The Fall of Tartaria
A Short Story by Michael Finney
The Tartarian Empire exists in the murky corners of the internet — a sprawling alternative history theory that has captivated people across forums, YouTube channels, and social media. The Fall of Tartaria takes that fascination and gives it form. Rather than debating whether Tartaria was real, I chose to write it as if it were — to build the empire in imagined images and let the audience experience its collapse as is speculated to occur during a great mud flood.
Just a few years ago, I wouldn’t have known about the Tartarian Empire’s lore online if you had asked me. However, while researching in the early days of the Chicago 1893 project, I stumbled upon the community supporting the claims and quickly fell into awe at the depth and richness of the alternative history perspective.
The Film
First came the film. Creating the short film was a “lightning in a bottle” experience; everything conspired to align for the rapid development. Within a month of starting the project, it was on YouTube on April 1st of 2024, where the algorithm began pumping the viewership. It is now available on Amazon Prime Video. The film introduced the world of the story in a visual medium. Continuing my practice of building each project across multiple formats, I began to convert the story into a fully fleshed-out editorial version.
The Story
The Fall of Tartaria is fundamentally a short story set in an alternative reality where the Tartarian Empire is a living civilization. Ominous warnings are emerging from various factions within the empire, but will they remain unheeded? The narrative brings the empire to life in both word and image — blending fiction with still images from the film production that has made the Tartaria theory so compelling in motion.
Available as an ebook on Amazon for $0.99. Published in August 2024, categorized under Dark Fantasy.
I gave myself a few months after creating the original video to work on rendering the story onto the page. Much of it existed that way already, but there were significant segments that needed to be articulated into words that had previously been expressed in motion in the short film.
The Audiobook
The Fall of Tartaria is also available as an audiobook on Audible. As with all of my work, I narrate the audiobook myself. The Tartaria story lends itself particularly well to audio — the tone is atmospheric and ominous, and the audioplay version utilizes the sound effects from the film to bridge the media gap and unify the experience.
I had at first considered offering a version of the story using the voices from the short film, but realized this could potentially be flagged for policies against synthetic performances in place at the time. Hopefully, the spirit of the short film rendition exists in my performance of the short story reading for listeners. You can also find the audiobook on Apple Books, Google Play, KOBO, Barnes & Noble, and Audiobooks.com.
Why Tartaria?
The Tartaria theory occupies a unique space in internet culture. It is not quite conspiracy, not quite folklore, not quite fan fiction — it is something new, born entirely from the collaborative imagination of online communities. I found that more interesting than the question of historical accuracy. The Fall of Tartaria is not an argument for or against the perspectives. It is a story that takes the material seriously enough to dramatize it.
Broadly, it seems that the Tartaria community has supported the project, though there have been criticisms. It’s healthy to keep the dialog going since this project exists within the narrative superposition between fact and fiction.
The Future of Tartaria
If you have been paying attention over the last year, my work around Tartaria has been quiet but not silent. There are additional projects in the works on the horizon for the Tartarian Empire as I flush out the material on my release schedule.