"Fallen giants seldom pass on quietly, for even as they die, there are always pretenders seeking to take their place in the sun.
"A new social movement, Communism, has inspired Russian radicals called Bolsheviks to seize control of their destinies from the remnants of Russia's shattered empire - even as some of these remnants fight a desperate war of independence, not just against the Bolsheviks and their enemies, the White movement, but also against a resurgent Germany eager to maintain her control on eastern Europe. This struggle for survival and greatness is mirrored in the Black Sea, where a nascent Turkish republic struggles with Greece for control of the Bosporus, even as it probes further north, seeking to extend its influence back into lands the Ottomans lost to the Russians generations ago.
"Asia fares no better - while seemingly victorious in the Great War, the fledgling Chinese republic is sundered once more into several warring cliques, to whom democratic authority is a matter of usurping votes, and whose means of settling political disputes involves opium sales and force of arms against their brothers. This has attracted the attention of unwelcome outsiders - the Bolsheviks seek to subvert China to gain more resources and allies to complete the reunification and reconquest of the Rodina, while an embittered Japanese empire broods on with plots to eject both Communism and Western imperialism out of Asia, which has now founded uncertain toeholds in Indochina and coastal cities in China itself.
"Together, the wake of these fallen giants - the Russian Empire, and the Qing dynasty - has grim consequences for peace in the Old World. It's been three years since the greatest war the world has ever seen came to a bitter close, yet the world is no less safer than it was back in that fateful summer more than seven years ago. Regardless, an era of NEW WORLD EMPIRES is about to visit the chapters of man's history - but at what cost to our own humanity?"
