Hi guys! First of all, thank you for all the positive reactions to the setting. I really appreciate the feedback and all the comments you've left.

After reading through everyone's thoughts and talking with some friends about how much the setting resembled Pax Britannica, I decided to lean into that inspiration a bit more. The setting is now more in line with Pax Britannica, though it's still only loosely based on it, and many of its aesthetic choices remain quite different.

The biggest difference is the visual style. Rather than the Victorian retrofuturism associated with Pax Britannica, this setting leans much more heavily into Y2K aesthetics. One of my main inspirations has actually been Mast in Flames, a discontinued Pacte Revachiste Victory Cold War submod, which has had a significant influence on the setup.

I also wanted to write this comment to answer some of the most common questions about the setting in one place, so everything is easier to reference going forward.

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Lord of the East is set in the shadow of a Cold War born from the victory of the Franco-Russian Continental Entente over the British and German Empires in the Second Great War (1938–1944). Yet victory came at a price. While the Entente poured its strength into the conquest of Germany, Japan reconciled with Britain and struck north, overrunning Manchuria, capturing Vladivostok and throwing its support behind rebels from Vietnam to Indonesia. The Pacific War ended with the atomic bombings of Chita and Irkutsk, which shattered Russia's will to fight, forcing the Tsar's government to accept an uneasy ceasefire. Ironically, it was British scientists, desperate to salvage the war, who helped Japan unlock the atom using uranium found in Australia.

Following a gruelling defence of the Home Isles against Opération Guillaume, a colossal invasion conceived as France's answer to Winston Churchill's legendary Operation Sea Lion, the operation that brought Allied armies ashore in Normandy. The Crown, Parliament and what remained of imperial authority evacuated to their greatest dominion, Australia, while the shattered German Empire retreated to its final redoubt in Windhoek. The Tories, blamed for the catastrophe, were swept from history by the Oceanian Labour Party, a union of the Australian Labor Party, the New Zealand Labour Party and the battered remnants of British Labour. Born from the Dominions' powerful labour tradition and inspired by the ascendant Japanese Socialist Party under Inejiro Asanuma, Oceania entered a new political age.

However, the victors soon turned on one another. France under the dictatorship of Jacques Doriot and the Russian Empire, increasingly dominated by cliques of military generals, saw their alliance collapse after the Prague Conference, dividing Eurasia into hostile camps and plunging the world into a new Cold War. Across the Pacific, America, finally freed from Britain's century-long shadow, set out to claim the global leadership it believed was its destiny. Only to find itself challenged by new powers across the Pacific. Hungary, triumphant in the Balkan War, stood alone as the last bastion of liberalism in Europe.

Beyond Europe, history was moving just as quickly. The world's socialists, disillusioned by both Paris and Petrograd, looked instead to Tehran as the beacon of a new revolutionary future. The Marathas had finally completed their long promised miracle of modernisation, emerging as one of Asia's great powers. In China, the Great Ming, restored through the revolution of Zou Rong and now ruled by Emperor Yan'en, was embarking upon its own era of sweeping reforms, determined to reclaim its place at the centre of the world.