Monday, 11 May 2020

The Bordurian Secret Police in the 19th century

In an earlier post I brought the history of Borduria up to the end of the 19th century. In that post, I wrote about the Bordurian Security agencies.



In that earlier post, I introduced two Bordurian Secret Police agencies, the Second Directorate (also called the Sekuritat), which controls the press and oversees state security and the Third Directorate or Informat which is the secret intelligence arm of the Bordurian state.

I should also have mentioned a further arm of the Secret State, the Military Police, but I will leave them to a later post.

These two characters are officers of the Third Directorate in uniform, although agents are commonly found in plainclothes for many operations.

These figures are both from the excellent Copplestone "Back of Beyond" Bolsheviks range. The tufts on the bases are Gamer's Grass from Bad Squiddo.

So, who are they?

Well, the female officer is Kapitan Anastasia Dimitrovna, a cold and calculating figure in the Service, whose speciality is running female agents in the decadent bourgeois societies of the West, but who is also feared as an assassin and expert interrogator. Although her background lies in the minor rural boyar families of the 18th and early 19th century, Anastasia is the daughter of a prominent revolutionary general Michaelis Demetrios (who slavicised his name to Mikhail Dimitrov) and committed supporter of the present regime.

The male officer is Commissar Evgeny Petrov, born Eugenios Petros in the industrial city of Peshod. As with many members of the new regime, he has also slavicised his name. Petrov fought as a young soldier in the battles following the coup that overthrew the original Republican Provisional Government. His revolutionary fervour in denouncing secret opponents in the ranks of the Army of the Proletarian Alliance government brought him to the attention of the Second Directorate, where he quickly rose through the ranks. He subsequently transferred to the Third Directorate to oversee the section whose responsibility is the infiltration of anti-revolutionary emigrĂ© groups elsewhere in Europe.

I am really pleased to finally find a use for these terrific figures. They will be part of a Bordurian company for In Her Majesty's Name, but they will also be really useful for Pulp games using the Crooked Dice Pulp rules.

3 comments:

  1. Very nice, especially Anastasia turned out great!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks. I am really pleased with her, too.

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  2. Great work on both Kapitan Anastasia and the post on Leitenant Eirena Karras - the Coppletone figures are beautiful and you have done a great job on them all!

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