Alexander Men (born 22 January 1935), known as the Father, is a Russian Orthodox priest who advocates for a decentralized, theocratic Russia. He currently resides in Northeast Siberia and will form the Divine Mandate of Siberia in 1963.
Biography[]
Men was born in the city of Moscow, the current capital of Reichskommissariat Moskowien. He was born to a Jewish family that refused to cooperate with the Soviet authorities as they were strongly religious. During the Great Patriotic War, he fled to Northeastern Siberia; he maintained his views on universal ecumenism, egalitarianism and community to the Russian people. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, he became the spiritual head of a movement that seeks a pacifist unification of Russia under Christian anarchism if possible.
In-game[]
Unlike other warlords, Men is not playable at game start, since Northeast Siberia has no authority. While all Russian warlords will get a news notification of him forming the Divine Mandate, he can only be played if the player selected one of the five unifiers in the Far East (Chita, Buryatia, Magadan, Amur or Irkutsk) and when prompted, select "May God Bless His Soul" at the news event. He will not appear until after the Buryatian Mutiny has been resolved.
Due to him not appearing until, at the earliest, a year after the game's start, Men is considered one of the hardest warlords to unify Russia with, having lost a year's worth of development in industry as well as research. Additionally, with the exception of Boris Yeltsin, he cannot peacefully unify with any other warlord.
Men proves to be one of the most benevolent warlords in Russia, as he will always at least attempt to spare the lives of his opponents - he will outright recruit Valery Sablin and Mikhail Matkovsky, and allow Mikhail II to return home to Australia. However, while he will attempt to spare Genrikh Yagoda and Konstantin Rodzaevsky, they will reject his mercy and wind up dead because of the events, although Men will still regret that they had to die. However, there is one exception to his mercy - should his final opponent be Sergey Taboritsky, he will have a special event where he labels Taboritsky as the Antichrist, calling him worse than Ivan the Terrible, Nero, Elizabeth Báthory, and Adolf Hitler combined.
Trivia[]
While Men is shown as a benevolent preacher in normal gameplay, if one enables the 2022 April Fools update (which will see Omolon replaced with Ponylon, a country led by a ponified version of Nikolai Bukharin), he will appear with the personality of a far more reactionary priest, fitting the stereotype of an overzealous bigot (albeit against the ponies that are featured in the update as opposed to any human characters).