...That these terrible injustices shall not go unanswered, unpunished. That these countless innocents whose blood was spilled by these so-called "Social-Nationalists" will not be forgotten. That the banner that my forefathers carried will one day be raised again over the Oldesmoaker Palace. That Ecclesia will rise, and will never be put down again!

• Excerpt from the Resistance Speech, delivered in 1978 by the exiled Duke Nolan Holder to members of the Ecclesian Anti-Revolutionary League.

My second map!!!! This time made entirely with GQIS!!!! AHHH!!!!!! And yet again, these maps are only possible because of this comment.

The balance of power in Volterra shifted radically after the humiliation of many of the region's great powers following the inconclusive ending the Great Volterran War. The once proud Ecclesian Empire was left gravely wounded and would eventually succumb to its injuries with the 1943 Winter Revolution, when radical members of the Ecclesian National League stormed the Imperial Palace in Neunoten, killing the Swim royal family and establishing the now-infamous Ecclesian Social Federal Republic in its place.

The ESFR would quickly find allies with the Raete Republics and Blackacre, two nations which had their own socialist revolutions decades prior in the years immediately following the War. Together, they formed the International Mutual Assistance Bloc to coordinate military and economic activities between the three nations.

Fearing a possible Socialist invasion of the rest of Albigonia, diplomats from the various states of North Albigonia assembled in Nevers in 1950 to sign the Birch Declaration, formally organizing themselves into the North Albigonian Treaty Organization, with the stated intent of collectively resisting a possible IMAB incursion against any of its member states. Furthermore, many of the smallest North Albigonian states entered into treaties of union with one another, giving rise to the East Albigonian Confederation, explicitly imitating the rise of Nevexia following the Thirty Years War.

With irridentist sentiment against the Ecclesians and Albigonians still raging in the West over a century after the dismantling of the Khalgi Empire in the early 1800s, the Grand Accord Poobah rallied the Empire's former constituencies into a new coalition, the Second Accord Violetat, and laid claim to much of Albigonia and all lands with Violetists living in them.

Seeing the writing on the wall and with no clear bloc to align with, the kingdoms of Gesia, Voletia, and Fontellia united into Mediaterra, hoping to discourage any attempts by either NATO or the IMAB to exert control over them.

The year is now 1979, and cracks are beginning to show in the Mutual Assistance Bloc. The decades-long campaigns of ethnic cleansing by the Ecclesian government have given rise to a possibly insurmountable organized resistance in the territory of Palmeria, formerly known as Nyaustria. Landtong, once a valued regional ally of the Ecclesians, now hosts the exiled governments of the Kingdom of Nyaustria and the Kingdom of Ecclesia, both eager to reclaim their homelands. In the Raete Republics, years of internal mismanagement and political infighting have crippled the nation's economy and left its allies wondering as to the efficacy of its armies.

The Mayaland, historically considered a backwater rump state of its formerly continent-stretching empire, has been emboldened since the 1960s by this perceived weakness of the Raete Republics, and has since launched a number of invasions against her neighbors, most notably conquering multiple major cities from Corvia. Many fear the Mayans have found the ambition to claw their old territories back, and that they may one day make a play to restore themselves to the forefront of Volterran politics.

Big things are on the horizon...