sample file - dmsguild · writing jason dickerson dan strother ... julian fong jean-françois...

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CREDITS��Chief Editor Robert Dubois ��Line Developer Jason Dickerson��Southern Combat Group Design Brad Bellows��Assistant Line Developers Saleem Rasul Abdul Aziz Brad Bellows Michael Onsrud Dan Strother��Art Director Greg Perkins��Marketing Director John Nguyen��Writing Jason Dickerson Dan Strother Nigel Wong��Additional Writing Saleem Rasul Abdul Aziz Brad Bellows Michael Onsrud��Copy Editing Matthew Baker��Illustrations Javier Charro John Nguyen Avelardo Paredes Alex Perkins Greg Perkins Michael Rookard Mariko Shimamoto Jake Staines David Tauzia��Additional Illustrations Ghislain Barbe Normand Bilodeau Julian Fong Jean-François Fortier Marc Ouellette Pierre Ouellette��3D Modelling Andrew Isaacs Jeremy Ortiz Greg Perkins Thomas Schossleitner David Tauzia��Design Avelardo Paredes Greg Perkins Thomas Schossleitner Mariko Shimamoto David Tauzia��Sculpting Alain Gadbois Philippe F. LeClerc Jeremy Ortiz��Painting Philippe Ferrier LeClerc Alain Gadbois Angel Giràldez Martin Jones Noa Artzy Jean-Denis Rondeau

FORGED IN FIRE: SOUTHERN FIELD GUIDE

“History has shown there are no invincible armies.” Joseph Stalin

CHAPTER 2 - VEHICLE COMPENDIUM ................ 46Monster in the Wings ......................................................... 46Introduction....................................................................... 48Vehicle Modernization Program......................................... 49

AST VEHICLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Jäger. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Iguana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52Black Mamba. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Black Mamba MP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Spitting Cobra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58King Cobra. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60Gila . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62Diamondback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64Fer de Lance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Salamander. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68Street Viper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Jäger Paratrooper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Iguana Paratrooper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73Anolis R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74Asp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75Basilisk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76Silverscale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Copperhead. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78Rattlesnake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Sidewinder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80Black Adder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81Desert Viper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82DartJäger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83Boa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84Python. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Chameleon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86Snake Eye Black Mamba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87Stone Mason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88Engineering Cobra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89Drake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90Naga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92Dragon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94Sagittarius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95Hydra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96Barnaby. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97Hun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98Visigoth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100Hetairoi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102Caiman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104Elan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106Jackrabbit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107Field Gun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................ 2Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

CHAPTER 1 - SOUTHERN HISTORY ...................... 4Valley of Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Colonization of the Southern Polar Region . . . . . . 6The Concordat Withdrawal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Rise of the Southern Leagues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Merchant Wars and St. Vincents War. . . . . . . . . . . . 7Judas Syndrome, the Sandstorm Strikes, and War of the Alliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Post War Reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Interpolar War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Uneasy Peace and Rebellions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10War for Terra Nova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Mekong Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Esperance Front. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Pacif ica Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

LEAGUES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Allied Southern Territories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Map of Terra Nova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Southern Republic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22Mekong Dominion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Humanist Alliance (Free) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Eastern Sun Emirates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

MILITARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34General Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Force Organization:

Southern Republic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35MILICIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36Mekong Peacekeepers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37Humanist Alliance Protectorate Forces . . . . 38ESE Retinues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Ranks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40Uniforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41Equipment: Humanist Alliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Equipment: MILICIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Medals and Awards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

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CREDITS��Layout Greg Perkins James Paquette Robert Dubois��Photos and Photo Editing Robert Dubois Angel Giraldez John Nguyen James Paquette Greg Perkins��Blitz! Concept Philippe F. LeClerc��Silhouette Blitz! Designers John Buckmaster Nick Pilon��Silhouette System Designers Marc-Alexandre Vézina Gene Marcil Stephane I. Matis��Gear Garage Software Samuli Aura��Additional Production Staff Nara Cormier Dave McLeod Kirstin McKeown��Playtesting Charlie BurkeAaron Haugh John IsraelGerrit Kitts Mark PerreJill Rhame Hugh Browne Jr.Frédéric Porlier Jean-François CoderrePaul Workoff Anthony SandovalCory Coltrain Walter T ChildsFrancis Charland ��Produced and Published by Dream Pod 9

5000 Iberville, Suite 328Montréal, Québec, H2H 2S6CANADA

Legal Deposit: December 2012BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE DU QUÉBECNATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADASTOCK NUMBER DP9-9266eISBN 978-1-927334-59-1PRINTED IN USA

Art & Designs copyright 2012 DREAM POD 9, INC.

DREAM POD 9, HEAVY GEAR BLITZ! & other names, specific game terms, & logos are copyright 2011, DREAM POD 9, INC. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except for datacards & gaming resource sheets for game play & short excerpts for review purposes. Any similarities to actual characters, situations, institutions, corporations, etc. (without satirical intent) are strictly coincidental.

DEDICATIONSJason & Greg: To the team at Stompy Bot for reinvigorating our digital horizons and being really excellent partners.

John: To all the loyal and hard working Pod Squad Members. We salute you.

“In the course of time, all governments will fall. If an external force does not destroy it, then the natural flaws of a governing system will consume it. The key to long term stability of a culture is to force the collapse of governments into the systems designed to reinforce the desirable attributes in a society. In order to accomplish this, tyranny must be introduced to reinforce the desire for freedom. Once societal revolution occurs, allow for excess to preside in order to foster the hunger for order.”

AymanDurand from his Annotated Analysis of Political and Social History, 3320 C.E. Avesta Colony, Kir Arya

CHAPTER 3 - COMBAT GROUPS ...................... 108Longest Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108Building Your Army . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110

Army Construction Flowchart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110Regiment Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111Loadouts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112Universal Cadre Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112

AST COMBAT GROUPS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114General Purpose Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114Recon Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115Strike Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116Fire Support Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117Paratrooper Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118Black Ops Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119Light Tank Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120Heavy Tank Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121Cavalry Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122Strider Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123Foot Infantry Platoon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124Beast Rider Platoon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125Armored Infantry Platoon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126Mounted Infantry Platoon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128City Milit ia Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129Military Police Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130Field Cadres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Southern Leagues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132League Specif ic Rules and Cadres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Southern Republic Army Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134Southern Republic Republican Cadre . . . . . . . . . 135MILICIA Army Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136Conscript Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137Mekong Peacekeepers Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138Peacekeeper Cadre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139Humanist Alliance Protectorate Forces Rules . . 140Hovertank Cadre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141Eastern Sun Emirate Retinue Rules . . . . . . . . . . 142Mercenary Guild Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143Border Milit ia Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Special Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144Prefect Raphael St. Clair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144Commandant Hanna Neuben . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145Adjudant Chef Alia Muna-Habib . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146Constable Sergent Norris Yamakazi . . . . . . . . . . 147 Jackhe Diturno & Aysl McKendrick . . . . . . . . . . . 148Denni Pelletier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

CHAPTER 4 - BATTLE OF PORT OASIS ............. 150Pride of the Republic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150Battle of Port Oasis Force Breakdown . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Part 1: At the the Gates of the Old City . . . . . . . 152Part 2: Burning Oasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155Part 3: Albigen Cauldron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155Part 4: The Phoenix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

CHAPTER 5 - GALLERY ................................ 158Rumble in the Jungle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158Gallery and Painting Schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160Weapons Recognition Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

DATACARDS ................................................ 164Sa

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VALLEY OF DEATHThe whirlwind withdrawal of the 16th MILICIA Armored Infantry Regiment out of Tanalom, the city-state the Humanists insisted on still calling Gropius, had left very little room to properly protect the regiment’s supply lines — supply lines that Sous-Caporal Lindee Deveraux and her cadremates were protecting in their infantry-support Asp Gears. Lindee had doubts that the Asp she was piloting would protect her, much less the armored column that stretched back kilometers. Two days earlier her compagnie engaged CEF elements as they overran Tanalom, and out of the original 120 members, only twenty-two survived the onslaught of the infantry-sized FLAILS. Lindee sighed, shaking her head to knock away the guilt of surviving the slaughter.

“Deveraux! Pay attention!” Sergent Oleg yelled over the Lindee’s comms. Lindee looked up and saw that she was about to collide with a Caiman APC that had thrown a track while trudging through the back roads of the Trondheim Valley.

“Sorry, Sarge.… Won’t happen again,” Lindee said, muttering, but she doubted it wouldn’t happen again. None of the Gear pilots had slept in the last thirty-six hours, and the pilots were using stimulants in their ration packs, but for most the effect of the stimulants had worn off. Lindee throttled her Asp back away from the crippled APC and walked around it. Her mind barely registered the sudden impacts all around the armored column. The impacts didn’t make the sound of artillery, but the high-pitched whine of thrusters instantly put the Gear pilot on alert. Adrenaline flowing through her veins, Lindee’s senses and survival instinct kicked into overdrive as she pulled the trigger to fire her Asp’s 13mm machine cannon and poured rounds into the tree line. She prayed to whoever would listen to her that the rounds would find their mark. The radio erupted with chatter from her cadremates calling for help, but the calls quickly turned into screams of agony as energy weapons and chain-gun fire from FLAIL infantry poured into the armored column. Lindee watched in horror, her infrared cameras displaying the sickeningly beautiful lights from enemy lasers as they destroyed Caporal Hestin’s Asp. Covered in a cold sweat, she looked around to find an escape, but her sensors showed how desperate her regiment’s fight was.

“Protect the caravan!” Oleg barked over the coms. Lindee cursed the ad-hoc section leader for not ordering a retreat, even though she knew there was no escape from the valley.

Gripping her controls tightly and taking a deep breath, Sous-Caporal Lindee Deveraux regained her resolve. The CEF would pay a dear price for her life.

“Copy that, Sergent. Let’s give them hell!” Lindee pulled the trigger on her controls, unleashing another burst of fire into the now-visible FLAILS. She bit her lip as her Gear lurched to the ground, its legs reduced to slag from concentrated laser fire. Lindee screamed for help as her Asp powered down under a hail of chain-gun fire. All around her, Lindee could hear the sounds of combat, but, paralyzed with fear, she stayed in her cockpit and succumbed to her exhaustion.

Hours later, Lindee woke up in the stifling, dark cockpit. Her lip was sore and swollen, and bolts of pain shot down her right arm from embedded shrapnel. Pushing the release to her cockpit hatch, the southern pilot crawled out of her Asp to see the destruction all around her.

Sous-Caporal Lindee Devereaux then knew she was the last survivor of the 16th MILICIA Armored Infantry Regiment.

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COLONIZATION OF THE SOUTHERN POLAR REGION

When Terra Nova was first colonized, the founding settlers established colonies in the lush jungles of the Antarctic Yung An Basin region. Within five cycles, the hearty settlers began constructing maglev routes between Yung Ang and Atsi, taming the wilderness around them, exploring the planet, and paving the way for future settlements.

Despite an early start, the full-scale colonization of the planet only began half a millennium later. In the initial centuries of colonization, Gateships traversed a series of stops to get to Terra Nova, which made the trip untenable for mass migration. In TN493, a newly discovered Tannhauser discontinuity allowed Gateships to travel directly from Caprice to Terra Nova, thus making the transit easier and allowing rapid colonization of the entire planet. In the Antarctic region, colonists occupied four main regions in the south, which roughly correspond to the leagues that their descendants eventually formed in the post-Concordat era. From the Yung An Basin, the ancestors of the Mekong Dominion had spread north to the Mekong plains, as

well as expanding east in the direction of the Ngoc Mountains. Beyond the Ngoc Mountains were the city-states comprising the forerunners of the Southern Republic, who had settled around Lake Esperance and south of the Alps. Port Oasis, the major Southern spaceport, was constructed on the shores of Lake Esperance, and from there, the colonists expanded north, past the Southern Alps and all the way up to the edge of the Badlands. Farther east, the scientists that would eventually form the Humanist Alliance first settled in the Tobian Plains to study the exotic local wildlife and expanded colonization in the region to enable prospecting in the nearby Pacifica Range. Finally, a group of investors known as the Consortium filed a bid for the Okavango swamp basin and the nearby Pacifica Mountain range. The Consortium’s use of indentured servitude to pay for the costs of migrating to the new colony led to the foundation of the Eastern Sun Emirates’ caste system. With the support of the Human Concordat, growth and development of the various settlements proceeded apace.

COLONIZATION OF THE SOUTHERN POLAR REGION

Throughout the centuries of exploration, the Human Concordat, the unified government of Earth, had bankrolled the expenses of establishing colonies, especially the ruinously expensive Gateship fleets, in the hope that the colonies would eventually return the investment once they had proven self-sufficient. Unfortunately, as taxes to subsidize the colonies rose, so did the cost of living and dissatisfaction toward the colonies. In TN1454, an Earth-first faction rose to power and abolished the subsidies of the fleets in order to let Earth’s damaged economy heal. The cessation of Gate traffic sparked a panic in the colonies. In the wake of the sudden collapse of interstellar travel, desperate people resorted to every means at their disposal to find a place aboard the last Gateships bound for Earth, before they were stranded across the stars for all time. This bleak time marked the beginning of the Age of Isolation for the colonies, as those who were left behind had to fend for themselves. As the leadership of the planets were the first to withdraw, the colonies were left with very little organization, and the early cycles of abandonment were marked by anarchy and desolation. Entire settlements in the South evaporated

into the jungles as populations abandoned their homes in search

of a more secure community.

In the chaotic atmosphere of what was known as the Reconstruction Era, Terra Nova settlers struggled to fill the power vacuum left by the departed governments and adjust to the sudden chaos of the withdrawal. In the wake of global communications breakdown and a dissolution of centralized authority, various regional movements arose in settled areas, largely in response to the general lawlessness that sprang up first. People banded together for protection, sharing of labor, and simple survival. The colonists formed conglomerates of city-states that would eventually become the forerunners to the modern leagues.

The first such league in the South was the Humanist Alliance, born in the Esperance Basin through the merger of the cities of Perth and Tanalom, leading the way for other leagues in the North and South. Farther east, the Gateship HCS Eastern Sun crashed on the planet, and under the leadership of Captain Enri Masao, the surviving officers took control of the native shajhalin (commoner caste) population. With access to the supplies and technology in the downed Gateship, the officers and their descendants built the Eastern Sun Emirates, a feudal society, with the officers taking on the role of leaders in their chosen communities. The Mekong Dominion incorporated itself into a league under the guidance of powerful taipans and allied under the banner of the multitude of surviving corporations. It was the final Southern league however, the Southern Republic, which would come to have the greatest impact on the Antarctic — and all of Terra Nova.

THE CONCORDAT WITHDRAWAL

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Even though the First Unification War established a significant league within two cycles of the conclusion of the war, the defeated government of Port Oasis organized a disparate coalition of Marabou’s enemies, leading to another bout of civil warfare that saw the Marabou Marauders destroyed and the remaining military forces reorganized as the Southern Republic Unifiers. Under this banner, they swallowed city-state after city-state until the Unifiers were destroyed outside of Saragossa in TN1607. By this time, the dominance of the Southern Republic was cemented, and after a generation of rebuilding and consolidation, the republic finally managed to incorporate Saragossa in TN1636, marking the birth of the modern Southern Republic. With its own borders and internal affairs secured, the republic began looking outward to the other Antarctic leagues, which had been steadily growing and developing while the Southern Republic forces had been fighting and conquering.

RISE OF THE SOUTHERN LEAGUESWhen the republic approached the Mekong Dominion with the offer of an alliance, the Dominion was initially skeptical and refused. At this rejection, elements of the Southern Republic Army massed on the borders of the Dominion and began a campaign of intimidation, holding war games, conducting military exercises, and occasionally burning outlying farmsteads. The reportedly accidental burning of an agricultural settlement proved to be the last straw; the Mekong Dominion was recovering from its own share of internal conflict, and the memories of those battles were still fresh in the league’s psyche. The Mekong Dominion’s taipans saw the strength of the SRA and knew that their armies had a high probability of being defeated in a long and protracted war, but more importantly, the fighting would wreak havoc on the economy of the league.

In TN1676 the Dominion signed a treaty of alliance with the republic, and the Southern Republic Army marched troops through the Mekong Dominion’s borders to assault the Humanist Alliance and the Eastern Sun Emirates. Initially, the republic was met with stiff resistance. The fighting in the Okavango Swamp on the Emirate Front was difficult, with the defenders knowing the lay of the land well, while the protectors of the Humanist Alliance proved to be surprisingly skilled and disciplined for all their semblance of being brainwashed drones. The fighting lasted for three grueling cycles, until Republican spies captured a prototype of the Northern Hunter Gear and scientists reverse-engineered the machine. The resulting vehicle, the Jäger Heavy Gear, revolutionized warfare in the South. With the aid of the newly developed Jäger, the SRA overwhelmed all resistance within a matter of seasons, and by TN1681, the Southern Republic had largely subjugated the Eastern Sun Emirates and the Humanist Alliance. With all of the Southern leagues subjugated, the Allied Southern Territories (AST) was created with the promise of cooperation and rebuilding, but in the centuries since its founding, the organization has proven more of an institution for the Southern Republic to maintain dominance over its neighbors.

The formation of the AST meant that the South could properly focus its energies on the rest of the world. During the founding cycles of the AST, the North was composed of a collection of scattered leagues plagued by internal divisions that were often sparked by the aggressive United Mercantile Federation (UMF). These internal divisions were quickly reassessed after UMF was defeated by the AST in a battle over influence in the Westridge region of the Badlands. This two-cycle war (TN1686–1688) known as the Merchant War established the dominance of the unified Southern leagues. The UMF recognized its weakness and came to the bargaining table with other Northern leagues, and in less than five cycles the Confederated Northern City States (CNCS) were formed to oppose the AST. With both poles armed and aimed at each other, global conflict seemed inevitable.

MERCHANT WARS AND ST. VINCENT’S WARIn TN1723, skirmishing Northern and Southern units made the fatal mistake of fighting their battle over the remains of a colonial medical ship called the St. Vincent. This released a stored plague that did not affect adults but turned them into carriers, and that the soldiers brought the deadly contagion back home to infect their families and loved ones. The plague was deadly to children; in less than a season, five percent of Terra Nova’s children were dead and an equal number maimed for life. Though a cure was devised in time to save the future of the planet, both sides blamed each other for the great loss of life, and predictably, the polar governments turned to war.

The fighting, known as St. Vincent’s War, devastated combatants and civilians alike; the objective was not to claim territory, but to punish the other side for their perceived sins. The war lasted from TN1723 to TN1729, ending due to both sides’ exhausted resources and demands by the citizenry to cease hostilities. While the fighting had ended, the shared resentment continued to fester, and the South now had a mortal enemy in the North.

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RISE OF THE SOUTHERN LEAGUES

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1 Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the North and South remained largely hostile toward each other. In the late nineteenth century, a series of brush wars known as the Sandstorm Strikes (TN1896–1905) pitted polar forces against each other, but the conflicts never really blossomed beyond small regional clashes in the Badlands. Both sides stockpiled weapons, supplies, and materiel in anticipation of larger conflict, and again global war seemed inevitable.

Tensions ran high amidst this atmosphere of global tension, and the final stages of what was dubbed the “Judas Syndrome” took hold. In order to survive the impending global war, influence brokers, spies, and politicians prepared to sell out anyone and everyone. In TN1913, however, the imminent interpolar war was forestalled by the return of a new enemy, the Colonial Expeditionary Force (CEF). Dispatched from Earth to reclaim Terra Nova for the New Earth Commonwealth, the CEF 8th Fleet expected to face scattered, primitive colonial remnants but instead landed in the gunsights of two fully armed, equipped, and motivated militaries ready for battle at a moment’s notice. In a conflict that would be known as the War of the Alliance (WotA), Terra Nova’s political climate would rapidly shift to meet this new threat. Even faced with two heavily armed colonists, the CEF commanded a massive space fleet that easily seized orbital dominance of the planet. In the early weeks, the fleet landed over four hundred thousand troops and attendant materiel along the equatorial regions of Terra Nova. The invaders used high-speed all-terrain hovertanks, laser and guided missile weaponry, and the dreaded GREL supersoldiers to crush all resistance before them. The plan was to establish a base in the Badlands and strike at Terra Nova’s major industrial regions: the Mekong Dominion in the South and the UMF in the North. Hovertanks and troop transports advanced rapidly along the waterways of the Mekong jungle and seized Ngorongoro, Atsi, and Yung An before being halted at the gates of Mekong City by the efforts of the Dominion Peacekeepers and the MILICIA. The occupation of the Dominion territory and the preliminary orbital bombardment launched by the CEF ships before the invasion had crippled the Dominion’s and other Southern forces’ mass production capability. Facing imminent defeat, the North and the South put aside their differences and formed an alliance to defeat the invaders.

The tide finally began to turn when Terra Novan engineers and scientists developed a new breed of orbital attack drones that eventually chased the CEF space fleet from orbit. Severing the CEF’s supply chains debilitated the invading forces, as each CEF battlegroup required a high amount of resources and maintenance for their hovertanks, GRELs, and energy weapons, and the war dragged on into a battle of attrition. Faced with a war which the CEF could not win, Earth’s forces gambled on one last thrust. In a final attempt to seize victory, the CEF fleet braved the shield of killer satellites and landed eighty-thousand troops in the Badlands, hoping to open

JUDAS SYNDROME, THE SANDSTORM STRIKES, AND WAR OF THE ALLIANCEup another front. Both sides knew this would be the turning point of the war, and the joint Terra Novan militaries responded with brutal force, pinning the landed troops in the city of Baja with withering firepower until the invaders were exterminated. At the conclusion of the battle, the human cost exceeded one hundred thousand Terra Novan lives. In the wake of the Battle of Baja, Paxton Arms, who had been quietly arming the Badland’s population, cast off their prior neutrality and raised the Peace River Army to further harass the CEF presence in the Badlands.

With all fronts collapsing, supplies low, and their main camp cut off from the bulk of their forces, the CEF command offered an unconditional surrender to the Terra Novan forces, and on 9 Autumn TN1917, the War of the Alliance officially came to an end. Weeks later, the CEF fleet struggled to withdraw from Terra Nova. In the chaos of the withdrawal, over 120,000 CEF personnel were left behind.

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JUDAS SYNDROME, THE SANDSTORM STRIKES, AND WAR OF THE ALLIANCE

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1Terra Nova had defeated a powerful foe and won its independence, and for several cycles the planet focused on rebuilding a world shattered by five years of brutal warfare. The AST had suffered heavily during the war, losing many of its assets to the fighting, and even as reconstruction and growth boomed in the postwar years, the inability of the SRA and MILICIA to fully police the republic led to another sort of boom: civil unrest, banditry, and terrorism.

While many of the veterans of the conflict were now more kindly inclined toward their counterparts, remembering the camaraderie of the war, the global leadership quickly squandered the goodwill earned from the War of the Alliance. In the Southern Republic, the new prime minister, Louis Philippe deRouen, rose to power at the head of an imperialist agenda. Patriarch Oliver Masao of the Eastern Sun Emirates declared that his last surviving blood relative would succeed him, leading to the Mothers’ Massacre and bloody internecine fighting as his vassal emirs turned on one another. In the North, religious

POST WAR RECONSTRUCTIONfervor grew unchecked, and Second Follower Thor Hutchison began spreading zealous ideology and demonizing the South as an oppressive, evil, and godless regime. The promises of peace withered in the face of silent aggression between the polar leagues as skirmishes in the Badlands, between CNCS and MILICIA forces, increased in frequency. In TN1933, the Eastern Sun Emirates erupted into full-scale civil war, as the emirates of Basal and Okavango, calling themselves the Free Emirates, turned on the patriarch. Compounding difficulties in the geopolitical climate, the Southern Republic Intelligence Agency (SRID) discovered that Humanist agents had infiltrated the halls of Republican power, and Prime Minister deRouen decided to eliminate the Humanist problem once and for all with the Twin Falcon Contingent, a virulent bioweapon used to target the genetic codes carried by most preceptors in the Humanist Alliance. Within half a cycle, the majority of the Humanist preceptor caste was dead or dying, and the Southern Republic moved in to annex the now-leaderless territories.

During the tumultuous period of the early 1930s, the Mekong Dominion had quietly extended overtures to the United Mercantile Federation, suggesting that they might betray the Southern Republic in the event of a Northern invasion.Combined with the battle of Rahnguard Oasis in the Summer of TN1936 and the assassination of Second Follower Thor Hutchinson, the North had sufficient impetus to officially declare war on the South. The resulting war was known as the Interpolar War.

Shortly after war was declared, Emir Nigel Shirow of the Free Emirates concluded talks for an alliance with the North as Northern Guard forces advanced into AST lands. Norguard troops reinforced the Free Emirates in their struggle against the loyalist emirate forces, while the Mekong Task Force of the Northern Guard forces advanced into the Dominion territories, expecting to be allowed to enter without a fight.What they did not expect was that the Dominion had never intended to betray the South to begin with, and the Mekong Task Force was harried and torn to pieces over the course of their retreat from the now-hostile Mekong Dominion. Elsewhere, the North made inroads into the eastern territories of the Humanist Alliance, opening up another front in the Southern battlefields along with the conflicts in the nearby Free Emirates region.

The South, for its part, launched several offensives against the CNCS, doing significant damage along the Northern border. Yet the polar leagues were not the only combatants in this war. When Dominion Peacekeepers and MILICIA forces caught up with the remnants of the Mekong Task Force near the Badlands cities of Erech and Nineveh, NuCoal, a recently emerging Badland’s power, took exception and dispatched the Port Arthurian Korps (PAK) to drive off the offending polar forces. Though bloodied, PAK eventually succeeded. In the North, Southern forces counter-attacked at Fort Henry in the Western

INTERPOLAR WARFrontier Protectorate. Destroying the city-state’s air-defense grid, Southern forces pressed the advantage and continued North, taking the cities of Yele and Skadi, but their advance on the league capital of Sorrento was halted by the Norlight Armed Forces. Undeterred, the Southern forces launched another major offensive through the Karaq Wastes, this time aimed at disrupting the flow of supplies to Northern forces entrenched in the Humanist Alliance and emirate territories. Battle was joined outside the holy city of Massada, and the fighting spilled over into the territory of Peace River, turning

the conflict into a three-way melee with elements of the Peace River Army, now known as the Peace

River Defense Force, engaging both sides.

By the Summer of TN1938, the people of Terra Nova were through with the cycles of bloody war. Riots and protests shook major cities across the globe. With popular support dwindling and both sides exhausted by two and a half cycles of war, Northern and Southern

governments grudgingly agreed to peace talks organized by Peace River. Before the

talks could begin, however, an antimatter bomb destroyed Peace River and killed nearly

seventy-five percent of its residents. Within hours of the blast, Northern Guard and MILICIA forces stood

down from active combat to render any and all aid to survivors of the explosion. The bombing would eventually be tracked back to CEF agents, and the Westphalia Cabinet was formed to manage the impending war against Earth and to continue mediating the peace talks between the poles. The North pledged to withdraw from the eastern Alliance territories, while the South agreed to return the occupied Northern cities in exchange. In the Eastern Sun Emirates, Patriarch Oliver Masao killed many of his supporters and himself in a bizarre murder-suicide, bringing an end to the Emirate Civil War. With the patriarch dead, a final peace treaty was ratified and the ESE was allowed to rejoin the AST, on its own terms, and the Interpolar War drew to a close.

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POST WAR RECONSTRUCTION

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1 The post–Interpolar War cycles marked a tumultuous period for the Southern leagues. In the Southern Republic, the rise in popularity of Louise deRouen, daughter of Prime Minister Louis Philippe deRouen, as a political power marked the return of an ancient shadow organization called the Order of the Falcon. The Order of the Falcon had secretly ruled the Southern Republic and the Allied Southern Territories since the Southern Unification wars, but during the TN1920s, the order was systematically destroyed by the machinations of Louis Philippe deRouen and Jacque Molay, Lord Protector of the AST. In the power vacuum produced within the secret society, Louise deRouen seized control of the Order of the Falcon to further her own political ambitions. With access to the order’s resources and her father’s political connections, Louise de Rouen manipulated Southern media, education, and the emergent grassroots political groups to her own needs. Her influence was so prevalent that by TN1944 Louise used her political base to save her father from political defeat. With his victory secured in public, Louis Philippe deRouen conceded the power of his office to his daughter’s designs.

Though on the surface the society appeared significantly more open and free, the reality of the republic was that the old orders had returned wearing a new mask. Louise de Rouen’s power play eventually put her at odds with Jacque Molay’s own ambitions, and in TN1948 a hard-pressed Molay attempted a coup against the deRouens. With the support of nearly half of the Southern Republic Army and the MILICIA forces in the league, Molay gained the upper hand in the early weeks of the coup, even forcing the Estates General to flee from Port Oasis with the aid of the deRouens. In the following weeks, the populace turned on Molay and his usurpation of the popularly elected government. The political pressures caused many of Molay’s forces to reconsider their loyalties, and whole legions turned on the former Lord Protector. By the Spring of TN1949, forces under the command of Prefect Narimasa Asano defeated Molay and his Legion Noire allies. The Legion Noire was allowed to save face by sending its duelist, Sergent Salvador Vin, out to meet Asano’s chosen duelist, Sous-Lt. Laura Pestre. Fought over the course of two days, the duel resulted in Sous-Lt. Pestre defeating Sergeant Vin on the Champs de Mars in Port Oasis. Though the Legion Noire was formally allowed to return to the Southern Republic Army, many of the officers and NCOs were quietly shuffled into the Black Talon Program as a way to get rid of stains on the legion’s honor. Prefect Asano’s staunch defense of the Curia earned him command of the newly formed Legion of the Republic, a force composed of the seven regiments in Port Oasis and its surrounding regions that stayed loyal to the elected government.

In the Eastern Sun Emirates, the new matriarch and her consort, Lysia Masao and Nigel Shirow, struggled to rebuild a league shattered by decades of civil war. Part of the rebuilding process involved rejoining the Southern community, but the autonomy of the Eastern Sun Emirates had to be preserved. In order to return the ESE to the Allied Southern Territories, the Southern Republic brokered a deal to place Nigel Shirow as Lord Chancellor of his league. Massive amounts of funding to rebuild the league poured into the Eastern Sun Emirates, which created a booming economy. The increased flow of money also generated a new host of problems for the league. Mekong corporations sought to exert their influence over the

UNEASY PEACE AND REBELLIONSconservative emirate factions, consisting mainly of the Khajar sisters in Smyrna and their allies in Cimmaro. In order to meet the labor demands of the league, slaves were brought in by the Mekong corporations, and in some cases slaves were acquired through force from rival emirate land holdings.

Horrified by the rampant corruption, embezzlement, and enslavement of her people, Matriarch Masao along with her husband ordered the arrest of the Khajar sisters and their Mekong allies. Sending the Matriarch’s retinue along with other loyalist emirate retinues, Shirow attacked the Khajar sister’s forces, which left the city-state of Smyrna in ruins as pitched battles between the conservative faction’s forces and the loyalists raged through its streets. The Khajar sisters’ forces were saved only when the mysterious Mekong bandit lord, Khan, intervened on their behalf and sent his forces into the fray. The fighting at Smyrna stalled as a result of the three-way battle until the Spring 39 TN1949, when Khan mysteriously pulled out of the region while attacking both sides of the battle. With the bandit forces’ withdrawal, Shirow’s forces gained the upper hand and crushed the rebellion. The Khajar sisters escaped the region with the help of Lord Chancellor Etienne Durocher, which left a power vacuum in the conservative emirate faction. The matriarch quickly capitalized on the departure by installing loyalist emirs into the Khajar’s vacated positions.

In the Humanist Alliance, the new borders marked drastic changes to the league and its people. In the western half of the league, the former Humanist lands under the dominion of the Southern Republic and Lord Chancellor Meredyth DeMer quickly transformed away from Yuri Gropius’s vision of the league, while in the eastern half under Illuminatus Anya Niklos used her ties to Port Arthur and NuCoal to rebuild what was lost due to the Theban Blight. Niklos spent the better part of the TN1940s rebuilding the preceptor program, the league’s manufacturing, and infrastructure, all which had been devastated by a combination of warfare and the Blight. By TN1949, military manufacturing in the Free Humanist Alliance returned to pre–Theban Blight levels and the preceptor and protector classes were normalizing due to the aid offered by NuCoal. Ties to the emergent Badlands power were openly strengthened during the decade as Illuminatus Niklos authorized the joint funding of the Sigma Maglev line and the Gallic Series of vehicles and Gears.

Lurking in the shadows, the Mekong Dominion under MDC Taipan Aaron Logan’s leadership quietly exerted influence over the MILICIA and Republican corporations in a gamble to usurp the Southern Republic’s position as the dominant Southern league. Logan’s machinations extended throughout the South through the use of monetary returns from postwar reconstruction that the Mekong Development Corporation earned from various government contracts. By TN1946, Aaron Logan displaced Speaker Sogabe. Three cycles later, Logan began instituting the MILICIA Modernization Movement to influence the loyalty of the AST’s military branch. With the social instability and short civil war in the Southern Republic, the Mekong Dominion appeared poised to seize the leadership of the Allied Southern Territories. Unfortunately for Logan and the rest of the Mekong Dominion, Earth’s invasion in TN1950 ruined most of his carefully laid plans and influence brokering.

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UNEASY PEACE AND REBELLIONS

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LOUISE DEROUEN, LEADER OF THE ORDER OF THE FALCON

The second invasion of Terra Nova by the New Earth Commonwealth’s (NEC) Colonial Expeditionary Force (CEF) began on the Spring of TN1950, when the CEF’s 8th Fleet entered into Terra Nova’s solar system via Gateships. During the fleet’s transit to Terra Nova, the Southern Republic Space Defense Branch (SDB) threw itself into a valiant fight in order to stall the inevitable landfall, and as a result of its delaying actions, the planet’s military forces had time to mobilize an armed response to the impending invasion. Even with the SR SDB’s valiant efforts, twenty-five days after the fleet’s entry into Terra Nova space, the CEF launched an orbital barrage on Marabou, killing a significant portion of the city’s population

WAR FOR TERRA NOVAand destroying the city-state. In addition to the massive civilian casualties, two whole MILICIA legions were destroyed while attempting to aid evacuation operations for the city’s population. Four days after the destruction of Marabou, the 8th Fleet began deploying troops to Terra Nova’s surface and creating conflict zones throughout the planet. In the Antarctic , the CEF landed twelve full Korps in three operations areas. Unlike the prior invasion, the CEF chose to deploy most of its forces directly into the densely inhabited leagues rather than the equatorial Badlands regions and fan out. With better intelligence and agents operating on the planet for decades, the CEF exploited specific weak points in defenses.

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WAR FOR TERRA NOVA“The Southern Republic has been denied the greatness it has long held, by the whim of two petty, selfish men. We crushed my father through our political will and restored the order to its proper place, and today, we sacrifice Jacques Molay on the altar of public opinion. The traitor to our league and to the South will die a political death at our hands.”

Louise de Rouen Leader of the Order of the Falcon, meeting with her supporters in Port Oasis, Southern Republic to determine the direction of the South’s future. 28 Summer TN1948.

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In the Mekong Front, command of the Terra Novan forces fell to the Peacekeeper Corps’ Chief Constable Francis Cranston, veteran of the War of the Alliance and the Interpolar War. Under Cranston’s guidance, Peacekeeper brigades and MILICIA legions mercilessly fought against the invaders. The first weeks of fighting created a siege situation in Loyang, which tied up the CEF’s IX Korp. Racing along the railways, Cranston threw the bulk of his troops along with the 6th and 9th MILICIA Legions into the Serpentine Mountain Range to stall the three CEF Korps under Lieutenant-General Ivan Warbowy. Warbowy had been a part of the original failed invasion and had spent cycles fighting in the Mekong Dominion, learning the perils of jungle fighting and the inhospitable terrain. He knew the key to controlling the Mekong lay in controlling the railways and the numerous secondary lines, and his principal target was the Beta Maglev line running directly into the heart of the Mekong Dominion. In addition to connecting to every major railway in the league, Warbowy needed access to the maglev to provide a corridor to move forces between the Mekong Front and Irrian Front in the north. Cranston’s forces succeeded in bogging down the CEF in intense mountain and jungle fighting throughout the western part of the league.

MEKONG FRONT

In the early part of TN1951, MILICIA and Peacekeeper reserves from Chung Tang in the north of the Mekong were released to attack Warbowy’s forces. The forces had been waiting on the return of the 2nd and 3rd Peacekeeper Landship Task Forces, which had been deployed in the Barrington Basin as a mobile bulwark against CEF forces that had landed in NuCoal’s territory and the unknown factor of the Port Arthur Korps. With the defeat of the CEF Korps in the Barrington Basin at Temple Heights, the landship task forces were called back to crush the IX Korp that had settled into a brutal siege at Loyang. Intensive urban warfare marked the type of fighting the 5th MILICIA Legion and the Peacekeeper’s Loyang Brigade experienced. By the time the 2nd and 3rd Task Forces arrived at Loyang, the city-state had been reduced to rubble and its population armed and formed into makeshift guerilla groups that fought from building to building. The tattered remnants of the 5th and Loyang Brigade ceased to be combat effective and provided marginal materiel support and direction to the civilian militia forces. On Winter 39 TN1951, the Terra Novan defensive positions on the Serpentine Front collapsed under the weight of the three CEF Korps and Warbowy seized control of the Beta Maglev line from Smyrna to Yung An. With 9th MILICIA Legion and the Peacekeeper’s Yung An Brigade in retreat, Cranston ordered the 6th MILICIA Legion to cover the returning forces. As in the prior war, Yung An’s lack of defensible positions forced Cranston to make the hard decision of ordering the city-state’s population to evacuate to Mekong City. In order to buy time for the evacuation, the Terra Novan forces sabotaged the Beta Maglev Line north of Yung An while forcing the fight into the thick jungles. Cranston saw that his forces would have to pull back and join the reserves in Mekong City. The Peacekeepers and the MILICIA would see their glory at the gates of the Mekong’s capital.

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New Peace River

Khayr ad-Din

Port Arthur

Prince Gable

Lance PointTemple Heights

Fort Neil

Jasper

Ronda

(HQ, Westphalia Cabinet)

Chung Tang

Mirat

(CNCS Capital)

(AST Capital)

(Destroyed TN 1937)

Peace River(Destroyed TN 1939)

D O M I N I O N

H U M A N I S T

E A S T E R N

S U N

E M I R A T E S

S O U T H E R N

R E P U B L I C

A L L I A N C E

M E K O N G

W E S T E R N F R O N T I E R

U N I T E D

M E R C A N T I L E

N O R T H E R N

L I G H T S

C O N F E D E R A C Y

F E D E R A T I O N

P R O T E C T O R A T E

N O R T H E R N

L I G H T S


Peace RiverDefense ForceSecurity Zone


NEW HUMAN REPUBLIC

N E W C O A L I T I O NPort Arthur

Security Zone

E.S.E.

NBC HazardZone

Franklin

Terrence

SorrenVen

ik

Ye l e

Korz

Sitk a

Thorn

Madras

F raser

Lake Van Ness

LakeProvidence

Loy

ang

Gua dalquivirL.Toro

Tron dheim

L. Waymar

Ra y es

Theros LakeIsaborah

Siwa

Réunion

LakeHeliosphora

LakeMoustache

LakePeterson

Kenem

a

L. Huneke

0°30° W60° W90° W120° W150° W180° 30° E 60° E 90° E 120° E 150° E 180°

0°30° W60° W90° W120° W150° W180° 30° E 60° E 90° E 120° E 150° E 180°

0°

60° N

30° N

30° S

60° S

60° N

30° N

30° S

60° S

0°

S e r p e n t i ne

Ra

ng

e

So

ut h

e r n

Sp

u

r


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ri

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eR

an

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eR

an

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in

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Pa

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a

Ra

n g e

Lo

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g

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ge

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e




Sa

ra

go

ss

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L a k eA u r o r a

L.Chanti l ly

Qu i n n R a n g e

LakeWindermere


L .Yu n g A n

L.Shuswap

P ac

i

fi

ca

Ra

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Ma j o r

Ak a r u m

Mi

no

rA

ka

ru

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Ga

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ag

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v

Be

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ag

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B e t a M a g l e v

Be

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Ma g l e v


Al

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aM

ag

l ev

Al

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v

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e r n

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R a n g e


Pa

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f

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ca

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e

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ic

a

Ra

n g e

Lo

ne l y

Hi l l s

Te r s h a w R a n

g

e


ge

Se

rp

e n t i ne

Ra

ng

e


B A R R I N G T O N

B A S I N

G R E A T W H I T E

D E S E R T




N o r t h e r n

I r r i a n



P l a i n s

M a r a t h o n

B a s i n



Z i h l S a l t

F l a t s

A r c t i c

B a s i n

B i g V a l l e y



P l a i n

Es

pe

ra

nc

e

Ba s i n

T o b i a n

E a s t e r n

P l a i n


S w a m p s

Godwell Valley

Sa

ra

go

ss

a

Ra

ng

e

WhiteMts.

We

s t r i dgeTr ench


Ré u n i o n

P l a t e a u


Qu i n n R a n g e


M e k o n g

B a s i n

Mt. Kandrasar

Mt. Ida


C ajun Pass

S a n g a r

T u d o r

P l a i n

B a s i n

Mt. Lowen

Mt. Mosvari

F o s s e n w o o d

P a m p a s


Mt. Mulhacén

Mt. Seldon

P ac

i

fi

ca

Ra

ng

e

I n t e r i o r


Ma j o r

Ak a r u m

Mi

no

rA

ka

ru

m

NubeMuerte

Mt. Perdido


P l a i n

W e s t e r n

M e k o n g

P l a i n

WhitetopSpire


Livingstone Pass

Ex

et e

r

H i l l s

Mt.Gérard

Mt. Émile-Zola

Mt.Kulin

Mt.François-Albert

Q u i n nR a n g

e

A

ur

or

aB

as

i n

Mt. Alban

E

me r a l d B e l t

Mt. Pekyns

Re

dH

i l

ls

Mt. Bukûtu

Marathon


InnsbruckKenema

Livingstone

Petropolis

Sorrento

Exeter

Franklin Harbor

KossuthSesshu

Skadi

Smolensk

Yele

Zagazig

Lyonnesse

Rapid City

Ashington

Baton Rouge

Canterbury

Djakarta Point

Mainz

Pioneer

Zagreb

Swanscombe

FortWilliam


Massada

Wounded Knee

Red Sands

Timmins

Port OasisMarabou

Saragossa

Timbuktu

Ankara

Aquitaine

Ashanti

Bethany

Innsmouth

Newton

Réunion

Siwa Oasis

Mekong

Hsi Tsang

Loyang

Olduvai

Yung An

Atsi

Ngorongoro

Strathclyde

Cimmaro

Javari

Skavara

Smyrna

Basal

Bangweuleu

Okavango

Perth

Gardena

Thebes


Oxford

Raleigh

White Rock

Azov

New BajaWestphalia

Erech

Nineveh

Jan Mayen

Elayu

Marigold

New Peace River

Khayr ad-Din

Port Arthur

Prince Gable


Fort Neil

Jasper

Ronda


Chung Tang

Mirat

(CNCS Capital)

(AST Capital)

(Destroyed TN 1937)


3rd MDP LND Fleet

2nd MDP LND Fleet

5th MILICIA INF LG

Korps IX

Korps X Korps XI Korps XII

MDP Loyang BRIG

MDP Mekong BRIG

6th MILICIA INF LG

MDP Yung An BRIG

9th MILICIA INF LG

1

12

MEKONG FRONT

Sam

ple

file

11

13

MEKONG FRONT

“Constant rain, unbearable humidity, dangerous creatures, and poisonous plants, what’s not to like about the Mekong jungles? We’ve grown up here and lived in this hell since birth. Doesn’t really bother us and we know how to get around through the densest parts with ease. Why do you think we ride around on these greater pack lizards? You can train them, but you still have the occasional city-bred idiot that thinks you can scratch under their chins like the domesticated cousins to my lizards. They’re war beasts not your pets. Can’t be held responsible for the occasional mangling or death.”

Constable Sergent Kenji van Horne explaining to embedded reporters accompanying the 42nd Peacekeeper Infantry Regiment in the jungles near Loyang, the dangers of approaching his escouade’s riding beasts.02 Winter TN1951

Sam

ple

file

1

The invasion into the heart of the South began with the landing of four CEF Korps in occupied Humanist Alliance territory. In the days leading up to the invasion, the CEF’s heavy orbital bombardment of the Southern Republic city-state of Marabou left the Southern Republic Army and the regionally garrisoned MILICIA legions reeling from the destruction of a key military stronghold. In an effort to protect Port Oasis, the capital of the Republic, SRA and MILICIA forces were withdrawn from occupied Humanist territories. In a highly unusual move, Illuminatus Anya Niklos offered to aid the Southern Republic by bolstering the MILICIA forces in the west with HAPF forces out of Perth. Under the agreement, Archon Navar assumed command of all forces located in the former Humanist Territories. Pressed with the need to preserve Port Oasis, Prime Minister deRouen accepted the offer and allowed Archon Navar’s forces to enter into occupied Humanist Territory for the first time since the Interpolar War.

Seven HAPF penhilions and four Port Arthur Korp battle groups rushed from Perth along the secondary rail lines to secure Gropius. When news of the CEF Korps approach to Thebes and the eastern strongholds of the Humanist Alliance reached Navar, the Archon promoted his second in command, Davyd Hopkyns, to Penstratarch, a rare rank reserved for task force command. Leaving Hopkyns in command of the western front, Navar rushed back to Thebes to defend the crucial heart of Humanist production.

ESPERANCE FRONT

The CEF Korps landings in the Esperance Front met with heavy anti-air battery fire and fierce resistance from Southern Republic Army and MILICIA legions in the region. Fully thirty percent of the CEF landing force was annihilated by ground defenses as the drop pods and landing craft attempted to secure their drop zones. The overall command of the Port Oasis and Albigen region was placed under the joint command of Prefect Henri Mikashi and Narimisa Asano. Mikashi was tasked with coordinating offensive actions against the advancing CEF forces, while Asano was tasked with the defense of Port Oasis.

Franklin

Terrence

SorrenVen

ik

Ye l e

Korz

Sitk a

Thorn

Madras

F raser

Lake Van Ness

LakeProvidence

Loy

ang

Gua dalquivirL.Toro

Tron dheim

L. Waymar

Ra y es

Theros LakeIsaborah

Siwa

Réunion

LakeHeliosphora

LakeMoustache

LakePeterson

Kenem

a

L. Huneke

0°30° W60° W90° W120° W150° W180° 30° E 60° E 90° E 120° E 150° E 180°

0°30° W60° W90° W120° W150° W180° 30° E 60° E 90° E 120° E 150° E 180°

0°

60° N

30° N

30° S

60° S

60° N

30° N

30° S

60° S

0°

S e r p e n t i ne

Ra

ng

e

So

ut h

e r n

Sp

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We

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Lo

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T e r s h a w R a ng

e


ge

S

er p

e n t i ne

Ra

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e




Sa

ra

go

ss

a

Ra

ng

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L a k eA u r o r a

L.Chanti l ly

Qu i n n R a n g e

LakeWindermere


L .Yu n g A n

L.Shuswap

P ac

i

fi

ca

Ra

ng

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Ma j o r

Ak a r u m

Mi

no

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ka

ru

m

Q u i n nR a n g

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M a g l e v


Ga

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ag

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Be

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ag

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v

B e t a M a g l e v

Be

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Ma g l e v


Al

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Sp

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Do

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R a n g e


Pa

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P a c i f

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a

Ra

n g e

Lo

ne l y

Hi l l s

Te r s h a w R a n

g

e


ge

S

er p

e n t i ne

Ra

ng

e


B A R R I N G T O N

B A S I N

G R E A T W H I T E

D E S E R T




N o r t h e r n

I r r i a n



P l a i n s

M a r a t h o n

B a s i n



Z i h l S a l t

F l a t s

A r c t i c

B a s i n

B i g V a l l e y



P l a i n

Es

pe

ra

nc

e

Ba s i n

T o b i a n

E a s t e r n

P l a i n


S w a m p s

Godwell Valley

Sa

ra

go

ss

a

Ra

ng

e

WhiteMts.

We

s t r i dgeTr ench


Ré u n i o n

P l a t e a u


Qu i n n R a n g e


M e k o n g

B a s i n

Mt. Kandrasar

Mt. Ida


C ajun Pass

S a n g a r

T u d o r

P l a i n

B a s i n

Mt. Lowen

Mt. Mosvari

F o s s e n w o o d

P a m p a s


Mt. Mulhacén

Mt. Seldon

P ac

i

fi

ca

Ra

ng

e

I n t e r i o r


Ma j o r

Ak a r u m

Mi

no

rA

ka

ru

m

NubeMuerte

Mt. Perdido


P l a i n

W e s t e r n

M e k o n g

P l a i n

WhitetopSpire


Livingstone Pass

Ex

et e

r

H i l l s

Mt.Gérard

Mt. Émile-Zola

Mt.Kulin

Mt.François-Albert

Q u i n nR a n g

e

A

ur

or

aB

as

i n

Mt. Alban

E

me r a l d B e l t

Mt. Pekyns

Re

dH

i l

ls

Mt. Bukûtu

Marathon


InnsbruckKenema

Livingstone

Petropolis

Sorrento

Exeter

Franklin Harbor

KossuthSesshu

Skadi

Smolensk

Yele

Zagazig

Lyonnesse

Rapid City

Ashington

Baton Rouge

Canterbury

Djakarta Point

Mainz

Pioneer

Zagreb

Swanscombe

FortWilliam


Massada

Wounded Knee

Red Sands

Timmins

Port OasisMarabou

Saragossa

Timbuktu

Ankara

Aquitaine

Ashanti

Bethany

Innsmouth

Newton

Réunion

Siwa Oasis

Mekong

Hsi Tsang

Loyang

Olduvai

Yung An

Atsi

Ngorongoro

Strathclyde

Cimmaro

Javari

Skavara

Smyrna

Basal

Bangweuleu

Okavango

Perth

Gardena

Thebes


Oxford

Raleigh

White Rock

Azov

New BajaWestphalia

Erech

Nineveh

Jan Mayen

Elayu

Marigold

New Peace River

Khayr ad-Din

Port Arthur

Prince Gable


Fort Neil

Jasper

Ronda


Chung Tang

Mirat

(CNCS Capital)

(AST Capital)

(Destroyed TN 1937)


New Osaka

Hanja

Lardom

Humei

Galapagos

Salisbury

VladivostokBannerton

New Yukon

Aberdeen

Kartoom

Yaramir

S i g m a M a g l e v

D O M I N I O N

H U M A N I S T

E A S T E R N

S U N

E M I R A T E S

S O U T H E R N

R E P U B L I C

A L L I A N C E

M E K O N G

W E S T E R N F R O N T I E R

U N I T E D

M E R C A N T I L E

N O R T H E R N

L I G H T S


F E D E R A T I O N

P R O T E C T O R A T E

N O R T H E R N

L I G H T S




NEW HUMAN REPUBLIC

N E W C O A L I T I O NPort Arthur

Security Zone

M.D.

M.D.

E.S.E.

NBC HazardZone

10TH MILICIA INF LG

Korps XXIII, Korps XXIV

Korps XXI, Korps XXII

2nd HAPF PEN, 4th HAPF PEN, 11th HAPF PEN, 15th HAPF PEN, PAK EAST Korps

2nd MILICIA CAV LGN, 4th MLICIA INF LGN,7th MILICIA INF LGN

Ethereal Guard, Emirate Retinues

3RD MILICIA INF LG

1st MILICIA CAV LGN, 6th MILICIA INF LGN

1st HAPF PEN, 3rd HAPF PEN, 5th HAPF PEN, 6th HAPF PEN, 8th HAPF PEN, 10th HAPF PEN, 14th HAPF PEN, PAK WEST Korps, 1st MILCIIA INF LGN

1st SRA LGN Republic, SRA LGN Noire, 3rd SRA INF LGN, 4th SRA INF LGN, 1st SRA CAV LGN, Port Oasis Def Corps, TNDI 1st BRIG

KORPS VKORPS VI

KORPS VIIKORPS VIII

2ND SRA ABN LG

1ST SRA LND FLT

1

14

ESPERANCE FRONT

Sam

ple

file

1The early weeks of fighting in the Albigen region provided mixed results for the Southern forces. In the southwest of Port Oasis, the less-defended suburban areas provided the CEF a point to breach the Republic’s capital. Under the cover of darkness, several battle groups of CEF ground troops infiltrated their way toward the crucial space port, but the invaders found their way blocked by an ad-hoc brigade composed of various Legion Noire sections and elements from the 1st Armored Legion and 3rd Infantry Legion. Lead by Commandant Mathis, the hastily thrown together Southern force engaged in a fierce street-to-street battle throughout Villeneuve, a suburb of Port Oasis. The CEF tide was repulsed by the Terra Novan forces, but at a great cost in human lives, as civilians were caught up in the fighting.

The fighting in the Trondheim Valley region near Gropius was a fierce interplay between HAPF and PAK forces equipped with hovertech and their CEF counterparts. Penstratarch Hopkyns coordinated the Terra Novans and attempted to engage the CEF in a series of battles in an attempt to bog down the CEF, but the CEF’s Lt. General Maximilien Jiang refused to take the bait and instead focused his korps into Gropius. HAPF, PAK, and MILICIA regiments struggled to push the CEF out of Gropius, but a week into the fighting, Hopkyns determined that the city-state could not be held and ordered his forces to withdraw while Terra Novan engineering companies remained behind to sabotage the rail lines and any other beneficial infrastructure. While their operations were successful, the engineering companies paid a heavy price.

By the third week of fighting in Port Oasis, Villeneuve had turned into morass of hellish urban combat. The structures of the suburb had long been reduced to rubble from constant fighting and artillery bombardment. Southern infantry and Gears struggled to hold back the CEF’s tide and were quickly losing the fight for the capital of the South.

1

15

ESPERANCE FRONT

“Infiltration and assassinations have always been part of the Legion Noire’s specialties. Take the leader down and sow havoc in the ranks. It’s a tactic that dates back to some ancient Chinese genius named Sun Tzu and his Art of War thousands of cycles ago, but I’ll tell you, I bet old Sun Tzu could learn a few things from us.”

Adjudant-Chef Jezebel Browning, 2nd Legion Noire Regiment, Team 13 on the team’s recent roles in the war.30 Spring TN1950

Sam

ple

file

sample file - dmsguild · writing jason dickerson dan strother ... julian fong jean-françois...

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