GDC Files: The Red Bamboo, DeathWatch and the Birth of CrimsonWatch
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Right, where to begin as we've got a bloody lot to cover.
Well, in the wake of the first Godzilla attack in 1954, it was no surprise to anyone that Humanity would long to make weapons out of such beasts that were now making themselves known to us. The capability of control over such a monster would make any country an immediate superpower, if not the only global power that mattered. Imagine the raw potential, well given what the Precursors have shown us we don't need to imagine, but still back then such an idea was a tempting one. To control something which could pluck planes from the sky, or drag ships to the depths. To have something that dangerous at your beck and call. Well, many a warmonger must have licked his lips in anticipation of all the possibilities.
And so, sadly, it was only natural that organisations rose to try take control over the great monsters of the Earth, believing that they held the key to world dominance - that silly old dream. Of course many 'Super-Villain' groups, as they were dubbed by the media, eventually fell into the background wasting away into nothing simply because their ambition outweighed their competence or were outright taken down by our forces, when the GDC was still young. However, two managed to rise to prominence and still remain to be an active threat to us to this day.
The Red Bamboo and the DeathWatch.
I shall go into description of the Red Bamboo first and save the worst for last.
Despite their notable rise in 1966, when they became known for utilizing banned mind control technology on the local Kaiju, Ebirah turning the poor creature into a glorified attack dog unable to exercise its own will. The past of this foul group is actually far older, and through our companions in the Battra-worshiping clan: the Dark Moth, we are able to gain a certain understanding of background of the insidious Red Bamboo. As well as the true extent to their alliance with that of the savage DeathWatch and, of course, the merging of these two groups.
From accounts that the Dark Moth has given us, the Red Bamboo originally began in Feudal Japan, under a Ronin betrayed by his master. The Ronin's name is lost to history as well as the reasoning for why his master betrayed him, but his legacy still lives to this day in the form of the bloody bamboo. A sigil, which legend claims, came about after the betrayed Ronin massacred a group of assassins sent to kill him in a bamboo forest, in which he stained the entire forest red with their blood.
Not entirely imaginative, but anyhow I digress.
The Dark Moth claim that the Ronin gathered a large group of similar, like-minded individuals ranging from the betrayed like him to bandits looking to plunder and loot. Of course, such a group only had one goal in mind; the control of Japan, and perhaps even beyond that. And so the now christened Red Bamboo began their schemes of dominating Japan through subterfuge and assassination. Which led to the mentioned conflicts with the Dark Moth Clan who likewise killed and assassinated though, only like the patron from where they take inspiration, because they believed it to be their dark duty for peace. A stark contrast to the power-hungry and vicious Red Bamboo.
And so a shadow war was waged across Japan for control as the two clans battled in the shadows - an environment both factions were very much comfortable in. While it is easy to judge the Dark Moth for their brutal, vigilante ways it's worth mentioning the cruelty of the Red Bamboo. Even in their beginnings when they were born of a betrayed frustration, they would burn villages and take boys to raise as their own, to raise into becoming their instruments of torment. A nightmarish trait which they will pass onto their death-loving allies, an experience that one of our own knows only to well.
The war of the shadows came to a bloody head, when the Grandmaster of the Dark Moth faced down the Betrayed Ronin of the Red Bamboo on the field of battle. Their choice in battlefield was in the ruins of a burning village - one in which the Red Bamboo were in the middle of destroying after attempting to resupply on their child soldiers. While the battlefield was lacking in it's grandiose, the battle itself was not. Ronin and Grandmaster clashed for hours, as the stories go, until the Grandmaster took the head of the Ronin, with the helmet included.
A trophy that the Dark Moth claimed to have to this day, their greatest trophy of one of their worst foes.
Though despite the lost of their leader and teacher, the Red Bamboo did not crumble into infighting as the Dark Moth had hoped. Instead they persevered, and began to spread their influence across the world. Departing Japan as the vengeful Dark Moth hoped to finish them for good, and given how an angered Dark Moth clan can topple empires this seemed the best course of action for the Red Bamboo's survival.
With their hasty retreat, the Dark Moth were able to free many of the young children that were nearly captured - those that could were returned but those with their families slain were adopted into the Dark Moth, and taught their ways which, was far favorable to whatever plans the Red Bamboo would have had. As for the Red Bamboo, they spread across Europe like an infection sowing discord in their wake in the path for power. Though battled by the Dark Moth when they forced their hand in the matter, the Red Bamboo managed a dangerous secrecy and began anew. With all the possibilities placed in front of them in Europe how could they resist in starting over in their murdering ways.
How many disasters and assassination were committed by the Red Bamboo is unknown as, like previously mentioned, the Red Bamboo went covert to avoid the vengeance of a very angry Dark Moth clan, as not often does their prey slip through their fingers, and so we don't have a true estimate of actions over the coming years. Until, of course, the second Godzilla forced their hand in 1966, revealing that not only did they have an interest in the Kaiju as weapons but also the hybrid children of the Mysterians and Humans - the abnormals and the psybrids.
It seemed old habits died hard.
Though this did give us, or rather G-Force, the excuse to punish them with violent impunity alongside our newly made Mysterian allies. After all, nothing made an alliance like violently tearing to pieces the scum of the Earth. Though the amount of weaponry that the Red Bamboo brought to the field did worry many of the higher-ups, as it heavily implied that they had some form of backing from a country, due to the fact that a simple terrorist organisation shouldn't be able to get their hands on both airships and frigates. Some worried it was from communist backings, it wasn't.
This was from the DeathWatch, so let's move onto to them.
So who are the DeathWatch? Well they're less of an organisation and more of an event as from interviews with Peregrine Gessar, son of one of their dreadful sponsors whose now trying to make amends for his father's work, claims that they date back to the times of Mesopotamia. It began as your basic gladiator games, champions fighting on their lords behalf to settle simple disputes. Claims of marriage, crimes or just good old entertainment. The whole idea was for the champions to fight so that the lords didn't have to use their own armies. The smallest amount of blood and all that philosophical nonsense. Soon however, a small group of lords realized that they could make quite a bit of money out of this and so the games began to escalate.
Simple matters of dispute between uppity lords soon snowballed into wars for countries being settled by the games. And it only began to get more and more depraved as it went on. Warriors were cast aside in favor for killers, men and women who lack basic caring for their fellows. Soon the games acted as an attraction, monsters and madmen alike were brought to the games to fight and to kill for the sheer joy of it. It became less about what was being solved and more about the spectacle of the blood itself. To watch a man dash his fellow out with a rock for a screaming crowd, to see how many ways a man could die by the hand of his fellows. That was what the games became.
Sponsors were soon brought in to fund the violence and soon it amassed a lot of wealth, arenas were cast aside for small towns and cites, and soon poor innocents found themselves forced into the games. Might making right became the only law - no matter if you ever killed a person or not. And it only got more and more worse, factions such as the Dark Moth tried to put a stop to it. The sheer monstrous nature of the games disgusted any sane mind, but DeathWatch had an canniness to it, and spies were both easily found and then tossed to the worse Killseekers - the champions and contestants as they were known - to be violently torn to pieces.
Whatever noble cause that started the games, spilling the smallest amount of blood for high causes, was soon cast aside for the mind-numbing pleasure of violence. It only got worse during the Victorian era, where the lords and ladies wanted to be among the games. Paying off for a safe-house, often in the dead center of the violence, they would sit about and drink with the upper-crust, rubbing elbows while outside their pristine mansions, madmen killed each other for their entertainment. That's borderline Dorian Gray levels of depravity, but that what the games were all for. Let us all go mad and to hell with the consequences.
It was madness that it ever got this way and it only got madder still.
Such a organisation had quite a few allies in high places, and one such was the Red Bamboo. Some of their members had even participated, fancy that, in the blood sports and so already had a working relationship. Killseekers of DeathWatch began to act as mercenary forces for the Red Bamboo, their blood letting skills and gladiatorial uniqueness made them a dangerous lot to face in battle. Isn't the worst foe to face the one that faced you without constraint, not caring for the pain of their own body as long as they took your life. So this dreadful relationship developed, and as that occurred DeathWatch developed a game show like appearance, headed under a man known only as Noa, their self-appointed CEO of a sorts.
This working relationship shifted and changed over the years, as slowly but surely both groups effectively merged into one, as with the crippling of the Red Bamboo by both Godzilla and the G-Force's efforts they fell to their allies for help. Soon DeathWatch and Red Bamboo became difficult to tell apart, though if you asked me there was little difference to begin with, though this working relationship was sealed in blood in 1995 when they attack a Dark Moth clan dojo, which was witnessed by a nine-year old Shinichi Ozaki, who was being trained there after being saved by them after his family was killed by anti-Mysterian hate groups.
"The Dojo was burning, they came in the thick of night under the veil of darkness. How they got past our sentries is unknown, but that mattered little. With insane cries of violence they threw themselves into the fray. Many were dressed in mocking Ninja-like costumes, wearing the birdlike masks of the Tengu. They didn't use guns and instead came in with wrist-mounted claws and knives. They were insane; but they were merely fodder. A little more then sacrifices for the coming slaughter.
Then the Killseekers came. There was only two; Yokozuna, a giant of a sumo-wrestler with muscles like iron, and the Shogun, clad in black armor wielding a chainsaw staff and wore an oni-mask. They tore through even the best of what was to offer. I saw one warrior attempted to attack Yokozuna, but the giant simply wrung his neck like his was nothing, while the Shogun carved through warriors, laughing madly as the blood stained his armor.
All the while great, black vans projected lights onto the burning dojo. There were cameras filming the whole thing, and truth be told I was surprised there was no commentators there. To make a television show out a massacre, it was the worst that Humanity had to offer all laid out in front of me. It was inhumane to its core.
What could I do against such mindless lust for violence. Nothing. All I could do was hide and pray there could not find me in their blood lust. But as I crouch in the dirt hoping they would not find me I swore to myself that I would grow strong, strong to stop people like them. So for that I thank the CrimsonWatch for giving me my drive for justice. To make sure that innocents didn't have to suffer by the hands of monsters like them." - Extract from an interview with Shinichi Ozaki, High Ranger of the Hybrid Units
And so the newly-made 'CrimsonWatch' became more and more blatant in their ways, sticking their hands in all form of vices. Every single bad deed known to man soon came attributed to them. Made worse by the Hybrids that they kidnapped, and warped to their sick way of thinking. This addition of violent super-soldiers gave them a dangerous advantage, worse still that they were dabbling in mad sciences with links to the likes of Biosyn mentioned in rumor and hearsay of course.
After King Ghidorah's attack back in 1999, the CrimsonWatch became in love by what they saw in Ghidorah. A mad kindred spirit who glutted himself on slaughter, why for many of them they no doubt fell in love. This coupled with Ghidorah's psychic scarring of the Earth led to the games going even madder. The CrimsonWatch returned to their roots of blood games being for a belief, this one was that Humanity alone was worthy of ascending to the stars alongside Ghidorah, though profit it still high on their list. And so it appears their new mission was to make all of Humanity as ugly as them, believing that we alone as a species were strong enough to take the stars for ourselves.
To make a empire of blood among a billion worlds.
They're all mental in you ask me.
Though we did managed to get a savage blow on them. By one of their own, Jack Cayman, too just to sweeten the justice. Though to those who fought against Jack, he was known as Gatortooth. Jack was a third-time champion and mercenary who had been scooped up by the GDC and the Agency after one of his contracts went a bit bad for him. He was given an offer he couldn't refuse: life in the worst hellhole we could find or help us take down CrimsonWatch. He agreed on the taking down. And so when CrimsonWatch dropped a virus upon Varrigan City, just off of Jefferson Island, Jack was dropped in to sort them out. He did well, carving his way up the ranks to the crowds entertainment which gave him a dark sort of immunity, but Noa didn't run CrimsonWatch by being dumb and soon every Killseeker was told to take Jack's head. They didn't, he got them all as his infamous chainsaw limb 'The Gator's Tooth' slicing them all to pieces. Including the Shogun of the Dojo massacre, much to Ozaki's joy. Though Yokozuna managed to survive his encounter with Jack and still fights for the CrimsonWatch to this day.
Jack even managed to uncover the sinister plot behind the attack; it was all to promote a pharmaceutical company, Formont Corporation, and their cure for a virus they made, Jack killed the champion and even got Noa too. But Leo Formont, the young doctor who's father ran the company, as well as a few Killseekers that slipped beneath Jack's reach managed to get away. Though Jack was congratulated on a job well done, if not a bit gratuitous, and was offered a job as a consultant of a sort by the ever-pragmatic Pentecost. I believe he's words when offered were "Well I don't have anything better to do."
As for Leo, he slipped under our radar, but from Jack's attack we got plenty of intel on CrimsonWatch. Their leading lot are known as 'The Organizers' a mixture of shady politicians, company owners and even few of their own Killseekers, but those that do are the worst of the lot killers that make saucy Jack look like a sweet, cuddly bunny. Still despite the fact Jack almost ruined the entire setup of the games, you'd think they fall on each other for the failure. Nope, all we accomplished was thinning the herd. As while the organisation fell in size, we had prune the edges and now those that survived Jack's CrimsonWatch were veteran killers, and still madmen and women flood to fill in the ranks. And more worryingly a large enough number of abnormals and psybrids for them to do some very nasty things.
Though a form of divide has split the group, one born of clashing ideologies and goals. One reporter, a Miss Audrey Timmonds, once managed to sneak where she shouldn't, a flaw of hers I must add, and uncovered that there was a form of divide born of belief. Some of CrimsonWatch worshiped Ghidorah, others were just nihilists to the core or wanting money but one new small splinter worshiped some thing rumored to come from the 'Drowned Utopia'. Whatever that was supposed to mean was not found out as Miss Timmonds was force to flee, before being saved by H.E.A.T and their overgrown iguana as the CrimsonWatch dispatched a group of cloned dinosaurs on her despite, of course, Ingen or Biosyn denying any links with the CrimsonWatch. Still they remain an ever present thorn in our side, and with mad science, endless resources and absolute zealots fighting for them, they prove to be an ever present threat to any sane person's way of life.
But mark my words we'll put a stop to them. They'll run out of traction at some point, no matter how hard they try. No matter the shadows that they hide in nor powerful allies they have, we'll drag them into the light and it will burn them.
And then we'll put an end to them for good.
This is Archibald Castor of the Global Defense Corps, submitting report.
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A/N: Hello all, and thank you for reading my fic. This one is a bit of an experiment on my behalf, as it's basically a supplement for coming lore in my own fanfic'verse Godzilla: Age of Beasts and Monsters. I thought I'd write a bit of backstory for the villainous human faction, the CrimsonWatch.
They're a molding of a couple of different ideas that have been darting around, and were inspired by the chaos cults of Warhammer, the Deathwatch from Madworld and a bit of every doomsday faction ever from Hellboy. A mad bunch of Ghidorah and something else worshippers, they'll no doubt be a thorn in the side of the GDC.
Anyhow I hope you all enjoyed what you read, feel free to drop a review as every little helps and enjoy the rest of your day!
