Nightmare Fuel / Red Flood

4 Following

The world of Red Flood is one where the aftermath of a longer and deadlier World War I ending in a stalemate left everything in total chaos, and it shows.

Unmarked spoilers below.

• The darker colour-palette of Red Flood compared to the base game or any other mod sets the mood of a world gone mad as opposed to the usual Alternate History Mod. World War One lasted longer and was far worse in this timeline than in ours, leading to not only more deaths, but both the Entente and Central Powers committing increasingly despicable actions to achieve their victory, eventually leading to the current setting.
  • The art style used for the focuses are done in a level of realism that's unusual for HOI4. While most focuses are benign in nature (balancing budgets, clarifying military doctrines etc, electing parties.), they all look somewhat off. This goes double for the actually screwed-up focuses: Germany's "Bring Back the Death Penalty" focus for example depicts the blade of a guillotine about to be used, with two skulls at the bottom.
• The more frequent use of profanity in the mod's focuses and events, especially during the "Friend of Old France" event chain, is a small detail that emphasizes the Darker and Edgier world.
• The entire "Friend of Old France" event line. A small group of Frenchmen who have not gone insane are leading a partisan movement seeking to overthrow Artaud and restore sanity to their country through either liberal democracy, Marxian socialism, or French ultranationalism. At the end, it is revealed that the entire conspiracy happened mostly in Artaud's head: he himself was the Friend of Old France, and was having an episode that displayed his utter insanity.
• The L'État Irréel super-event is nothing short of Nightmare Fuel due to the sounds that come with it, taken directly from a radio play by the real Antonin Artaud called "Avoir en finir avec le jugement de Dieu".^note "To Have Done with the Judgment of God" It begins with Artaud himself ranting in French, before it completely degenerates into a nightmarish cacophony of incoherent screaming and deafening percussion. Instead of a picture related to this, the superevent image is nothing but an abstract painting, warped enough that even the event window is distorted.
  • The event described in the event is also nightmarish, consisting of France declaring war on the very concept of reality, with everything in France and French society from this point considered to be nothing but extensions of Le Patron—and they apparently wish to spread this to the rest of the world, whatever that process may entail. Reality itself will be but a canvas, and l'État Irréel will be Le Patron's brush.
• The Accelerationists do it again in Russia, if Aleksei Gastev is the one on top once Russia is reunited. His idea of a perfect state is one that does away with identity and even humanity so completely Russia is called the One State, and names are outright outlawed in favour of numbers, with Gastev himself taking the title of OP-01. Everything in the nation down to its very ecosystem is made into nothing but fuel for the fires of relentless industrialization, as the land that was once Russia is turned into a singular industrial complex, with every citizen merely part of an attempted Hive Mind staffing it.
  • The accompanying superevent is a chilling version (originally unintentionally) of "The Internationale" played entirely on factory sirens, turning a song once celebrating the worker and the breaking of their chains into something inhuman.