ZERO PARADES wiki

People's Republic of Kohila

Kohila is the country that took CASCADE in — and the country that put her on ice. The People’s Republic of Kohila is a communist state and member republic of the Superbloc. For Hershel Wilk, it’s been home, employer, and disciplinary prison since she defected here from Mircea in the early ‘80s.

Why Kohila matters

Three reasons Kohila is on every page of CASCADE’s life.

1. Hershel’s defection point

Sometime before ‘82, a radicalised young Hershel was being persecuted by Mircean monotheists for her political beliefs. She fled to Kohila. Kohila took her in — communist countries doing what communist countries did in the ’80s — and the rest of her life followed.

That means Kohila is the country whose passport CASCADE travels on (in cover or out of it), whose education shaped her professional adulthood, whose institutions absorbed her, and whose security apparatus eventually recruited her into the Operant Bureau.

2. The Im-Ex Bureau cover

The Import-Export Bureau of the People’s Republic of Kohila is one of the cover fronts the Operant Bureau uses for its operants in foreign countries. It’s a Kohilan state agency on paper — actual sock importers, actual paperwork — and an Operant Bureau asset infrastructure underneath.

This matters because of PSEUDOPOD. PSEUDOPOD is in Portofiro under cover as a sock importer for the Im-Ex Bureau. That’s the cover identity the Whole Sick Crew has been building around him, the paperwork the Operant Bureau has been filing on his behalf, and the legal scaffolding that lets him be in Quisach in the first place.

When CASCADE arrives to find him zeroed out on a cot at the Foto 24 safehouse, she’s also inheriting his cover apparatus. Anything she does in Portofiro that connects to “the Kohilan sock importer” connects back to PSEUDOPOD and through him to the Im-Ex Bureau.

3. Novessa and the Freezer

Kohila is also where CASCADE has been stored for the last five years.

The capital city of Novessa (or near it — geography is light on the launch wiki) is the site of Satellite Facility B, known internally as “The Freezer.” This is where the Operant Bureau sends operants it doesn’t want to discharge but doesn’t want to use. After CASCADE’s ‘91 Portofiro operation burned, she was sent to Novessa. She spent five years there before being recalled to back up PSEUDOPOD in ‘96.

So Kohila isn’t just home — it’s the country where CASCADE has been a prisoner of her own employer. The Freezer is the Bureau’s solution to operants who have become institutional liabilities. CASCADE has now been on both sides of that solution.

Kohila in the world map

The People’s Republics, the Superbloc, the Illuminated Empire, La Luz, and EMTERR make up the high-level geopolitical layout of the game. Kohila sits inside the People’s Republics / Superbloc bloc.

The Superbloc’s intelligence arm is the Operant Bureau. The Operant Bureau runs operations in foreign countries through Kohilan cover infrastructure like the Im-Ex Bureau. So Kohila isn’t just a place — it’s the institutional layer between CASCADE’s personal life and the Bureau’s operational reach.

Cities

  • Novessa — site of Satellite Facility B, “The Freezer.” Where CASCADE spent ‘91–‘96.

What’s confirmed vs. unknown

Confirmed: Kohila is a communist Superbloc member state, took in Hershel Wilk in the early ’80s, runs the Im-Ex Bureau cover that PSEUDOPOD operates under, and contains the Freezer where CASCADE was kept for five years.

Unknown to the player at launch: the rest of Kohila’s geography, the specifics of its government, whether the Operant Bureau is a Kohilan agency or a Superbloc-level agency that uses Kohilan cover (the launch wiki suggests the latter but isn’t explicit), and how the country’s relationship to CASCADE changes when she ignores Melita’s recall order.

Kohila connects to: Hershel Wilk; Mircea (her birthplace, the country she fled from); Superbloc (Kohila’s parent bloc); Operant Bureau (uses Kohilan cover); PSEUDOPOD (Im-Ex Bureau cover identity); Foto 24 (the safehouse in Portofiro that connects to the same cover network).