ShaVeK HaChaver 814
Proton
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2022
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RÉPUBLIQUE LIBRE DE GENÈVE
GENEVA
______________________________________
City 24 falls. From its ashes rises liberated Geneva, singing hymns in joyous hope for the future.
Arm-in-arm, a triumphant resistance marches through the city streets, tearing down banners, removing any sign the CMB were ever here.
Underground dissenters, spokespersons, representatives, citizens of Switzerland, emerge for the first time in decades.
They proclaim with resonance the establishment of a new Genevan Republic. They promise all listening, 'We will liberate Switzerland. We will liberate the world!'
No more neutrality. The Republic takes action. Never again will it sit idly by in the face of evil.
Reconstruction will be arduous, but it will be done.
Geneva first builds her economy around the antlions beneath it, domesticating some, capturing others, exporting their potent anti-infestation fluid.
Geneva's medicinal industry grows to be Lambda's lifeblood, countless lives saved through grub extract.
The Worldwide Family Index, kept safe by Mearsheimer, is distributed to Geneva's liberators in his surrender.
Thousands are inspired to take up arms, unafraid that their families across Earth will suffer from their decisions.
Geneva, once a flagship city for the Combine, carries on its prominence under new management.
She breathes again.
Yet the Monolith still stands, ever present, ever watchful, ever envious.
An armada of dropships flock to it, filled with jackboots, their carapace dotting the white peaks of the Alps.
Embittered eyes watch this new stomping ground of liberated humanity.
This bastion is the revolutionary center of Lambda's outpour.
The Free City will hold. The Citadel must fall.
______________________________________
I.
AFTERMATH - COMBINE
The Fall of Geneva has been a devastating loss to the Empire. Without the Family Index, it cannot be as nearly as threatening as it once had been, it can no longer keep track of the forcefully-separated and estranged citizens of its mandate. Free from the looming fear of familial executions, many flock to resist, insurgent networks are bolstered across the globe. Every third civilian is plotting for the downfall of their oppressor. Civil Protection departments and garrisons have lost one reason to fear disciplinary action. They grow evermore autonomous, posing a threat to those above with their own idea of how the Empire ought to function. DEFENDER-6's Young Officers Coup, although it had failed, has spread like wildfire in the discourse of the Security Council and constituent CMB State assemblies. No amount of censorship could stop such a leak from spreading, spoken of widely in both resistance and loyalist circles alike. Civil Protection departments and garrisons, too, find themselves debating the efficacy of the attempted takeover. Some see inspiration, others a gross mark on operational history.
Commissioner Rivera, who fled the city, finds himself personally tasked with delivering the Emergency Administration's report to the greater Overwatch Security Council. In a rendezvous, he is extracted, reunited with his peers, to whom he elaborates the details of the siege. Besides failed coups and damning rants-disguised-as-speeches, a silver lining is discovered, that of the Genevan Ceasefire. Hatched by the mind of Katerina Kuskova, splitting the council, only to be passed with Mearsheimer's deciding vote, then negotiated by herself, Estrada, and Onobanjo, the armistice proves the most vital and crucial element of the Emergency Administration's decisions, effecting CMB policymaking deinde.
As for Garrison 314, she leaves battered and bruised. Geneva, her failure, is also her redemption. Her functionaries take flight towards the Citadel for rejuvenation, to be prepared for incoming deployments, to fight tooth and nail for the Mandatorial Sick Man that is the Combine's Earthly administration. Scarred by months in the field, they finally find an inkling of peace in the vast nexus, afforded much leisure time before their next deployment, courtesy of an even higher power than the Security Council, which had looked upon them only as mere utilities.
The portal opened above Citadel 24, although disappearing as quickly as it had arrived, let loose a sizeable fleet from parts unknown, arriving to bolster a reeling imperium. Beyond what had been seen firsthand by both Garrison 314 and her enemies, not much can be known about what technologies the Combine harness that could allow them to deploy reinforcements even in the destruction of Citadel 17. What was readily apparent is that not all of that fleet made it out, some exiting ships being swallowed, ripped into two, as the rift closed.
City 24 may have been lost, but by no means is the CMB's fight for survival anywhere near finished.
Commissioner Rivera, who fled the city, finds himself personally tasked with delivering the Emergency Administration's report to the greater Overwatch Security Council. In a rendezvous, he is extracted, reunited with his peers, to whom he elaborates the details of the siege. Besides failed coups and damning rants-disguised-as-speeches, a silver lining is discovered, that of the Genevan Ceasefire. Hatched by the mind of Katerina Kuskova, splitting the council, only to be passed with Mearsheimer's deciding vote, then negotiated by herself, Estrada, and Onobanjo, the armistice proves the most vital and crucial element of the Emergency Administration's decisions, effecting CMB policymaking deinde.
As for Garrison 314, she leaves battered and bruised. Geneva, her failure, is also her redemption. Her functionaries take flight towards the Citadel for rejuvenation, to be prepared for incoming deployments, to fight tooth and nail for the Mandatorial Sick Man that is the Combine's Earthly administration. Scarred by months in the field, they finally find an inkling of peace in the vast nexus, afforded much leisure time before their next deployment, courtesy of an even higher power than the Security Council, which had looked upon them only as mere utilities.
The portal opened above Citadel 24, although disappearing as quickly as it had arrived, let loose a sizeable fleet from parts unknown, arriving to bolster a reeling imperium. Beyond what had been seen firsthand by both Garrison 314 and her enemies, not much can be known about what technologies the Combine harness that could allow them to deploy reinforcements even in the destruction of Citadel 17. What was readily apparent is that not all of that fleet made it out, some exiting ships being swallowed, ripped into two, as the rift closed.
City 24 may have been lost, but by no means is the CMB's fight for survival anywhere near finished.
II.
AFTERMATH - RESISTANCE
Geneva is free. A crucial strategic point for Lambda, the Mountain Fortress will serve humanity's emancipatory conquest, a center of logistics and a home for the refugees of Central Europe. For Lambda's contractees and their fellow travelers, this is a hardfought victory, the fruits of which are not theirs to reap. The city's guardsmen will be funneled from the Eastern European nucleus, a fully loyal militia, civilized every which way and far estranged from the ethic of a soldier or mercenary. The Siege's protagonists will find themselves deployed elsewhere, their seniority in the field warranting their full utilization in other areas demanding it. They'd be bored to death otherwise. The role of a gendarmerie is not theirs, not yet.
Lambda will inevitably hear reports from their representatives; the peculiar truce brokered by the Security Council, the attempted coup, the madman called Mearsheimer, and it will dissect this just as intimately as their enemy. Huddled around drawing boards and maps of Europe, they'll chart a new analysis of their imperial adversary, one that finds it more rational than they had expected. Across the world, clustered in a brutalist room, staring at holographs projected from a cold metallic desk, commissioners and councillors will come to terms with their reality. Lambda's achievement produces the heat necessary to start the Mandatory Thaw.
Among the documents that were able to be retrieved from charred, hastily burnt top-secret Overwatch records, were those detailing the ecological impact the CMB has had on Earth. A board will be formed by Lambda's top scientists to evaluate the devastation. In Geneva, the blankets of snow have grown thinner and thinner by the year. Loss of biodiversity across the planet, drained oceans, exhausted resources, all challenge the human plan for a CMB-free future. What they salvage only provides a brief overview, the details lost, a new existential enemy creeping forth — a rapidly changing climate.
As word of the portal spreads Eastwards, Lambda will realize the gravity of the situation, the need to stay true to its roots, to continue, by all means, its science programs, to outcompete the Empire at every step in a new race of technology not just to beat the Combine, but to save the planet from the disaster they have wrought.
Lambda will inevitably hear reports from their representatives; the peculiar truce brokered by the Security Council, the attempted coup, the madman called Mearsheimer, and it will dissect this just as intimately as their enemy. Huddled around drawing boards and maps of Europe, they'll chart a new analysis of their imperial adversary, one that finds it more rational than they had expected. Across the world, clustered in a brutalist room, staring at holographs projected from a cold metallic desk, commissioners and councillors will come to terms with their reality. Lambda's achievement produces the heat necessary to start the Mandatory Thaw.
Among the documents that were able to be retrieved from charred, hastily burnt top-secret Overwatch records, were those detailing the ecological impact the CMB has had on Earth. A board will be formed by Lambda's top scientists to evaluate the devastation. In Geneva, the blankets of snow have grown thinner and thinner by the year. Loss of biodiversity across the planet, drained oceans, exhausted resources, all challenge the human plan for a CMB-free future. What they salvage only provides a brief overview, the details lost, a new existential enemy creeping forth — a rapidly changing climate.
As word of the portal spreads Eastwards, Lambda will realize the gravity of the situation, the need to stay true to its roots, to continue, by all means, its science programs, to outcompete the Empire at every step in a new race of technology not just to beat the Combine, but to save the planet from the disaster they have wrought.
III.
AFTERMATH - GENEVA
And thus, the 'Peace Capital,' exhanged from one administration to another, stays geared for war. Yet now, returned fully to humanity, it will see more use than it ever did being a hotspot for loyalist debauchery and scenic retreats for high-ranking collaborators. Geneva will turn tides in the favor of humanity, one of the first cities to earn its freedom, memorialized in history for The Siege That Shook the World. Erected in its central square, a wall naming all those who died in its recapture, beginning with 'Los Angeles,' will be visited for generations.
In the underground of Vienna, insurgents rejoice in the news of 'Arbeiter von Wien' having echoed through the streets only hours after Combine retreat, hours after Mearsheimer was escorted from the Palace of Nations in handcuffs. In Japan, the memories of Blue Street, the Tokyo Commune, are fanned by young students and hardened partisans. Songs are sung across the shoddily-built benches of the Provisional Government of Kiev's makeshift parliament-on-the-beaches. In the peripheral recesses of the Empire, Yorkshire-accented guerillas take to the streets in defiance, spurred on by news of the Fortress' fall.
In Geneva, a provisional government has already formed, museums are scoured for founding documents from which the city-state may base its constitution upon. Levelled buildings are cleared of their debris, replaced or reclaimed in the name of nature. The government, first to read those ecological findings, have taken to reviving as best they can the environment, letting those overgrowths thrive, integrating the environment into the city itself. Parks are fashioned into communal farms, Xenofauna undergoes testing for its utility, noninvasive and nonthreatening plants made to thrive alongside those of Earth's.
The Unity Complex becomes a public forum for citizens to debate the course of their republic and below its labs are handed to Lambda's finest, while the Palace of Nations is restored to its original value, a wall erected in its atrium to commemorate the diplomats of the Siege — Harland Roscha, Zhao Qiang, Tatsuo Obayashi, Lavrentiy Bukhanov, 'Red', Cyrene, among others. Every now and then, a scavenger will find in-tact tape for a movie showing at the theatre down Solomon Knapp Avenue. Vortigaunts, who have suffered greatly powering the city, are freed, those images spreading like wildfire, highlighting CMB atrocities. Carved into a fountain not far from the seat of government is the name 'Abe,' now a ritual mourning place for those vortal denizens that, too, populate the fledgling nation.
Geneva has been many things; the model city of peace, of CMB collaboration, and now, the model city of a better future.
In the underground of Vienna, insurgents rejoice in the news of 'Arbeiter von Wien' having echoed through the streets only hours after Combine retreat, hours after Mearsheimer was escorted from the Palace of Nations in handcuffs. In Japan, the memories of Blue Street, the Tokyo Commune, are fanned by young students and hardened partisans. Songs are sung across the shoddily-built benches of the Provisional Government of Kiev's makeshift parliament-on-the-beaches. In the peripheral recesses of the Empire, Yorkshire-accented guerillas take to the streets in defiance, spurred on by news of the Fortress' fall.
In Geneva, a provisional government has already formed, museums are scoured for founding documents from which the city-state may base its constitution upon. Levelled buildings are cleared of their debris, replaced or reclaimed in the name of nature. The government, first to read those ecological findings, have taken to reviving as best they can the environment, letting those overgrowths thrive, integrating the environment into the city itself. Parks are fashioned into communal farms, Xenofauna undergoes testing for its utility, noninvasive and nonthreatening plants made to thrive alongside those of Earth's.
The Unity Complex becomes a public forum for citizens to debate the course of their republic and below its labs are handed to Lambda's finest, while the Palace of Nations is restored to its original value, a wall erected in its atrium to commemorate the diplomats of the Siege — Harland Roscha, Zhao Qiang, Tatsuo Obayashi, Lavrentiy Bukhanov, 'Red', Cyrene, among others. Every now and then, a scavenger will find in-tact tape for a movie showing at the theatre down Solomon Knapp Avenue. Vortigaunts, who have suffered greatly powering the city, are freed, those images spreading like wildfire, highlighting CMB atrocities. Carved into a fountain not far from the seat of government is the name 'Abe,' now a ritual mourning place for those vortal denizens that, too, populate the fledgling nation.
Geneva has been many things; the model city of peace, of CMB collaboration, and now, the model city of a better future.
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