On the distant
planet of Wagan, the ships are bombing the surface. It's been going
on for about two years. If you're here, that means you weren't able
to get off the planet in time. Now you're kind of stuck. The royal
blockade has kept everyone here. You stay alive off humanitarian aid
and scavenging through the ruins; but some co-opt farms and
underground grub farms work well enough.
The war all began
when the last emperor gave up the planet. Now, four species fight
over it. The clever Tulari, the militaristic Zimt, the repugnant
Olgun, and the conniving Jess'et.
These four alien
races are just small smattering of the ones that inhabit the galaxy.
Wagan was a very cosmopolitanism place. But after the human emperor
gave up the planet, moved the capital back to Earth after four
hundred years of tradition keeping it here, the planet became a real
hell hole. Humans, Tulari, Zimt, Olgun, Jess'et, other species too-
the little people are stuck down here in the ruins.
Every day bombs
fall over head, trying to knock out important power connections and
religious or cultural sites. Every day anti-bomb defense bombs try to
blow up the first bombs. It's hard for the people of the planet to do
much about it, mostly because they're all up in space in cruisers and
battleships. These ships send down small armies of elite troops,
mechanized infantry and drones to try and capture locations, while
other factions try to bomb the shit out of them at the same time. At
this point it's probably just laughable.
It's easy enough
to avoid getting rubbled for the most part; staying indoors is a good
start because most of the buildings here are made of zirconian
elements, pioneered by the Tulari, which are essentially compression
and explosive proof. Still, the damage takes its toll. You can see
inner-city markets spring up in neighborhoods that were attacked two,
maybe three days ago. The smoke still rises but it's cleared up
enough that you can move in for a time. Usually any place that gets
destroyed stays clear for up to a week before the ships overhead move
back into position to fight for the next useful speck.
The
soldiers in the sky aren't just interested in each other though;
there are factions on the ground too. People down here are willing to
sell their knowledge; secret tunnels, bomb shelters, and lead troops
into ambushes against their enemies. Everybody down here wants
somebody to win this war for their own benefit, if they're interested
at all in Wagan politics. The Jess'et are promising to make the
planet an anthropological paradise for all of the deep-space remnants
of old cultural importance for many resources who, frankly, can't
afford to keep them on planets anymore. Space is at a premium on
planets when compared to the vast empty. But the Zimt are famous for
well-planned central economies that keep people working and hearty
pensions for veterans; of which civilians who aid them will be
recommended for by the Zimt ground captains, naturally.
The
players could take the role of minor leaders. They could be landed
nobles from a quickly dissolving feudal land-ownership system, gang
and rebel squad strongmen, or military commanders in way over their
head. You lead squads of men into the rubble to rescue civilians,
capture territory, or hold important objectives. You need to keep a
good schedule of the ships above and where they'll be over next, and
down here short hyper-wave transmitter scanners are as common as
microwaves. Everybody, civilians and soldiers alike, listens to the
Wagan Renegade- the hyperwave transmitter AI that gives coordinates
and estimated time of payload hits, calculating wind resistance and
gravity acceleration in real time to give the most accurate reports.
Nobody is quite sure who set up this AI, but whoever did has saved
far more lives then they would know.
Of
course, urban combat in such a chaotic environment is brutal. Half of
warfare is about setting up hardpoints and using technology from the
various races to augment your own forces, or make it hard for the
enemy to catch up. The Zimt are experts in energy field manipulation,
and while their ships and brigades sent from above are the best at
it, most races can hack together some energetic fields that displace
blaster fire or make force fields that cannot be passed except by
those with the right keys. The Olgun are a special example as they
partially terraform entire city blocs; pulsating moss growing on
every surface fast enough that you can see it, turning interior
spaces into gas-spore infested condemned buildings. Their race is
adapted to breathe it with their air gills, you probably aren't.
There
are wars in the Sky too. The ships above are in constant stalemate.
The large carriers and cruisers holding the weapons refuse to cross
over the horizon line close enough to see another ship; going too far
over the curve of the planet means laser weapons can annihilate you
at the speed of light. Instead, they play a careful game of posturing
and delayed bombing. For the second half of the second year, kinetic
rods were all that has been used since traditional ammunition has
seem to run out. But if the council is anything to go by, new
shipments of payload is coming in to replace the old. As such, some
rebel civilian groups have even banded together to stop it from
arriving.
But how to get out into orbit and stop transports carrying military
weapons with just our own scrap, planet-locked forces? That's the
tough part.
Meanwhile,
near the heart of Wagan is the Council building. The huge,
laser-protected dome is one of the few megastructures not yet bombed
to shit by the above cruisers. The garden terraces around the
building can always be seen from below and above; a jealous look of
cultural elegance that is anything but. Just about as much violence
is inside the building as around it.
In
truth, the Council is just about as cutthroat as anywhere else.
Racial diplomats at the end of their rope; assassins hired among the
staff are constantly stalking the halls. Young privates and
custodians with no experience are quickly promoted to official
liaisons, even generals, as the body count keeps growing. The Jess'et
are pretty close to wining this war just through attrition; their RNA
unsequencer poisons placed in cloth fabrics and ventilation shafts
kill quick and clean.
Pointless
debates over if cyber-bounce grenades should be banned by military
troops who don't follow the guidelines in the first place rage on as
slimy arms dealers try to undercut the expensive imported military
goods from space, since the space elevators were cut at stratosphere
height ages ago, by using cheap local manufacturing. Some of the most
well off people on Wagan are those who put shell casings together by
hand in what used to be a preschool.
Hyperinflation
is the bane of most fiat economies- in Wagan? It's another form of
attack. By getting the mints to mass duplicate credit codes, you can
destabilize and cause hyper inflation in your opponents army. Of
course in a month when things change and you're now reliant on the
codes to supply your own side you'll do anything to shut down the
computer farms that duplicate the digital currency; like bomb them
from space. Now you can see the problem.
The
Goodness tucked Away
All
over the planet; people are just trying to get by. While some sectors
seem almost well cleaned after the constant destruction, some don't
even look inhabited. Young people get along as well as they can in
education, requiring digital uplinks and learning from archaic
methods, like reading books or watching videos, as opposed to full VR
education exercises. Holographic imaging technology requires a lot of
infrastructure a lot of people here just don't have anymore; theaters
do plays in person
with costumes and everything. It's a time of great cultural
expansion; the people of the planet looking inward when a galaxy who
has forgotten about them keeps turning the great wheel of
productivity.
Wagan
was once a planet of nothing but gray sludge formed into building
shells and maximum utility centers of industry. Almost all of its
natural resources were stripped a long time ago; a great desolation
occurred hundreds of years ago when the humans settled here. It seems
now, with their leaving and the jealous war over the aliens who are
descended from their imperial ambitions, life untethered is making a
come back. Species who were intentionally made extinct by city
planners during the great urbanization have been seen in rumors
around mossy-covered parks. Escaped Olgun specimens and mold-children
have actually somewhat melded with the common ecosystem. Underground
birds have begun to reappear, the lack of skyscrapers coating every
inch of inhabitable ground means that the air currents that they
navigate by with their eyeless little faces are opened up to them. In
some ways, life has made a combat only through mass destruction.
Perhaps it is just a temporary change as the result of a great,
mostly pointless conflict. Or perhaps it is a change here to stay.
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