Great Powers

Great Britain

Territories
First among nations, the British Empire covers approximately a quarter of the globe.  Ruled now by King Edward VII, the dominions stretch from New Zealand to British Canada, and include such treasures as the subcontinent of India, the territories of South Africa (recently annexed from the Boers), and much of the eastern  portion of the Mediterranean.

Politics
Great Britain is a parliamentary democracy headed by a monarch. No Prime Minister would dream of making major state decisions without consulting the King, but day-to-day business is largely handled by the elected Parliament chosen through universal male sufferage.  Having learned from the conflict in the Americas, Parliament includes representatives from the colonies (although such representation is not proportional to the size of these colonies).

Economics and Society
Britain is the leading industrial power of the world.  Domestic British industry is concentrated in the north, around the coal and iron mines and in the south and west where rare earths and unique elements are needed to produce many of the more esoteric marvels of the modern age.  The standard of living for all citizens in Britain is relatively high, although conditions and hours for factory and mine workers are brutal.

There is a stark division between rich and poor.  Medical advances have allowed many ailments to be cured, but at a great price.  The rich, therefore, live significantly longer and better, than the poor.  Hotaether technology has also made the lives of the wealthy much more pleasant.  Steam cars are the toys of the rich, and even in Britain only the wealthy can typically travel by airship.

People from the colonies, along with the Irish and Welsh, tend to occupy the lower social rungs in Britain.  They, together with a number of ethnic English, live and labor in squalor—crowded into vast urban slums or dismal rural villages.  The middle class is relatively large and prosperous in Britain.  Middle-class  Britons typically employ a servant or two, and live comfortably, supported by high-paid jobs in finance and industry.  The elites, made up of nobles with old money and members of the rising industrial class, live very well.  These two classes have tended to blend together in Britain as many rich factory owners are eager to give up their factories in favor of titles and country estates when the opportunity presents itself.

Military
The British military is excellent, but not large.  The navy, both surface and airship, is the largest branch.  The British rely on the natural isolation of the islands to provide some measure of protection.  The Royal Navy has just begun to be drawn into an arms race with the German Empire.  At present, the British rule the waves and the British Aerospace Forces can guarantee the security of the skies over Britain.  Small hunter-killer airships are a specialty of the British, as their doctrine specifically emphasizes the defeat of any airships bent on landing troops on their home islands.  Older models of these airships are popular among smugglers and couriers for their speed, durability, and maneuverability.

Territories
Germany controls a large portion of central Europe.  Germany was formed in keeping with the plan of Otto von Bismarck, who wanted to see a German state built around a northern, Prussian, core and which excluded Austria, which Bismarck viewed as both backward and unstable.  Germany also owns a few small colonial territories, including a few small pieces of Africa, some trading concessions in the Manchu Empire, and a few scattered island territories.

Politics
Germany is an empire.  The current emperor, Wilhelm II, is a man in early middle age with a modest intellect but a ferocious sense of national pride.  The Kaiser shares with his people a sense that the British have been working to keep the German people from achieving their national destiny, and is eager to right this perceived injustice.  The German government has followed a moderately bellicose foreign policy, confronting the British and French and demanding more territories.  The parliamentary institutions in Germany are weak and do not have the power to rein in the Kaiser, even if they wished to do so (which they generally do not).  They tend to share the Kaiser's vision of a larger and more powerful Germany.

Economics and Society
Germany has recently overtaken Britain in conventional industrial output, although Germany lags behind in the fields of industry that depend on alchemical salts and Hotaether.  The German economy is generally strong and prosperous.  While not shared evenly it is more widespread than in Britain, thanks in part to the social welfare legislation enacted when Bismarck was Chancellor of Germany in an effort to keep revolution from sweeping through the nation.

Military
Germany has a very large and effective military.  The military traditionally relies on conscripts drawn from the rural regions of the Empire, a practice that has been re-examined in recent years because the rural population has not kept pace with the fast-growing urban population.  Germany has a highly sophisticated General Staff and produces many of the best officers in Europe.  Soldier-for-soldier, the German army is probably the best in the world, and is very well-equipped, although lacking in some of the very high-end Hotaether equipment used by the British elite forces.

The German navy is young and small, but plans have been put in place to greatly increase the size of both the maritime and aerospace branches of the navy at a tremendous rate over the next decade.  These plans have drawn protest from the British but the Kaiser shows no interest in backing down.  German plans emphasize the development of an airship navy, as the Kriegsluftmarine command believes it will be easier to attain parity with the British in the skies than on land, and also believes that airships will be useful if colonial war must be waged.

Territories
Russia's Empire comes a very close second to Britain's in terms of total land area, but much of these territories are inhospitable and lightly-populated.  Russia stretches from Eastern Europe, where the once-sovereign territories of Finland and Poland mark its furthest western extent of imperial expansion, through all of Asia to the Pacific Ocean, where Russia shares a border with the territories of the Chinese Manchu Empire and into the western reaches of North America, in the lands called Alaska.

Politics
Russia is an empire, ruled by the hereditary monarch, Tsar Nicholas II.  The emperor is not subject to any checks or balances, and some recent emperors have still claimed to rule by divine right.  Russia is part of the Three Emperors League, and has forged extremely close ties with the German empire thanks in large part to German scientists' successful treatment of a case of hemophilia in the infant Alexi, heir to the Russian throne.  Russia has come into periodic conflict with Britain, mostly over British insistence on controlling Constantinople, a city with particular historical and religious significance to the devoutly Orthodox Russians.

Economics and Society
The Russian economy is developing, and doing so rapidly, but has not caught up with the economies of the leading nations as of yet.  Moscow and St Petersburg are both heavily industrialized, and German technical capital have made it possible for Russia to begin to exploit some of the alchemical salt deposits found deep in Siberia, but the facilities to fully exploit these riches are still years from completion.  Wealth in Russia is very unevenly distributed.  Most Russians still labor under debts incurred by their parents as part of the end of serfdom (essentially slavery) in Russia.  A small middle class is concentrated in the cities, and the elite is made up of a mixture of the largely unproductive nobles and the new industrial tycoons.

Military
The Russian military is of mixed quality.  Army reforms put into place in the 1860s modernized both recruitment and officer training, and the best units of the army are on a part with those of any modern nation.  The arms industry in Russia is not yet large enough to fully supply the whole of the country's very large army, however, so older weapons are often issued to second-rank formations and some garrison troops still use muzzle-loading rifles over 30 years old.  Morale and discipline tend to be good, however.

The Russian navy is unsurprisingly weak.  The fleet is spread between bases in the far north, bases on the Black Sea, and a small force in the Far East.  The bulk of the fleet is concentrated in the Black Sea, where it is meant to defend against a possible British naval assault.  The Russian airship fleet is very small, but of surprisingly good quality, thanks to the work of several eccentric geniuses in rocketry and airship engineering.  Russian airships tend to be mid-sized vessels, able to operate effectively as either interceptors or bombers, and armed with a mix of guns, bombs, and dumb-fire rockets.

Territories
The Austro-Hungarian Empire spans much of central and south-eastern Europe.  The empire includes Austria proper, the heartland of the empire, as well as Hungary and many other smaller Balkan territories.  Austria proper is well-developed, while the eastern territories are much less modern.

Politics
The Empire has fallen on hard times.  The rise of nationalism over the past century has caused tremendous trouble for the Austrians, whose empire is made up of a patchwork quilt of different national and religious groups, many of whom badly want to break away from Austrian control.  The empire has become both more fragile and more repressive as a result.  Otto von Bismarck, the architect of German unification, worked very hard to exclude Austria from his nation building, because he felt that the Austrians would have fatally weakened the German Empire

Austria is ruled by a monarch, but one with limits on his power as a result of a compromise with the Hungarian minority within the empire.  Franz Joseph, the ruler of Austria, is a tough old campaigner, but getting on in years.  He and his advisers have pursued policies designed to strengthen their internal control, but with limited success.

Austria has a strong alliance with Russia and Germany, known as the Three Emperors League, based on a shared opposition to the policies of the entente.

Economics
German industrial and financial support has allowed the western parts of the empire to modernize.  Austria is also blessed with very rich deposits of alchemical salts in its mountainous southeastern regions.  Exploitation of these riches has begun, but will take years to fully implement.

Military
The Austrian army is a hodgepodge.  Soldiers in the army speak over 20 different languages.  The German-speaking Austrian troops tend to be of very good quality.  Troops from the other regions are less well-trained, and many secretly harbor a desire to fight for the freedom of their own countries rather than for their Austrian overlords.  The Austrian army is also only moderately well-equipped, with only elite units having access to any Hotaether gear at all.

The Austrian navy consists of six or eight patrol boats.  The Austrian aerospace navy is made up largely of vessels purchased from Germany.  These ships tend to be older, but were of good construction originally.

The Austrians have devoted a considerable amount of effort to building up a commando force in recent years.  This special section attached to the Austrian Secret Police operates largely outside the law, and some officers in the conventional armed forces worry that the special section is acting with near-autonomy and pursuing some secret agenda.

Territory
The French empire consists of European France, plus a scattering of colonial territories, including possessions in North Africa, the Caribbean, and several island chains in the Pacific Ocean.  The French have recently occupied Indochina.  Two provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, which were part of European France, were lost to Germany during the Franco-Prussian War.

Politics
France is ruled by the Third Republic.  The French government has been unstable throughout much of the 19th century, and has swung back and forth between republic and monarchy more than once.  French domestic politics are currently divided between a nationalist faction which is interested in reclaiming territory lost to Germany, and a large and vigorous social-democratic faction which is interested in forming connections between workers in all the industrial nations, and in the peaceful overthrow of the capitalist system.

The French had long been enemies of the British, but the two nations were forced to make common cause after Germany united to form the German Empire.  Britain needed a powerful ally on the continent to rein in German expansion, and the French badly needed an ally.  German diplomacy delayed the formation for some time, but a formal treaty of alliance was signed in 1904 between Great Britain and France.

Economy
The French economy is modern, but not as well-developed as that of Britain or Germany.  The loss of Alsace and Lorraine robbed the French of some of their richest deposits of coal and iron.  Fortunately for the French, their greatest deposits of alchemical salts are located in the mountainous region of Provence, in areas near several odd archeological sits of uncertain origin.

Wealth is not spread equally in France, but some social welfare systems do exist.  The influence of social democrats in the Third Republic has gradually produced some reforms and protections for the workers.

The French educational system is an object of particular pride, and the Sorbonne boasts excellent faculties in many different academic disciplines.  The Parisian university is especially famous for having the most advanced curriculum in the study of lucid dreaming outside of the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Military
The French army is of good quality, and generally well-equipped.  The French rely on a two-tiered system, with most troops serving in reserve formations which can be mobilized swiftly in the event of war.  Several divisions of regular army troops man the border with Germany, and six elite Alpine divisions are stationed in the south, where they are mostly responsible for keeping desperate Spaniards out of France.  French colonial troops are of mixed quality.  Most troops are well-trained, but their equipment is often out-of-date.  The French Foreign Legion is the exception to this rule, and it is both well-trained and well-equipped; currently based in Saigon.

The French navy is of average quality.  The French have several battleships, but no Hotaether-driven dreadnaughts.  France has some  of the best cruisers in the world, which aid in protecting commerce.  The French Aviation Corps is of moderate size, but is the most innovative branch of the military, and uses a mix of different airship classes.  Plans are in the works to develop several specialized craft as well.

Territories
Portugal controls a far-flung colonial empire.  The Portuguese control much of eastern South America, as well as territories scattered through Africa and Southeast Asia.  These territories are rich in resources, including several vast deposits of alchemical salts, which have only recently been surveyed.  Portugal controls the western part of the Iberian peninsula as its home territory.

Politics
Portugal is a constitutional monarchy.  The conservative party currently holds sway, and has focused on building up the already-extensive trading power of the nation.  Portugal is a relatively calm country, as wealth from the colonies has made most people's lives comfortable.  Portugal maintains a careful watch on its eastern border, in order to limit the number of desperate Spaniards seeking refuge.  Portugal maintains a careful position of neutrality on the world stage, and trades with all interested parties and powers.  Portuguese traders are notable for having established extensive trading relations with Aztlan in recent years, and may have sold a good many technical formulas to that secretive but wealthy empire.

Economics
Portugal is rich.  Resources pour into the home country from the colonies, and are processed in a network of factories.  Portugal exports extensively into the world market.  Portugal's colonies are poor, however.  The Portuguese are not gentle colonial overlords, and their territories are economically exploited. The wealth from these colonies has been taken for granted, and there is little industrial innovation in Portugal.

Military
Portugal maintains a two-tiered military.  The small but fast modern navy is used for commerce defense and communications.  The field army is comprised of several very modern divisions equipped with the latest arms and equipment.  The territorial army is comprised of the dregs of Portuguese society and a levy of conscripts from all of the colonies. This force is adequately-equipped for its task of suppressing revolt, but would melt away if faced with a modern army in the field.

Territory
The United States of America now number twenty-five, and cover much of eastern North America from the 45th parallel in the north to the tip of Florida in the south and west to the Mississippi River.  After the thirteen original colonies gained their independence from Great Britain, the new nation soon found itself engaged in a grinding, decades-long war of attrition with the aboriginal tribes they sought to displace. The 1865 Treaty of Fort Defiance placed the western border of the United States at the Mississippi River, though the US holds the formerly-French city of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi.  Despite occasional raiding and border skirmishes, this border has held firm for the nearly four decades since.

Politics
The United States is a constitutional Republic.  Each of its states have their own state constitutions and governments, and the federal government is comprised of the three branches:  Congress (the House of Representatives, which number 313; the Senate, numbering 50), the President (currently Republican Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, and the judiciary.  While slaves were freed, the compromise was that the freed slaves would need to “redeem” themselves (buy themselves back) from owners in compensation, which resulted in an indentured servitude which lasted for nearly thirty years following the formal abolition of slavery.  Officially, the US is neutral in the affairs of Europe but is closer to the Entente Cordiale (Britain and France) than to the Three Emperors League.  The biggest foreign concern is the newly expansionist Aztlan Empire.  Currently the allied nation of Texas has been keeping the Aztlan Empire at bay, and the United States has been supplying the Republic of Texas with materiel in the hopes of keeping conflict away from their own territory.  Lacking a connection with the Pacific Ocean, the US is not concerned with affairs in East Asia.

Economics
The United States has developed a strong industrial base in an east-west belt from New Jersey to Indiana.  The US also possesses an abundance of rich farmland and produces a surplus of agricultural products.  Though lagging behind Great Britain in Hotaether technology, the US is leaping forward in diesel propulsion and electricity thanks to an abundance of talented inventors and industrialists in the current generation.  The US also has moderate deposits of alchemical salts which have only recently been mined to any significant extent.

Military
The United States has a small, moderately well-trained, poorly-equipped military, but all of that is rapidly changing.  Mass conscription ended with the Fort Defiance Treaty in 1865, and that generation of hardened warriors has long since retired.  Isolationist policies since resulted in a substantial draw-down in the size of the military, leaving a small force of questionable morale focused on mitigating tribal raids over the western border and a small naval squadron to safeguard its merchant marine fleet.

Under President Roosevelt, the US has started saber-rattling in earnest.  There have been recent substantial increases in military spending and significant structural reforms meant to enable a more outward-looking military posture to meet the perceived threat from the Aztlan Empire.  The Army Balloon Corps has been restructured into an independent Air Corps and the first of a new class of medium attack airships was recently launched at the headquarters of the Detroit Airship Corporation. The US naval squadron remains small and outdated but construction has begun on new classes of Hotaether powered heavy cruisers and escort frigates at the Newport News shipyard in Virginia.  The army has been modestly expanded and its doctrine modernized.  Its equipment is in the process of being replaced with modern gear, rumored to include the prototype of some sort of particle cannon devised by Nikola Tesla.

History
The Empire of Aztlan had its origin in an alliance of the Nahuatl-speaking city-states, expanded through successive wars of conquest until by the start of the 16th century it controlled most of Mesoamerica.  In the century following the defeat of the Spanish forces, the Aztecs further expanded their domain to encompass all of Central America from the Isthmus of Panama to the northern desert.  For most of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Aztecs consolidated their conquest and maintained an isolationist foreign policy, forbidding foreign traders from operating in their territory.

In 1872, an armed British merchantman airship arrived over the city of Tlaxcala and demanded to be allowed to trade with local merchants.  When the Aztec garrison arrived to evict them, the merchants retreated to their airship and bombarded the garrison with impunity.  Shocked by this attack from the air, the central government in Tenochtitlan underwent turbulent change, little of which is known to outsiders.  What is known is that a new Tlatoani (Emperor) was declared in 1876.  This new emperor, Cuahutemoc III proclaimed his nation as the Empire of Aztlan and undertook a rapid program of industrialization.  Recently, the Empire has invaded the lands of Kali Forno along the Pacific coast incorporating a large province into the empire.  Aztlan has also purchased the loyalty of the King of the Hawai'i island chain, who has granted them a port on the island of Oahu.

Territory
The Empire of Aztlan controls the entire Central American landmass from just south of the isthmus of Panama to the To BaÐaadi River bordering the nation of Texas to the northeast.  To the west, the territory extends up the Pacific Coast all the way to the Great Bay of Kali Forno.  Aztlan also controls, by proxy, the islands of Hawai'i in the central Pacific.

Politics
The Empire of Aztlan has always been, to the best of any westerner's knowledge, an absolute hereditary monarchy.  The current Tlatoani is not thought to be a blood relative of the previous Tlatoani, and is considered by outside observers to be the first in a new dynasty.  The Tlatoani would seem to govern with the advice of a council of priests representing the various cults of the Aztec gods, but how much power this council actually possesses is unknown.  Current foreign policy is belligerent and expansionist.  The Empire does not maintain embassies in foreign lands, sending diplomats only when they wish to deliver a message.

Economics
The Empire has rapidly industrialized since 1876, resulting in spectacular economic change and not a little turmoil.  The working conditions in Aztec factories are rumored to be extraordinarily poor; that captives from conquered peoples in Kali Forno are conscripted and sent south to the Aztec industrial heartland.  Technological progress is rapid but uneven, being a mishmash of stolen or purchased technology mixed with homegrown innovations.  Despite the belligerent foreign policy, the Empire has opened a number of trade ports on its territory to merchants from East and West.  Substantial air defenses have been placed in all major cities to avoid a replay of the incident of 1872.  Aztlan merchant vessels, on both air and water, have begun to call in ports in Africa, South America, and Asia, using their port on the island of Oahu to extend their trade throughout the Pacific Rim.

Military
Thirty years ago, the crack troops of the Aztecs were still wielding flintlock rifles and obsidian-edged swords.  All that has changed.  Although unreliable, reports from the invasion of Kali Forno depict ground troops wearing terrifying animal-visaged suits of personal armor and wielding automatic weapons of unusual design.  The elite Jaguar and Eagle Guards are equipped with these state-of-the-art weapons and armor, but it is strongly suspected that all other ground forces are not so well-equipped yet.  Air and naval forces are yet small in size but are rapidly closing the gap with some of the major European powers.  A recent naval skirmish between Aztlan and Russian warships near Nippon was disastrous for the Russians.

History
The state known to Europeans as the Inka Empire calls itself Tawantinsuyu, which means “The Four United Provinces” in the chief language, Quechua.  The empire was formed in the 15th century from the nucleus of the city state of Cusco, located in the high Huatanay River valley.  Conquests greatly expanded the territory into an empire spanning much of western South America.  Around 1530 the empire suffered a crippling civil war between competing royal sons.  Nearly simultaneously, a smallpox epidemic ravaged the population until the priests of Inti, the sun god, hit on the proper formula for the remedy.  The empire took a generation to recover from the civil war and disease but embarked on another phase of expansion north, south, and east beginning in the 1570s.  In the 1670s, this expansion brought the Inka Empire against Portuguese expansion.  Nearly thirty years of warfare pushed the Inkas back into the Anti Mountains.  A peace was mutually agreed upon in 1699, and both sides spent the next several decades building forts along this border.

Around 1700, the Aztec conquests took their armies into Inka territory and the Portuguese province of Venezuela.  Fatigue on all sides resulted in a brief conflict followed by a treaty setting borders at 6° North Latitude and 77° West Longitude.

The next hundred years saw a gradual lessening of tensions between the Inka and Portuguese.  Trade routes opened and flourished and cultural exchange gradually induced political rapproachement.  Meanwhile, a series of weak emperors  in the early 1800s resulted in much power devolving from the central government in Cusco to the heads of the four provinces.  The nation is now at peace with the neighbors and largely prosperous.

Territory
The Inka Empire controls a long but narrow stretch of land encompassing the entire west coast of South America, incorporating the entire Anti Mountain range and the adjacent highlands.  The Inka hold no overseas colonies.

Politics
The Inka Empire is more aptly described by its own name for itself, the Four United Provinces.  The current government could be considered a loose federation with a weak hereditary monarch and a strong oligarchy controlling much of the actual political and economic power.  The emperor is really little more than the mayor of Cusco, having primarily ceremonial power outside the city.  With power having devolved to the provincial governments, there are no strong federal institutions.  An informal group of provincial leaders gather periodically under the “guidance” of the Inka emperor to decide issues of foreign policy and to negotiate trade agreements.

The Four United Provinces has been at peace for some time, and developed good political relations and strong economic ties with their Portuguese neighbors.  Relations with Aztlan have been strained, but the border is short and Aztlan does not seem interested in moving south at this time.

Culturally, the Inka maintain many of their ancient traditions.  Most still worship the sun god, Inti, and believe in reincarnation for the unworthy.  Those who obey the Inka moral code (ama suwa, ama llulla, ama quella—do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy) go to live in the sun's warmth while others spend their eternal days reincarnating on the cold earth.  The Inka also maintain a strong traditional of mandatory public service (mita) which is the means by which terracing and irrigation are maintained.

Portuguese culture and Catholicism have made some inroads with the lower classes, who find these easier than the traditional Inka ways.

Economics
The economy of the Four Provinces is a mixture of subsistence agriculture and mineral extraction with very little manufacturing.  The industrial revolution has hardly touched the Inka and nearly all manufactured goods are imported from abroad, with only the oligarchs able to afford such luxury goods.  This small class of Inka oligarchs, descended from the old Inka royal families, has managed to maintain a complete stranglehold on land ownership.  The gap between the ruling aristocracy (less than 10% of the population) and the bulk of the population is a vast chasm, as nearly all profits from extracting and exporting the substantial mineral and alchemical wealth goes to the ruling elite.

Military
The Inka military is basically four separate provincial forces with little or no coordination or training between them.  Taken together, they would form a fairly large force which would be formidable if not for their poor training, poor morale, and hopelessly outdated equipment.  The few military airships and naval vessels possessed by the Inka were purchased second-hand from the Portuguese.  Mita extends to mandatory military service by all males for two years.  Thus the infantry is a poorly-equipped, low morale, high turnover force that wields muzzle loaders and mostly sits idle in garrison forts.  The greatest forces are along the northern border, but even these are woefully ill-equipped for a fight against a modern military.

Territory
Italy controls the Italian peninsula, as well as Sicily, Sardinia, a smattering of islands in the Mediterranean, and a portion of the Balkans extending down to, and including Albania, as well as Libya in North Africa.

Politics
Italy is a constitutional monarchy.  Italian politics have remained modestly expansionist since unification roughly 40 years ago.  The government is essentially dominated by conservatives, although there remains a good deal of tension due to the annexation of the Papal State during unification.  The Pope, as well as much of the population is hostile to the Italian state.  While there is a tentative alliance with the British, there has been no formalization due to the proximity of Germany and Austria-Hungary, both of which are capable of out-gunning Italy before British assistance could arrive.

Economics
The Italian economy is developing, but not yet fully modern.  Northern Italy has a good number of factories and a few plants able to produce Hotaether technology, but the south remains very under-developed.  The Dalmatian territories are believed to be rich in alchemical salts, but these deposits have not been extensively mined or even explored.

Military
Italy has a second-rate navy and a third-rate army. The best Italian units are well-equipped and capable, especially the three Italian mountain divisions.  Most of the Italian army is made up of poorly-trained and under-equipped conscripts.  However, the Italian navy is relatively modern, but small.  The Italians do have an experimental airship carrier, which makes them unique among nations as other powers have opted to simply relay on land-based airship aviation.

Territories
Spain controls its section of the Iberian peninsula and a few scattered colonies throughout the world, mostly island chains and a few small sections of Africa.

Politics
Spain is currently a republic, dominated by the liberal party.  No Spanish political party is held in much esteem, however, by the public or by the world.  Spain has never been a player on the world stage since their attempts to expand into the new world were largely unsuccessful, and Spain's development stagnated.

Economics
Spain has only a tiny industrial economy.  A few factories huddle miserably on the outskirts of Madrid.  The rest of Spain is locked into a crushing cycle of poverty, as tiny farms are further sub-divided with each generation and masses of hungry and desperate folk flee to the already overcrowded cities or attempt to leave for other lands.

Military
The Spanish military is large, but vastly out-of-date.  The navy is small and ill-equipped.  Spain's military is capable of suppressing dissent within the Spanish territory, but could not defend the nation against a serious aggressor.

Territory
Nippon controls several islands off the eastern coast of Asia, including the home islands and several nearby possessions.

Politics
Nippon is ruled by a warlord, known as the Shogun.  This system has been in place for hundreds of years and while it might have once provided dynamic and effective leadership, it is now deeply corrupt and massively inefficient.

Economics
Nippon largely depends on agriculture and fishing.  Nippon is poor in minerals, and has little to export.  However, as Nippon's stagnant political structure desires few imports, apart from a few luxury goods, this system functions reasonably well.

Military
Nippon's military is very outdated, and lacks even the simplest of gunpowder weaponry.  Other advanced products of industry are also entirely lacking.

Territory
The Manchu Empire consists of China proper, together with territories to the north and east, including all of the Korean peninsula, and half of Mongolia (although this territory does not provide much in the way of strategic or economic value).

Politics
In theory, the Manchu Empire is a true empire, ruled by an emperor whose power is not limited by any checks and balances.  In fact, the Empire is effectively ruled by a bureaucracy.  The Manchu Empire was locked in political and cultural stasis for generations until, in the 1840s, a conflict with the British Empire sparked a wave of nationalism.  Chao Shen, a leading imperial official, was promoted to the new position of First Minister by the outraged emperor.  Chao's tremendous political and military skill allowed the Manchu Empire to stall for time, limit the influence of the British, and appeal to some of Britain's imperial rivals for assistance.

The Manchu Empire remains resolutely isolated from European affairs, but does have a rich trading relationship with both the German and Russian empires.  In 1896, Portugal attempted to use gunboat diplomacy to force new trading concessions from the Manchu.  The tiny fleet assigned to this task was wholly inadequate, and was torn to shreds by the guns defending Shanghai and then pursued and destroyed utterly by the Manchu navy.  The First Minister was succeeded by Ming I'chen, who seems to be as capable as Chao, although he has yet to face a major crisis.

Economics
The Manchu Empire has a huge population, and covers a vast swath of territory.  The coastal regions, as well as some interior  regions rich in minerals and alchemical salts are well-developed.  It is believe that the Manchu Empire has an industrial base close to that of the Austrians, or even the Russians, but they have been very careful to keep the true scope of their development secret from the other great powers.

Military
The Manchu employ a two-tier military system;  The banner armies are territorial forces, used for police duties and to watch the least dangerous borders.  The new model armies are essentially western forces, and are garrisoned primarily along the eastern coast.  The Manchu navy and aerospace forces are small, but the Manchu have been building factories needed to expand both.  Coastal and air batteries have been installed over key sites in the Manchu Empire, making the prospect of invasion an expensive one for their foes.