Reality and fiction meet in a bad way

[Saxon]

One of the things I love about Dominions is that each nation is so different. Many play counter intuitively and sometimes you need to do things that seem like a really bad idea. For example, a sloth scale or a death scale just don’t make much sense in real life. This was always the fictional element of the game, the fantasy part of the war game.

But today I was thinking about reality and discovered that there is a scary situation where someone is really trying to run a Dominions nation in real life. Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.

The guy outright states he hears from spirits and has his followers convinced he has magic powers. He is a pretender. The methods the movement use are warped, like Ermor or some of the Blood nations. They steal children and force them to fight for them. Initiation often includes forcing the kids to kill or mutilate family members. The movement thrives on turmoil and make no pretence of governing the population, they just loot. And they have been doing this “successfully” for over 15 years.

I never thought I would see the really counter intuitive parts of the game function outside the fictional world, but regret to discover I was wrong. It is tough to see such negative and outright evil practices succeed. Of course, playing Ermor right now doesn’t help much, but I did pick the nation back in January, when Kenya was falling apart, so perhaps I should not be so surprised to see unreasonable things turning out to be functional, at least for some.

In any case, this is not a cheery post, but I doubt many other people would get my attempts to understand regional politics through a prism of computer gaming... My thanks for your indulgence.