Nations
There are multiple different nations represented in the world of Victory Belles. Soon after the beginning of the game, you'll be ask to choose a Nation and one of the Belles available to help you get started.
Choosing a nation is definitive and cannot be changed later. Every Belle from that nation will take 10% fewer vestures to rescue, and you'll be added to that nation and faction leaderboard for the rest of the game. More details here.
There are two kinds of Nations in the game: the Great Powers, available to everybody, and the Middle Powers currently available only to the Kickstarter backers. The Middle Power are subsumed into one of the Great Powers for certain war plans rewards and the 10% vesture reduction for rescuing Belles.
Or check the Belle page for a comprehensive list.
Great Powers
United States
The beating heart of the New World, and the great industrial colossus of the new age. The United States was late into the first World War, proposed the League of Nations but refused to join, and - still crawling out from the debris of the Great Depression - is hesitant to fall into the politics and conflicts of the old, decadent European powers.
But America no longer has the option of abstaining. Her reach extends from the mainland to Hawaii, to Alaska, to Panama, to the Philippines - and there are new enemies coming to threaten all of it.
This nation is non-aligned at the start of the game.
United Kingdom
There's no question that the first World War was hard, and neither was the aftermath easy - the British Empire saw the loss of Ireland. The Great Depression. Strikes and uncertainties and hunger.
But, for all that, the sun is not setting on the British Empire. From Canada to South Africa to east Africa to India to the British Isles themselves there's still a common vision - or at least a single king.
With all that territory, and with perhaps the greatest navy the world has ever seen, there are privileges and there are responsibilities. This new war will smash against the limits of both.
This nation is part of the Allies at the start of the game.
France
The Third French Republic holds a colonial empire that stretches from the Caribbean to West Africa to Indochina - but the First World War and the Great Depression left deep scars at home. After years of recession and strikes and socialist governments grappling with ultra-nationalist trends at home and among her neighbors, the average French citizen probably hopped for nothing more from 1939 than peace and a return to normalcy.
But it was not to be....
This nation is part of the Allies at the start of the game.
Germany
From the first World War to the humiliating Treaty of Versailles to the catastrophe of the Great Depression, the twentieth century has not been kind to Germany. In the turmoil, Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party twisted the mechanisms of government to its own ends. The Third Reich now seeks the natural expansion it feels it was denied by its rivals, and has annexed or seized most of German-speaking Europe. It shows no signs of slowing down - and the first dark hints of its plans for the people it considers undesirable are already evident - but to the average German, this is a time of triumph and renewal.
Or it was. Until the new war.
This nation is part of the Axis at the start of the game.
Italy
Still feeling the scars of the first World War and alarmed by the rise of Soviet Communism in the east, in 1922 King Victor Emmanuele III of Italy turned control of the state over to Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party - and this sparked decades of political domination at home and conquest abroad, from the Balkans to East Africa. Now allied with Germany and Japan, Fascist Italy dreams of a new age of empires - and woe to whoever objects.
Even if they aren't human.
This nation is non-aligned at the start of the game.
Japan
A hundred years ago, the Empire of Japan was isolated and inward-looking - and then Western powers kicked in their door, and they realized they would either have to modernize or to become accustomed to subservience.
They made their choice.
A modern, militarized Japan seized control of Taiwan, Korea, and the nearest chunk of the Sakhalin archipelago - and now Manchuria. They mean to keep Asia in Asian hands, beating foreign imperialists - and Morganas - at their own game.
This nation is non-aligned at the start of the game.
Soviet Union
The people of the Russian Empire ended centuries of tsarist misrule and abuse in bloody revolution - and in 1922 they set about turning that revolution into a utopia. It would be an example for all the world, and the cornerstone of a global society that would recognize the dignity of the masses and ensure equality and justice for everyone who lived in its embrace.
But they have enemies on all sides who mean to see them fail. Or worse....
This nation is part of the Comintern at the start of the game.
Middle Powers
Netherlands
The Kingdom of the Netherlands tried hard to be neutral in the first World War, and at the start of the second they are a voice of diplomacy and moderation in a world with very little time for either. At the same time, they hope they have created defensive lines that can see through the war - safe in Fortress Holland.
For all that, they are an empire in their own right - a tiny country in Europe governing vast swathes of the Indonesian archipelago. In the age of the Morganas, the only question is whether the Netherlands can be a player, or only a prize.
This nation is part of the Allies at the start of the game. They are considered to be part of Britain for all other purposes.
Poland
Some will tell you that Poland ended as the war began. The Second Polish Republic was only born in 1918, and its borders and territories were contested right from the start - in just a couple of decades, Poland faced Soviet invasion, presidential assassination, military coup, and mounting internal political instability. Then the Germans invaded, and that seemed to be that.
But that was not the end.
That is not nearly the end.
This nation is part of the Allies at the start of the game. They are considered to be part of Britain for all other purposes.
Spain
The Spanish Civil War ran from 1936 to the first of April 1939 and saw half a million deaths. The winning side was that of "Spanish Catholic authoritarianism." by way if General Francisco Franco and the FET y de las JONS - nominally neutral, but modeled on Italy's Fascists and conspicuously friendly with Hitler's Germany.
This should be a time for healing and consolidation - but the Spanish coastline in both the Atlantic Ocean and in the Mediterranean Sea is vulnerable to the new enemy, and real friends are few.
Spain is on a knife's edge.
This nation is part of the Axis at the start of the game. They are considered to be part of Germany for all other purposes.
Turkey
The Ottoman Empire was swallowed whole by Western powers at the end of the first World War; modern Turkey was born from the War of Independence that ran from 1919 to 1923. The founders of the reborn Turkish state learned from their rivals - and in less than twenty years, they made a strong, stable home for themselves out of rubble of the old.
But now a new enemy is thundering into the Bosphorus Strait and swarming around the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and Turkey's independence is under a threat that Kemal Atatürk could never have foreseen.
This nation is part of the Axis at the start of the game. They are considered to be part of Germany for all other purposes.