Editing Wraith: The Oblivion (section)

===The Dark Kingdom of Wire===
[https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/monsieurchoc/charnel-houses-of-europe-the-shoah/ Detailed in ''Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah'']. Welcome to where the victims of the Holocaust wind up.

[[Grimdark|Yeah, it's ''that'' kind of place.]] The Dark Kingdom of Wire is comprised of the various ghettoes, extermination camps and other infamous sites related to the Final Solution, all linked by a network of ghostly railways that reflect the real-life ones built to carry out the Final Solution. The name comes from the relic barbed wire that enmeshes practically everything here, carrying with it a charge that will [[grimdark|toss anyone who touches it screaming straight into Oblivion]]. It's about as horrendously grimdark as you might expect, to say the least.

As for how the Kingdom came into existence, well, that's a long story. Basically, WW2 was a complete fuckstorm for mundane and supernatural factions alike; this even extended to the Underworld, where the Dark Kingdom of Jade went to war with Stygia while there was a massive influx of new souls from the battlefields, bombings, and butchery that defined the war. As a result, when the first wraiths of the Holocaust began to appear they were lost in all the confusion for some time. Eventually the Hierarchy noticed weird stuff was going down, put two and two together, and decided to [[Derp|basically shove all the Holocaust-born wraiths into the Underworld's ghettoes until they could adapt to Underworld life]]. [[Fail|Unsurprisingly, this was a complete failure in the long term.]]

As WW2 ground on, more and more wraiths connected to anti-Nazi resistance groups began showing up. Unsurprisingly pissed at the state of the ghettoes and desiring revenge on old enemies, they effectively convinced the wraiths of the ghettoes to secede from the Hierarchy and join them (the Hierarchy's reaction ranged from 'much rejoicing' to 'about time', as they saw the Holocaust wraiths as more of an environmental issue than anything else). This marks the point where the Dark Kingdom of Wire ''de facto'' began, since the Hierarchy didn't officially recognise it for some time afterwards.

Eventually, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked, kicking off the Fifth Great Maelstrom and causing Charon to vanish. The Deathlords took full control of the Hierarchy and intended to continue ignoring the issues caused by the 'toss them in the ghettoes' approach, only for the Boatmen to not-so-subtly tell them to sort their shit out or be [[Blam|replaced]]. The Holocaust victims and their protectors (the Army of Fire) promptly took the opportunity to demand that their independence be recognised and any Nazi wraiths handed over to them; in exchange, the Dark Kingdom of Wire's wraiths would deal with the Spectres and Nihils caused by the Holocaust. 

Uncertain of their new power and recognising the potential damage that could result if they fucked up, the Lords agreed, signing the '''Covenant of the Millions'''.   This agreement essentially recognised the semi-autonomy of the Dark Kingdom of Wire and bound the Deathlords to send any Holocaust victims found outside the Kingdom's Necropoli over to them; courtesy of the Boatmen threatening the formation of more sub-regions, it also forced them to accept the millions of souls lost to genocide and purges before WW2 in Europe into the Hierarchy, after the Deathlords previously abandoned them for fear of over-bulking the Grim Legion's ranks.

(The higher-ups of the Hierarchy are still [[Butthurt|salty over this deal going through]], though the lower and middle ranks are generally sympathetic to the DKoW's actions and plights).

The Kingdom itself consists of several Necropoli:

* '''Theresienstadt Ghetto:''' One of the waypoints on the road to Auschwitz, Dachau, and the other extermination camps. It's a copy of what it was in life, though the walls now bleed and the Small Fortress (used as a base by the SS) now has a Nihil (basically a portal to the Tempest from which Spectres can emerge) right in the centre of it. The German doctor '''Richard Holvenbach''' runs this place - having tried (and failed) to help the Jewish inhabitants there during the events of WW2 after seeing just how horrific their conditions were, he's now running a (so far unsuccessful) program that aims to redeem Spectres and help the Wraiths of the ghetto peacefully achieve Transcendence.

Factions here are pretty few in number: The biggest are the ''Patients'', led by Doc Holvenbach, who act as the unofficial administrators and policy-makers to the rest of the camp - due to this, they're fairly well liked and looked up to (even if the good doctor's Redemption Program is causing some fear among the general populace). They comprise the bulk of the '''Ghetto Circle''', the official administration and political party of the Ghetto, who work to try and turn the Ghetto from a place of horror and pain to one of healing where Transcendence can be achieved.

The smallest and by far the most hated are the '''Red Cross''', the members of the IRC who failed to see the truth behind the "model ghetto" and its prisoners' treatment despite even Doctor Holvenbach trying to tell them how bad it was; they are now Fettered here by these failures, and their failures have not been forgotten - or forgiven. They're led by '''Jean-Claude Leclerc''', a former Red Cross diplomat who brushed off Doc Holvenbach's claims (thinking such horrors could not be possible) and subsequently drank himself to death when the truth about the Holocaust came out; he now seeks to redeem himself and his colleagues for their horrific failures and find acceptance within the Ghetto.

There are also the remnants of the ''Judenrat'', led by '''Solomon Eisenfeld'''; a Rabbi [[grimdark|put in charge of selecting those to be sent to the gas chambers]] in life, he and his colleagues now seek redemption for what they did, despite the vast majority of the Ghetto's wraiths hating their guts for hopefully obvious reasons.

* '''Babi Yar:''' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar Site of multiple massacres] of Jews by Nazis from 1941-43. On the Underworld side of things, it's home to a fucking huge Nihil which likes to spit out Spectres; the nearby Kyiv wraiths do ''not'' like the wraiths that live here, since they like throwing Nazi wraiths and their collaborators into this Nihil. While this used to be a total shithole due to the constant Spectre assaults and official stance of ignorance of the massacre in the Skinlands, the creation of the below two factions and the shift toward recognising the massacres in the Skinlands have improved it somewhat.
** '''Menders:''' Wraiths who want to find and help other survivors, while closing the nearby fuckoff-huge Nihil.
** '''Fallen Comrades:''' Red Army ghosts, dedicated to protecting the Menders and fighting the constant hordes of spectres emerging from the Nihil in the Ravine.

* '''Auschwitz-Birkenau:''' Yep. *That* Auschwitz-Birkenau. It's one of the biggest Necropoli in Europe in terms of sheer population density (which scares the pants off the Deathlords due to the damage they could cause if united), and is appropriately [[grimdark]] even by W:TO's standards - the place stinks of rotting corpses, giant clouds of ash and Zyklon-B permanently cover the skies, the air is filled with dissonant sound and agonised screaming, soulforging is common, and there's an utterly massive Nihil smack-bang where the SS Barracks used to be, from which hordes of Spectres often erupt to menace the camp. Oh, and there's basically zero leadership because of the dark memories that censuses and identification bring up, so it's mostly an anarchic nightmare with the outermost camps completely overrun by Spectres.

The infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" gates are still there, though the majority of the camp's officers and guards have been rather agonisingly fused with them, ''I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream''-style. Most of the camp is covered in a perpetually-regenerating mildew-like substance made of rotting flesh; that relic barbed wire from earlier is everywhere, denoting the camp's boundaries. The crematoria have become Soulforges - don't stay in them after dark. There's a bordello by the name of the House of Dolls, though it's creepy as all hell and several corridors lead straight into the Labyrinth. Birkenau itself is completely overrun with Spectres; the rest of the land around is a mix of barely-organized subcamps that are frequently attacked by Spectres.

Faction-wise, the spectres of Auschwitz are mostly divided into groups named "Triangles"/"Kommandos", in a display of bleak humour on their part.

'''''Partja:''''' The closest thing to idealists in this place. They're socialists that want to make the camp better to live in, since they're stuck there.

'''[[Communism|Collective]]:''' Hardcore old-school Communists. They're mostly Artificers and keep to the adjacent work camp of Buna, where they sometimes Soulforge Nazis into various goods (the rest of the time, it's implied they use any poor schmuck that gets sold to them). They've got a monopoly on Darksteel in the Kingdom of Wire, but have been becoming more and more isolated due to fears of corruption by Spectres in the main camp (which may not be entirely baseless - the DKoW's wraiths tend to be pretty fuzzy on the difference at the best of times).

'''Kanada:''' The black marketeers and relic-traders. You name it, they can probably get it for you. And if they can't, well, [[Grimdark|they'll just kidnap some poor fucker and sell them to the soulforges in the camp's crematoria so that they can get it for you]]!

'''''Sonderkommandos:''''' The Jews forced to help the Nazis dispose of bodies from the gas chambers. These poor bastards are *really* hated by most of the camp's inhabitants, who consider them barely a step above the willing collaborators and ''Kapos'', despite the fact that the ''Sonderkommandos'' were coerced to work under threat of death. Those who died rebelling against the guards get much better treatment, but there's still a lot of bad blood between the regular inmates and them.

'''''Die Eingeistein:''''' Ex-''Kapos'', these assholes worked with the SS to help keep the prisoners in line. They function as the camp's conscripted militia, keeping the other wraiths safe from Spectres (albeit grudgingly) in exchange for not having their asses thrown into Oblivion for their willing collaboration with Nazis in life. Probably the single most hated faction in the camp (tying with the non-rebellious Sonderkommandos), except for...

'''Black Triangles:''' In life, these guys were bottom-feeders - lackeys and boot-kissers to the camp's guards, who survived mainly due to their servility. In death, these guys are the lowest of the low in the hell of Auschwitz - about the only reason they haven't been soulforged/moliated into furniture or thrown into Sheol (that fuckoff-huge Nihil where the SS Barracks were) is because they weren't outright Nazis, and because they're useful for picking up nuggets of information. Also, basically everyone gets to treat them as their personal prison bitches.