“Fires of Hate”
Elysian Accord propaganda piece
–
Screen fades from black, displaying parts of a large-scale urban arcology in the foreground. The sky, backlit by a setting sun, is the epicenter of a large-scale void battle could be seen in the form of flashes of energy discharge and the outlines of naval vessels facing off against each other.
A voice, vaguely feminine, narrates.
“In a Multiverse of disparate groups, each laying claim to their own territories and advancing their own goals, it is inevitable that war and conflict would eventually arise in time. The civilized states of the Elysian Accord have long since established and observed laws of war intended to minimize the suffering of the innocent and the bystander.”
The background sky slowly darkens, and the view zooms in on a small sector of the sky. The low-resolution image shows the blurry outline of dozens of strike craft, approaching the camera at an extremely high speed. The view slowly zooms out,over the course of the next twenty seconds. If there were several dozen in that sector, it must have been hundreds, if not thousands, approaching the city.
“Though in times of war two states are expected to wage destruction upon each other, the Accord recognizes that civilians are innocent bystanders and should be spared the death and slaughter that the armed forces of the respective states will undergo.”
“But our adversaries are not as honorable.”
A popup appears on the upper right side of the video feed, with a line coming off of the popup and pointing to a circled region near the center of the video. The popup cycles through several images, each displaying the frame of variants of bomber craft or interceptors. It’s accompanied by the faint sounds of alarms sounding across the city and the reverberating thumps of large-scale anti-aircraft weapons returning fire. Missile streaks and flack bursts fill the sky, but the incoming strike craft seemed to be unfazed. At the bottom of the video feed, civilians can be seen scattering in all directions.
“During the latter portion of the First Solar Crusade, the combined forces of the Unity waged a war of extermination against the now extinct nation known as the Dominion. Though their justification to declare war was understandable – the Dominion government has waged a war of aggression against the Unity and systematically exterminated civilian populations in response to partisan uprisings – the Unity has chosen to be just as heavy-handed and unforgiving.”
The frontal wave of the strike craft assault, composed mostly of interceptors, sweeps over the city and quickly swarms the few Combat Air Patrol craft left defending the city.
“This nameless world, on the edge of Dominion holdings, has rejected their government and declared neutrality. They have sought peace and reconciliation for the crimes their wayward brethren have committed, but the Unity is only content with their death.”
Then the main wave hit.
Behind the black wing of death formed by the swarm of strike crafts, the city collapsed into a cascade of fireballs as munitions rained down from the skies. Buildings disappeared into fire and dust behind the rolling front of explosions. The blossoming fireballs soon turned into conflagrations that consumed the ruins in mere moments, leaving behind walls of red and orange flame.
The video pauses and zooms in on the edge of the rolling front. The fleeing civilians are but small figures on the yet-to-be-destroyed roads, miniscule compared to the wall of death headed their way.
“In the act of supposedly avenging their brethren and bringing retribution, the Unity has fallen into the same depths of inhuman cruelty that they have vilified their enemies for. They are savage brutes who only understand indiscriminate destruction as a solution and are a danger to our civilized world.”
The feed fades out and a different clip fades in. This one is rendered in such high quality that it would be easy for a layman to pass it off as a legitimate recording. The clip’s point of view is positioned about a meter off of the ground, in the center of a road surrounded by burning buildings, looking up at a crimson sky as waves of strike craft passed overhead. The feed pans downward, revealing corpses strewn across a burning road. The nearest one appears to be alive and struggling to get up, however, its body is being consumed by fire. Much of its skin and clothing is now melted into each other, indistinguishable, and what little is left of its face is stuck in a rictus of terror and pain.
But most disturbingly, the civilian at death’s doorstep is not the only one alive.
In the foreground of the rendered clip, there is something cocooned in a shell of metal and plastic. The plastic dome that made up a portion of the cocoon has been broken and peeled away, and a corner of cloth is sticking out of the opening. As the crackling of burning fire faded for a moment, a cry of fear could be heard. It is accompanied by a fit of coughing.
The sounds originate from the cocoon.
The camera pans up and back toward the sky as a particularly large flying wing passes by high overhead. A projectile of sorts detaches from its bottom, descending into a parabolic dive towards distant ruins.
The clip suddenly turns white. Eventually, the color returns, revealing a fireball of such magnitude that it dwarfs any and all structures that are visible from the camera’s position. As the clip clears up, it becomes apparent what had occurred – an atom strike has been carried out, and the fireball is the epicenter of the attack. A mushroom cloud blossoms against the distant sky, blotting out the actual sun with its expanding shape.
The resulting shockwave rushes through the destroyed structures, and the clip abruptly cuts out.
“Yesterday, it was the innocent people of the Dominion that perished in flames. Today, it is the Technocracy that fell to their perpetual expansion. Tomorrow, it will be us.”
“Stand up against the rise of evil. Fight for the peace that the Unity will destroy.”
–
“Gate Guardians”
Unity propaganda piece
–
Screen fades in from black, showing the inky darkness of outer space interspersed by pinpricks of starlight. Camera slowly pans down, revealing a nearby star in the background, a terrestrial habitable planet in the midground, and several space stations in the foreground. Trails of merchant convoys passing to and fro between the space stations, the planet, and other unseen locations appear as pinpricks of engine trails contrasted against the night half of the planet. The bright engine clusters of a Star Dreadnought and its escorts headed away from the stations could be seen. The sound of a faint engine hum accompanied by faint beeps form the ambience.
A masculine narrating voice speaks.
“Ever since the beginning of recorded history, the children of Terra have expanded outwards in all directions. It is our nature, our destiny, to spread across the stars and discover the secrets that have been hidden from us. With us, we have brought progress and civilization. We have brought order, and with the formation of the Unity we have brought the Imperial Dream to those who are worthy. Many have joined us on our march across the void of space and many more honor our sovereignty.”
Several scenes flash by the screen in rapid succession – the Ruling Council gathered on Unity Station’s Solarium, delivering a decree; an active cityscape of neon and glass surrounding a space elevator; a Jump Gate powering up, creating a portal between realms; and more.
“However, not all are willing to make peace with us.”
The video is blurred out by static for a moment. When the static fades, the first scene reappears. The four space stations are ablaze, and the airspace is filled with warships of all sizes fighting to hold the line against a colossal vessel an entire order of magnitude larger than the space stations. The world in the midground is shrouded in layers of planetary shields as barrages of hypervelocity weaponry passed through to slam against the superstructure. Merchant vessels scatter in all directions, escaping from the hurricane of battle. The ambient sound is replaced by bits and pieces of communication overlapped on each other, accompanied by the sound of distant explosions and alarms. Burning merchant freighters could be seen drifting about, some actively fired upon by the superstructure.
“The Multiverse is filled with threats – machine menances leased to the wills of Abominable Intelligence, nameless horrors from the darkest corners of reality, and hostile states that would sooner destroy us than to make peace.”
Video cuts to the surface of an unidentified planet, showing a night-time cityscape bound by rivers in the midground and one of the rivers in the foreground. Several of the high-rise buildings have collapsed in on themselves and the rest are ablaze. The cause of this is soon revealed as a large bipedal creature appears between two still-standing buildings, collapsing one with a swing of its similarly proportioned tail and reducing another to ashes with a burst of plasma from its mouth. Video pans downwards, showing the building collapsing down onto hundreds of civilians trying to evacuate the area through a wet naval transport awaiting at the shores.
Video cuts to another scene, showing a suspension bridge stretching across the narrow portion of a river inlet and connecting suburbia to cityscape. One end is blocked off by a pile-up of vehicles, and a large group of what appears to be civilians is trapped on the bridge by the pile-up. On the other side of the bridge and the suburbia beyond, slender war machines of chrome and silver lay waste to everything that is standing in their way. The video zooms in, showing one of the war machines demolishing a hospital and vaporizing on those attempting to escape regardless of gender, age, or health, while another impales several injured civilians with metal spikes on the end of transparent appendages before violently siphoning their organs and internal fluids out and into the machine’s main body.
“They prey upon the weak and helpless, the unarmed civilian populations that cannot protect themselves from harm. They are the darkness of the void, seeking to smother the light of civilization and the existence of mankind.”
“In the face of these terrors of the unknown, and where all others have fled, we have stood our ground. Where the Elysian Accord abandoned the people to die, it was we who held the line. When the gates of Hell swung open and its abominable contents poured forth, it was the Unity who pushed back the tide and sealed the gates.”
The previous scenes replay in order, but the tide of conflict has been turned. The superstructure is surrounded on all sides by dreadnoughts and battleships of various designs, bombarded with every form of weapon imaginable. Great gouts of gas and fire erupt from its surface as explosive shells and columns of energy tears apart its hull. The colossal creature is interrupted as an artificial lightning bolt reduces a patch of its hide to carbonized char. The source of the bolt is revealed as a humanoid war engine of similar size, accompanied by a pair of smaller but visually identical war engines, stride from out of sight into the river with all secondary weapons firing. The tri-pedal alien machines approaching the suspension bridge are barraged by artillery as close air support formations move in to halt their advance.
“We will light up the darkness, with the glow of peace and progress if we can and with the flash of war if we cannot.”
The scenes replay again in that order. The superstructure is destroyed, shattering into hundreds of fragments that explode into debris one after another. The larger human war engine lays into the creature with both its primary weapons as one escort charges in and rips through flesh and bone with a claw-like weapon and the other bombards the creature with immolating fire. The bridge is cleared of debris and the civilians evacuated as the strange alien machines are flanked by infantry and armor and pushed into an encirclement, where they would no doubt be destroyed.
Eventually, the screen slowly fades to black.
“Each of us carries the torch of the Imperial Dream, and it is the duty of every one of us to ensure that the flame burns brighter than ever. Stand as one with your comrades and banish our enemies back to where they came from.”
–
“Freedom Fighters”
Elysian Accord propaganda piece
–
Screen fades in from black, showing a thick night-time jungle from a birds-eye view. In the distance, a portion of the vegetation has been cleared out and a large forward operations base has been established. The area is surrounded by barbed wire and trenches, and gunships and transports are constantly landing to drop off or pick up cargo and troops. The FOB appears to be large enough to garrison a small regiment of infantry, and the garages and armored vehicles under tarps certainly seem to indicate so. A few batteries of artillery and anti aircraft guns of various types are scattered within the boundaries of the base. A road passes through the base and winds through the forest in the form of packed and hardened dirt. Each exit to the base is secured with horizontal sliding gates reinforced well enough to stop armored vehicles moving at high speed and is further blockaded by barbed wire and metal barricades scattered across the road. The FOB and the area around it are brightly lit with floodlights, but beyond that the jungle is shrouded in inky darkness. Landmine warning signs are scattered throughout the grass around the area.
Most noticeably, there are flags on poles at the center of the base. One of them is taller than the rest and is carrying a flag displaying a red hand reaching upwards towards a white galaxy swirl.
A convoy of transport vehicles and escorts depart from one gate, turning toward the right edge of the screen before moving down the road. The view pans to keep the convoy in its sights.
The same narrator from Fires of Hate speaks.
“Like the tendrils of an invasive vine, the Unity has entrenched its influence at every opportunity. Across countless worlds, their standing armies are garrisoned to usurp rule of reason and ensure that their rule of terror remains uncontested.”
Point of view switches to that of the treetops, looking down onto a road cutting through the jungle. The distant rumble of an approaching convoy could be heard and the road is faintly illuminated by their distant headlights. Camera pans to one side, then to the other, revealing the vague outlines of humanoids wrapped in camo in the undergrowth below. The faint glow of energy weapons can be barely seen. Camera pans down further, showing a dim screen held in the hands of the observer displaying the status of several objects of indeterminate design.
“Where the forces of tyranny establish its control, those who would rather resist than to be subjugated rise to meet the match. In many of these worlds, guerillas and revolutionaries fight for their sovereignty and self-determination. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, they have shown time and again that brute force cannot crush free will.”
The video fades to black and is replaced by a series of monochromatic recollections.
A formation of strike craft passes overhead as great swathes of jungle disappear beneath rolling clouds of burning Promethium and white phosphorus. A towering pyramidal siege engine breaks through a low wall, its many weapons firing in all directions. A two rank deep formation of infantry clad in full body armor march through the ruins of a small town, gunning down anything that moves.
“As it becomes increasingly obvious that the Unity’s claims of order and civilization is but a paper-thin facade, the people of the Multiverse are standing up to the tyrants.”
Video returns to the point of view of the treetop. The convoy is much closer, and the sounds of tires against dirt and repulsors could be clearly heard. The humanoid figures in the jungle undergrowth flatten themselves against the ground further, making themselves nearly invisible in the infrared and visible wavelengths with their camo cloaks. The entity serving as the video’s point of view draws the folds of their camo cloak about them, still holding out the screen.
As the convoy rolls past, the figure reaches out with the other hand and selects the objects displayed on the screen. Immediately, explosions ring out as several vehicles are hit by hidden IEDs. Small arms fire breaks out as the hidden figures begin their ambush and the convoy escorts scramble to respond to the threats.
Video slowly fades to black, with the audio of small arms fire fading out soon afterwards.
“Though our brethren fight valiantly, they cannot win the war alone. Only with your help can they throw off their chains.”
–
“Torchbearers”
Unity propaganda piece
–
Screen fades in, looking out the door of a gunship and down at treetops rushing by underneath. The multiple barrels of a kinetic heavy weapon occupies a portion of the left side of the screen. The jungle below is well-lit by midday sun, and as the camera and weapon pans up the outlines of several other low flying troop transports can be observed in the distance. A few seconds later, a road curves in from farther out and becomes parallel to the direction of the transport’s travel. A convoy of transports and IFVs can be seen as the transports pass by them.
Camera movement slows significantly as the gunship approaches something out of sight. Field of view turns as the gunship banks right, revealing a series of structures. Most of the buildings, constructed out of concrete and metal, are destroyed or ablaze. A small collection of structures, clustered on the area closest to the direction the gunships arrived from, have been fortified. The reason for this reveals itself in the form of several vaguely reptilian humanoids, some distance away, taking cover behind rubble and firing at the buildings with what appears to be a mix of kinetic weapons and low grade energy weapons.
The same narrator from Torchbearers speaks.
“Like moths to a burning fire, the enemies of progress are drawn to our beacons of civilization and order. In every world where mankind establishes presence and habitation, violent savages appear from the shadows.”
The gunship continues banking right, revealing the entire situation. This appears to be a frontier settlement, the size of a small town, that has just been hit by a large-scale raid from the hostile figures. There are several other fortified positions under siege, and some are returning fire with turrets and armed militia entrenched within the concrete shells of the buildings.
As the gunship slows and descends, far more disturbing things begin to enter the video’s frame. The final fates of many of the less fortunate settlers are shown in grisly detail – hung from lampposts, impaled on spikes, piled up by the dozens and lit ablaze. One still-alive settler is in the midst of being beaten to death by several attackers wielding blunt weaponry, while another is being dismembered with axes.
“Our enemies know not of civilization, of reason and order. They only comprehend the language of pointless and wanton killing. There is no negotiation to be had; they will hang our diplomats from trees and continue in their endless butchery. When our enemy speaks the language of violence, we will respond in kind. Only then can we guarantee peace and order, and only then can our fellow people be safe.”
The heavy weapon reveals itself to be a rotary cannon as it opens up, reducing nearby enemies to clouds of red. Before the weapon is even finished firing, an unseen hand casts a rappel rope out the opening. Immediately, figures dressed in full body armor move up to the doorway and slide down the rope one by one.
Video feed cuts to the frontal cameras of another dropship, showing the armored figures moving in small squads and reinforcing the besieged settlers. The two civilians from earlier have unfortunately perished, but the raiders who took their lives are felled in a storm of energy fire. Camera pans left and shows the convoy arriving in force as a small group of the raiders, disarmed of their weapons, are lined up against a wall and summarily executed.
“Join the Unity’s armed forces. Defend the Imperial Dream and your fellow citizens.”
