The year was 2105.
Earth, then mired in the first of its unification wars, was in many places a smoking slag of blood and war. Those who wished to unify the creaking, decrepit polities of old into something stronger were pitted against those who saw their identity - nationality, religion, slipping away. There was no good, and no evil; merely conflict. There was innovation, to be sure, like medical miracle boom of the 2070s, or the invention of the space hyperdrive in 2095 by Hitoshi Sugiyama. But with Earth engulfed in bloodshed these inventions were squandered or salvaged for whatever military applications they provided.
And then the gate opened.
No one could explain the device. None of the most qualified scientific minds in the human race could hope to understand it. One moment it had been empty space next to the Moon. The next moment, it simply was. A wonder, no doubt. Of God, or of science, it seemed not to matter. All that was certain was that the object was alien.
A number of probes were sent through; what they discovered stunned the war-weary masses of Earth. It was a new galaxy, virgin space. Never before seen, never touched. Astronomers called the new galaxy Hesperia, after the Greek word for 'western land,' but most referred to it colloquially as NewSpace. For the vast majority, it was a nearly unreachable mystery. For a few, however, it provided a new home.
The first to theorize colonizing NewSpace was the Heartlander Federation, composed of embattled rural rebels in the United States and the rest of the Anglosphere. But they were soon joined by other losing factions in Earth's grinding struggles; the Shanghai Cooperative, Chinese ultra-capitalists, and the Visegrad Group, ultranationalists of Eastern Europe. All were losing their respective wars. All sensed an opportunity that would never come again.
In 2108, sixteen colony ships carrying nearly twelve million people departed Earth. An instant after they passed through, the gate closed. Again, no one could explain it. But the fact remains that it happened; and it changed the human race forever.
That could have been the end of things. But God -or science- possesses an infinite sense of humor. On August 2nd, 2388, the gate reopened. By then, some three hundred years later, mankind had long since unified and spread amongst the stars. The strange events of the early 22nd century were not totally forgotten, but they merely existed at the back of our consciousness, nearly irrelevant compared to the great wars and movements and triumphs and sorrows of the day. We had spread among the stars, yes, but they were our stars. Our galaxy. It came as no less of a shock when that other one reappeared in exactly the same spot, orbiting the moon.
And this time, we did go through. What we found was far more incredible than the first discovery. We found people, nations, whole civilizations stemming from the twelve million who had divorced themselves from us. The Slavic Union, in all its autocratic and militaristic splendor and repression. The Han Commonwealth, the perfect profit-driven corporate state. And the Clarion Confederation, a loose and chaotic amalgam of spacer clans and warrior houses from Earth's old Anglosphere. It was this last nation that gave us trouble. They didn't much care when the United Nations occupied Providence in 2392, the sparsely populated spaceport planet at the foot of the gate.
But then Clan Harmon invited the UN to take control of the planet Hollis - that was four years ago now. They probably desired UN hegemony for all the right economic reasons, not to mention their blood feud with the decidedly-anti UN Clan Everett, which also essentially ran the Confederation. We thought it was a popular move on Hollis. We thought the Harmons' vassals would approve. We tried to bring them democracy, a constitution, free commerce.
We were wrong. Today is May 7th, 2433, the third year of a brutal civil war. We've put 22 million combat troops on the planet to support the fledgling Republic of Hollis and fight its pro-Confederation enemies, who sometimes seem to be every motherfucking bastard on this planet.
Who knows, though. We've been winning handily of late. The fighting has died down somewhat. A lot of the rebellious clans have been forced to the negotiating table. General Trueba says we can finally see light at the end of the tunnel, and I find more reasons to agree than not. My year-long deployment on Hollis with the 153rd Infantry Division started two weeks ago, so hopefully the guys and I will get through this without too much hubbub and I can come back home. I find a lot of frustration here in Camp Darmawan, in the middle of nowhere. These aren't our people we're fighting for, not really. More like cousins. They left us, remember? They fled Earth. It's their war. A cousin's war.
-Lt. Col. Mustafa Razdan
71st Infantry Regiment
3rd Brigade
153rd Infantry Division
Hello and welcome to A Cousin's War. Our plot arc will follow soldiers of B Company, 1st Battalion, 71st Infantry Regiment, 153rd Infantry Division as they attempt to pacify the rural province of Cordelia, purging it of clan rebels hostile to the UN and its ally, the Republic of Hollis. You will take control of a United Nations Army soldier in one of B Company's platoons as the unit navigates the challenges of what is essentially an occupational war.
As a military science fiction RP, this setting takes some inspiration from Star Wars, Star Trek, Freelancer and the Halo universe. Real historical influences are primarily the Vietnam and Iraq Wars - as you may have surmised, what I described above is not dissimilar from a Vietnam in space. That's sort of the situation the UN finds itself in on Hollis.
Please review at least some of the lore and timeline information before you apply. You needn't know all of it; just have a passing familiarity.
PLANET MAP ||| Hesperia Galaxy Map
