[A Hearts of Iron IV System, with no national focus feature. The construction feature is available, and factories work more realistically.]
In the twenty-third year of Longsheng (Year 912 of the Great Zhou calendar), the Great Zhou Empire, which had ruled the realm for nearly a thousand years, lost its last great ruler.
In the eleventh year of Tianwu, the Prince of Yan, a powerful vassal in Youzhou, launched a rebellion. In just a year, the capital fell, and the twenty-seven-year-old Emperor Tianwu was forced to take his own life. The Prince of Yan, Zhou Weilin, proclaimed himself emperor.
That same year, 923, the kings of Nanyue and Pagan, entrenched in the south of Great Zhou, proclaimed the Prince of Wu of Yangzhou emperor, splitting the realm between north and south. From then on, the Great Zhou Empire was caught between civil war among warlords and foreign barbarians watching hungrily from beyond its borders.
