing on the islands since prehistory. This naturally led to conflict between the Cumbrian settlers and the clan natives, eventually concluding with a small nationwide partisan effort to arm the settlers, effectively ensuring the full-blown erasure — be it through violent means or otherwise — of the clan systems on the northern islands.

Actions such as this were bound to catch flak from the local — much larger — MacDonald and MacDougall Clans of the Highlands, who immediately denounced the actions of the not officially government associated settlers as nearly genocidal, as the clan system had thrived on the Argyll island chain for decades without intervention, and these settlers had gone and ruined it.

And, as the butterfly effect goes; a certain political divide between two parties within the Cumbrian and Manx House of Lords formed: one which supported the Argyll settlers and their efforts in resource extraction, and one which did not; denouncing the actions of the settlers, but not particularly demanding that reparations be paid to the natives from the government.

[ 10 Instab for the Commonwealth]

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“Y’know,” George remarked casually, “these things are getting trickier and trickier to fix.”

His coworker stood at the bottom of the ladder to ensure that George didn’t fall from his small perch.

“Yeah. Seems like we’ve been replacing these little bastards every other week. For the better though, I guess. Can’t have a thriving economy without power, rig-”

A deafening sound shattered nearby windows and sent George’s coworker thirty feet back into the cobblestone street, making him unconscious in the process. George himself was nowhere to be seen, as a smoldering, blackened mark replaced where he had once stood on the electric utility pole. George’s death was not the only one that rocked the United Khalsa Republic that afternoon, as thousands of electric boxes connected to the nation’s power grid shorted suddenly and without any warning, sending hundreds ducking for cover and even more covered in glass and ash. Khalsa would be without power for a short while, but the innocent victims of the tragedy would always be remembered.

[the Republic of Khalsa removes 1 PDEV in each province. If there is zero PDEV in a province, ignore that province.]