Saturday, November 12, 2011

Our history of the modern tiberium world.

Sorry for the late post, it took a long time to type this up.

Many of you already know the story of Command and Conquer as done by Westwood (RIP). In the Xenoforce Reborn mod we're taking what they had and working from their last official piece of work, the expansion pack for CNC2 called the Firestorm Conflict and working forward from that point. So in other words, anything that EA came up with for their story of CNC3 and beyond is not going to be used by us. It's not that we dislike what EA did (though we do think they made many questionable choices in their adaptation of the story) it's more of a "we simply feel that this is the best place to interject our own history for the story of Xenoforce Reborn to work."

Keep in mind 3 things

1. This is a work in progress, and things / times are open to change as needed.
2. This is how I would write up our history for the game, Doug may have issues with some aspects of it and ask for them to be modified as need be.
3. This is to give you a general idea of how things are playing out. For specific "but what happened to this or that here?" or more details you will have to wait, but each part of the story will be told by the units and structures as we complete their final workups and post them up. These workups will make up the Codex for each faction.

Following the Firestorm Conflict many of the countries around the world began to question the decision to allow GDI to become the global government and police force that it had become. The purpose of GDI had been to protect them from global terrorism not to destroy the national sovereignty that they had been fighting to gain control of for 1000's of years. And then there was the fact that if it wasn't for NOD, the entity that GDI so strongly opposed and fought against for so many years, coming to the rescue of GDI and the world against CABAL then there would not be a planet to govern at all.

Soon support for GDI started to slip. In an act of trying to salvage the situation and to put a positive spin on things GDI publicly came to an agreement with the survivors of NOD granting them immunity for any and all previous war crimes committed against the world. At this time NOD began talks with Egypt to build a large city outside of Cairo with the sole purpose of being a peaceful place of sanctuary. In exchange NOD would share with the Egyptian Government some of it's highly effective techniques at harvesting and working with tiberium radiation.

Unfortunatly for GDI this had the opposite effect of what they were hoping to gain. While this show of appreciation and gratitude to their once hated enemy gained them support from a number of smaller countries that were starting to waiver it caused others to grow agitated at the way GDI was starting to pander to the will of countries that cry the loudest. Specifically 3 of the original G8 countries that help found the GDI now started to secretly turn their back on them. These countries could not forgive NOD so easily for all the harsh attacks that they had brought against them as they had been specific targets of NOD for over 20 years.

In 2037, 5 years after the Firestorm Conflict ended, the countries of the United States of America, Canada, and the United Kingdom officially left the G8 and the GDI. On March 15th they signed a treaty that became known as the Constitution of the Federation and the Earth Federation was born. This transition was not an easy one though, as many civilians opposed leaving GDI and felt that they were asking for another war to start again. Still, many more civilians agreed with the decisions of their governments here and the "National Sovereignty Movement", or NSM began to spread around the world.

Smaller countries in many of the yellow zones around the world stayed by GDI as without them they would have no protection from aggressive neighbors. Still others stood with GDI due to the fact that the recent decisions from GDI had benefited them greatly. Finally, the remaining G8 countries took the departure of the 3 superpowers in the "more for me then" mental fashion of the greedy and power hungry. Germany, Japan, and Italy each saw this as a way for them to come back and become powerful military forces once again and made great strives to militarize their countries again under the banner of protection.

And still other smaller countries that had the natural protection of location and little to no resource of want took this chance to become political neutral zones much like Sweden from World War 2. The most effective of this was a small island nation in the pacific that became known as ORB. This country had only one real resource, but it was one that many other countries wanted for themselves. This resource was intelligence, ORB became known for many technological breakthroughs as well as having a high number of engineers and scientists there. It was this limited resource that allowed ORB to remain neutral because if any one nation made a move to grab them the other nations of the world would have to "come to their aid" for the simple fact that they could not allow their enemies to have access to these technological advances.

The civil unrest in the Earth Federation did not last long though, and in a matter of 2 short years the Earth federation had shored up its positions around the world and became the global superpower that GDI had feared it would become. It was about this time that scientists working for a company called Robo-Technology Institute in the country of ORB developed the first working Space Catapult system. This system was a revolutionary way of getting spacecraft into orbit compared to conventional ways. It used high powered magnets powered from renewable energy sources like solar panels and oceanic tidal generators to move specially designed spacecraft at huge speeds along a curving ramp that ended with the ship moving up into space. This design was an instant success and many governments raced to gain access to it from ORB. In the end GDI won a contract from the Robo-Technology Institute to build them 10 high performance craft designed for long range exploration of the other planets in our system in exchange for use of the Space Catapult. The Earth Federation immediately following the lost bid for the exsisting catapult contracted the Robo-Technology Institute to build them 2 of their own catapults, one in California and one in Alaska. NOD also secretly began work on their own, smaller version of the catapult in Australia.

The GDI used this new way to escape earth to start a new project of their own called the Planet Project. The design was for them to start building massive colonies in space to start offloading some of the people from more devastated areas under their control into these space colonies as a way of "protecting their people from the planet they are fighting for." However this massive project required resources that would not be available to GDI without significant cuts in their military R&D and so many types of research was canceled. One noteable line of research that was cut was the "Mecha" tech like the Wolverine, the Titan, and the Mammoth Mk 2 walkers.

Where GDI turned their backs on mecha tech the RoboTechnology Institute picked up. With all of the resources flooding in to them due to their now lucrative space transport projects they began work into military applications of mecha technology. They also used their newly constructed ships given to them from GDI and set out towards Mars for "research purposes." In truth they knew what they were doing all along as years ago the President of the company had discovered a faint energy signature coming from Mars. However at the time he did not have a way to exploit this discovery and as such he started the RoboTechnology Institute company with the purpose of one day getting there first. And thanks unknowingly to GDI they were on their way to do that.

During all of this NOD flourished. In small towns where most governmental oversight had been abandoned due to "the target not producing enough of a valuable asset to demand military involvement", most notably in yellow zones across the middle east and in parts of africa, NOD stepped up and protected these people from "roaming bands of rouges and bandits". In more civilized locations that were hurt economically NOD became a source of revenue as they built research centers, schools, and hospitals. To the world it really appeared as NOD had changed since the loss of Kane and they were becoming a full fledged religious force like the catholic church. However what was really happening was NOD was attempting to defeat their foes no longer with weapons, but with economics, and it was working.

In 2041 the Earth Federation began building their own colonies in space. There were 8 Colonies that were planned on being built. These colonies were 3 times larger than what GDI was building, and unlike GDI who was building them to effectively offload those refugees of the ever-expanding tiberium the EF was building them for their most prestigious and powerful officials to live in free from the worry of Tiberium. There was more to this than what the EF was admitting to though, the real purpose of this project was to build a secret and massive military complex on the Moon. In truth the shells for Colonies 7 and 8 were built but the insides were hollow as these parts were sent to the Moon for use in the base. Colony 7 was retrofitted into a research and development center for building massive carrier ships to allow the EF to patrol their section of space free from the fear of any "outside" eyes and Colony 8 was turned into a giant solar panel and refocusing center nicknamed "The Solar System". This colony was placed in a way so that the EF could capture and re-direct light from the Sun to any place on the planet no matter where or when it was needed giving the EF access to solar energy no matter what the situation was. This system also made for an amazing weapon when set to it's tightest beam setting, able to cut through anything in a matter of moments.

Meanwhile the Robotechnology Institute had made it to Mars and started research into the energy source that their founder had discovered over 20 years ago. What they found was a massive alien spacecraft buried under the sands of Mars. This ship spanned over a mile long and was unlike anything anyone in the expeditionary force had ever seen. The head of the force decided to build a massive base over their discovery which later becamed named Mars Base Serra. When word got back to Earth about their discovery the founder of the company changed the name of the company to the RoboTech Research Center. He also went to the Earth Federation, who up to this point was their companies greatest customer and entered into a research agreement. The Earth Federation would supply the Robotech Research Center with an uninhabited island in the Pacific currently under the Earth Federations control for them to build a new research facility. They would also provide resources and protection to the RRC and any convoys between Earth and Mars Base Serra. In exchange the Earth Federation would gain access to any technology that they discovered as a result of the alien ship on Mars. The RRC would also build and develop a massive military outpost in the northern most sections of Alaska at no cost to the Earth Federation for them.

However everything was not peaceful during this time of restructure and growth. Tiberium continued to move forward at an almost unstoppable crawl, and small border skirmishs between the EF and GDI were common. GDI fished the first of their Planets in 2044 and began to shuttling refugees into space very quickly. Soon after the Earth Federation completed Colonies 1-6. However, unlike GDI who were using their Planets as a way to ease the public demand for a solution to Tiberium the Earth Federation had found a better way to use their Colonies. The President of the Earth Federation at this time began by sending those Generals and Senate Officials who he trusted the least to the colonies as a way to solidify his power base on Earth under the guise of "promotions". With their families in space but them stuck on earth it became easy to influence those who spoke out against his plans the loudest to keep their mouths shut.

In 2049 a new power began to form in space. The movement started small and grew with a great wildfire between the Plants and the Colonies. This was called "Zeonism". The people of the plants were the poor and weak of Earth who at first though they were being sent to space as a way for their government to protect them. However after 5 years it became clear that this was not the case as overpopulation in the Plants became a common complaint. With overpopulation came crime, disease, and unrest. The people thought they were getting a new start in life only to find they were being sent into space to be forgotten about. On the EF side of things those who were sent to space by the EF so that they could no longer "cause problems with the heads of the EF" saw this as an opportunity to finally strike back at those who dismissed them. They began calling for the colonies to become separated from earth all together, and called for those in the Plants to side with them. The Colonies were much larger than the Plants. There was massive amounts of open space, in fact colony 6 was still only operating at 5% of occupancy levels! There was no reason for those who were promised protection to be shoved into a plant against their will like sardines in a can and forgotten about! On top of this on Colony 4 a new form of weapon had been developed. Spies for the Colonies had acquired some top secret designs that were being developed for the EF by the RRC and construction of this new weapon had begun. The EF had asked the RRC to go back to the drawing board and try a different, more structurally sound design, but the Colonies had no problems with this technology. This new weapon would become known as the Zaku, the first mass produced mobile suit ever built. A small army in Colony 4 consisting of over 250 of these suits were built by a former head of security for the Zeonic movement.

In 2053, with the support of many in the Colonies and the Plants, the Zeonic Movement announced independence. They deployed their Zaku Forces all around and inside Colonies 2, 3, and 4 as well as a dozen Plants. They demanded the immediate withdraw of all GDI and EF forces from the remaining colonies and plants or else war would begin in earnest. GDI withdrew from most of the plants right away, they were not prepared to deal with a military battle in space on the scale that the Zeon forces now offered. These abandoned Planets who did not wish to become part of Zeon became known as the Neutral 7.

The Earth Federation however had different ideas. They launched their secret forces from the Moon Base, carrier ships filled with their own mobile suits developed by combining Robotech Technology and using thier own knowledge of weapons systems. This force set up around the Colonies and prepaired for a blockade from Earth as well as to begin an assault on the rebel forces.

It was at this moment that NOD struck. Disguised as Zeon Loyalists they launched an assault on the GDI A-SAT System in Goddard Space Center taking down GDI's defense network around the Space Station Philadelphia. They then launched a Nuclear Missile from the Earth at the Space Station, destroying it in one blow. With this single act of terrorism NOD had not only sparked the next Tiberium War, but they had done so at the expense of Zeon. Now true war would break out across the Earth and Space, some factions fighting for power, others for their survival.

And in the deepest parts of space, ancient eyes turn towards the planet.....

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder whether you guys can add more stuffs in to get more fans interest on your XR mods.

Alan said...

*CLAP CLAP CLAP* I love the new story. I like how you intertwined the Philadelphia being shot down into it. I find it to be much better than the story that EA gave us. Funny how a few days ago I was trying to come up with a story to the mod just for me to figure out why the fighting was going on, and your story (while much more explained and fitting) is similar in many ways.

azuza001 said...

Anon - What new things are you talking about/thinking about? We've added a ton of new things in (two entire factions, new AI, new GDI units, heavily modified Scrin, and new powers for NOD).

Alan - Thanks, glad to hear you liked the story.

Alan said...

I was just trying to make a map for this and realized that I am bad a geography so if you or Doug have any free time that you would be willing to spend on making a map it would be much appreciated.

azuza001 said...

Doug is currently working on a Map right now for this.