Avengers of Mass Effect
Shanxi arc chapter 5
Disclaimer: I do not own either mass effect or the marvel cinematic universe, if I did I would not be writing this story, but making changes to the games or sitting besides Stan Lee during his moments in the movies.
'' Talk'' is regular oral communication/talking out loud
'TALK' Is forced mental communication such as reaper telepathy or communication with things that are controlled through brain waves. Will also be used in situations dealing with possession by some kind of being/force.
'Thought' This is used when in more gentle communication, such as Loki connecting the rest of the avengers with him through telepathy.
Author's notes: In this chapter we will mainly see how things are going on the home-fronts, so the Citadel and Earth. This chapter also hopefully gives a more indepth insight into the political side of things. The next chapter will be a time-line chapter, the one after that the second chapter of that time-line.
Also, something I might have forgotten to explain before, spoken language native to the person from who's perspective we are seeing events will always be written as English, while if they meet a person/group that speaks a language that isn't their natural language that they don't have a translation of in their omnitool/translator either for some reason, the language will be written in how the actual language works. For example:
Desolas Arterius POV
Watching the video feed gave me some chills, the video feed was showing these 'Human's' re-enforcements landing planet-side from some kind of massive support vessels -the damn things were bigger than his damn dreadnoughts!- going in high atmosphere and dropping troops that used some kind of ancient gliders to land on the ground, while behind them shuttles with ground vehicles attached to them were making their way down.
This was forcing the ground troops to send more of its already near depleted reserves to intercept them, and were trying to setup a defensive line against long range attacks from the invaders.
Only for two what seemed to be enemy officers to yell something my omnitool didn't translate.''Voorwaarts, in naam van vrijheid en de koning!'' (''Forward for freedom and the king!'') ''Chargée! En nom de la Belgique et la reine!'' (''Charge! In the name of Belgium and the Queen!'') their troops reacting with some kind of shared shout or cheer, and charging forward towards our not yet ready lines while firing dozens if not hundreds of different weapon types on the run, causing further disarray in our lines. With energy beams slicing through the infantries shields, explosions all around them and even ancient projectile weapons and flamethrowers felling proud Turians. But the worst truly began when they reached the line.
As seen in this example, languages that aren't native to the person will be written in cursive, while if that language isn't English there will also be a ( ) behind it that translates it into English for the reader. An exception to this will be titles or positions, like the German name for the position commander in chief or the Quarian title for a religious leader.
These will be used even if we are seeing things from the POV of a German or a Quarian respectively, and as such will always have a translation behind it.
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Planet: Earth/Terra. Location: Buckingham Palace, Year: 2157 A.C, Date: The 1st of June
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? POV
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Ok, this is going to be one of the most important meetings in our history, and probably also the first where half the people represented in it are not there in person but by hologram. ''Have there been any last minute information updates, Jacob?'' I asked my old friend Jakob Rutte.
''No my king, there haven't been any updates since you last asked, though please do use a more formal way of speech in the meeting. I know you are friendly and on a first name bases with most if not all of the people at this meeting, but this will be both recorded and potentially released to the public at a later date as part of a PR campaign, so we should take precautions to be presented in such a way that the people know we consider their safety a very serious and important business.''
Sigh, I would have protested as is our normal routine, but we both know he's right. This morning 8 AM GMT time the Chinese got an automated message from their shield generator in Shanxi that somebody had performed a partially successful sabotage mission against said shield generator. British spies picked it up, because the Chinese for some reason we do not understand at all haven't updated their cyber security ever since they started using large swaths of V.I. units lead and controlled by a small number of organic A.I's as their cyber defence.
Of course the Chinese declined to share this fact with the rest of the world, and also didn't lift their threat against us in case we decide to send our fleet to support Shanxi. One hour later however, the Systems alliance 2nd fleet admiral Kastanie Drescher called all leaders of countries that had spoken out against the Chinese and American decision to not let anybody besides one of their own fleets be sent to assist Shanxi together for a meeting at Buckingham Palace.
Which is why we're here now, together with ambassadors from France, Germany, the Vatican, Belgium and Great Britain. As we neared the door, our bodyguards showed the identity papers, a formality really since there had already been a check at the entrance of the building, and they exchanged nods with their British counterparts.
The guards then opened the doors and one of them announced ''Hereby announcing that his majesty Willem-Alexander the second of the Dutch Union, Dutch Union prime-minister Jakob Rutte, Dutch Union Defence Minister Maria van Vlimmeren and Dutch Union Commandant der Strijdkrachten(Commander of the armed forces) Leia Bauer have arrived.''
Nice to hear somebody finally actually using the translated version of our official country name instead of just the old 'Netherlands', because while 'Netherlands' has a nice ring to it, we changed the name for a good reason.
Looking around the room I saw we were the last to arrive, though that is somewhat understandable since we're the only ones that actually had to travel more than a few kilometres, since the Belgian monarch was already visiting her youngest sister that lives in London, the Systems Alliance representatives called this meeting in the first place and most of the remaining Belgian military and civilian high command was visiting Britain to look into having thirty of the new Hunter class corvettes the British had developed built for them.
All others, such as the Pope, the commanding officer of the Papal Armed forces, the French President and minister of Defence, the German Chancellor, President and Generalinspekteur (Inspector General of the Bundeswher or in other words overall commander of the German military) were here by hologram.
I still do not understand why the Germans and French kept insisting that element zero Gear should be given a greater chance in the navy, though their argument makes a small amount of sense in the form that the ships were so much cheaper to produce then our own Terran technology heavy dependant designs.
However we could simply never match the sheer manpower advantage our human enemies have over us, so we should instead be focussing on building things that can take down so many of them that in the end it wouldn't matter just how much of a numerical advantage our opponents have, we would still win the battles because any enemy group with a less than three to one numerical advantage flees on sight.
Ok, shouldn't be thinking about that now, not as our delegation walks to our assigned seats to the left of the British, with the Belgians being on their right, with then the French, then the Germans, the members of the Vatican and then finally the Systems Alliance, whom were seated directly to our left. What seemed to be the leading systems alliance officer stood up, and started the meeting.
''I am glad you have all answered our call for a meeting between us. As you all might already know, an alien force has attacked two of our patrols, with the second one winning the battle with said force. What you may not know yet is that we lost contact with said fleet within a few hours afterwards, moments after they sent a message of an incoming enemy flotilla.''
After looking around, I could conclude that the only person in the room that was actually surprised at this, was the French president. The man seems to have noticed the same thing and began panicking slightly, until his defence minister whispered something to him, which seemed to calm him down.
Ok, one good thing, at least everybody in this room kept up their spy networks unlike the Americans and the Chinese. Those now depended on the new element for literally nearly everything in their government and military, including some things were element zero is actually inferior to their previous systems in many ways. Sure those V.I's of theirs were much cheaper to build and use them rather than using humans, synthetic A.I's or even organic A.I's as the main part of your cyber defence.
In theory the small number of actual A.I. they have to lead the V.I's should be enough to allow them to match much larger numbers of synthetic or even organic A.I. however the simple fact was that when overstressed with work some of it would, just like humans, start becoming of a lower quality then the A.I. is actually capable of.
Which means that their defences while certainly strong enough to hold against any frontal attack or full on take-over we could possibly try, which is a feat in and of itself, they are simply completely incapable of stopping any of our infiltration or light information gathering missions. Meanwhile our own defences are manned by a combination of synthetic A.I., organic A.I. and humans. Wait why do I keep going off in thought towards things not related to this?
The officer, seeing that everyone knew what she was talking about, continued ''We feared an immediate attack upon Shanxi, but for some reason or the other the enemy didn't go through the gate to perform a large scale attack. We found out a few hours ago that at least part of the reason for not yet pressing the attack was them sending in what seemed to be a special forces or espionage squad to gather information and take out the Colony's shield generator.''
While saying this she started up the hologram projector on the table and pulled forth 2 three dimensional images of what seemed to be different members of the same alien species, walking on 2 feet, with one of them being blue and the other closer to green.
''As far as we've found out, these are some of our attackers. We have neither found out what they are called, nor have we learned of a way to communicate with them in their language. Early reports did find that most of their gear seems to be Element Zero based technology. And before somebody asks if these are the protheans, they aren't, their body structure is too different.
Some of the data on prothean biology left behind in their seemingly abandoned mars outpost confirms that. Also the technology is too low level for any possible revival of the Prothean Empire after being reduced heavily in their technology level due to some sort of civil war, considering they would by this point have long since retaken control of this region.''
Wait the technology isn't better then what we found on mars? ''You said the ships and the gear they use are for the most part worse than the Prothean gear and data the Americans and Chinese found on Mars? So that means that while the average Terran fleet is at a disadvantage against them in element zero gear we'll have an advantage in energy weaponry and the defence against energy weapons? Especially our blast reduction shields and the quality of our armour?''
''Yes, while their element zero technology is more advanced than ours, its only 'more advanced' in the term that we would at this rate independently reach the same level sometime in the next thirty years or so, instead of something that would take thousands of years to achieve.
Meanwhile all our other advantages will make it so that even the element zero reliant versions will overall be more capable than their own ships. Do keep in mind though they will be able to produce much larger numbers of ships for the same costs as even the cheapest variants we can produce.''
That is not what I expected ''One last question if it is no problem?'' She nods, causing me to continue ''According to our scientists we would be reaching a certain plateau in the growth of our element zero technology within a few decade where we will stay until something drastic happens, are these species already at that plateau or still moving towards it, possibly even already near finding a way to move past it?''
''As far as we can tell they are already on the plateau but haven't yet found a way to move past it in any shape or form.''
I nodded ''That is good to know. Also, how long out is the QRF that you are sending?''
''The quick reaction fleet is on its way, but due to delaying by the Americans and the fact that we have to hide our movement from satellites and space stations under American and Chinese control it will only arrive in 5 days instead of within the next 48 hours from their station ten lightyears away from Shanxi.''
After looking at the non-Systems alliance delegations with them looking at each other for a moment then nodding, I sighed and decided we needed to upfront with this. ''Mr. Rutte, would you please explain Guardian Protocol strategies to those in the room not informed of it?''
3rd person POV
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The man named Jakob Rutte stood up, and changed the image of the holographic table to a list of what seemed to be documents, and selected one of them. ''These documents contain what is known to all high ranking military and civilian personnel of European Union as Guardian Protocol.
This protocol was officially created in June 2140, after continued heavy aggression towards us from China with neither the United American States nor most other countries not already allied to us speaking or acting out against it but our own defence of colonies against Chinese raiders and our attempts to enact vengeance on these people being portrayed as a danger to international peace by both China and the USA.
This protocol has been updated time and time again to ensure we have all possible tactics and individual countermeasures to Mass Effect weaponry and gear in general and sometimes specifically those used by the American and Chinese forces. Though a relatively large amount of these plans will be rendered useless by the fact that our current enemies most likely won't have the same issues as the Chinese do nor the American ability to underestimate any opponent no matter their strength or capabilities, I do admit.
The strategies and countermeasures aimed against Mass Effect oriented forces in general should be useful during this war, especially since it seems that they are even worse in how they armour ships and seemingly even buy into that idiotic 'as long as you fire may more projectiles then your opponent the actual damage a single one of those projectiles can do doesn't matter' strategy. Considering that while very efficient against shields, it's an extremely ineffective thing to use against actual armour this will give us a significant advantage.''
The room was engulfed in a stunned silence, with the people from the Systems Alliance to look around the room for support only to realize their own group were the only ones that hadn't known about it yet. The others were all looking on in either grim silence or nodding their ascent to this.
After that moment of stunned silence those that represented the Systems Alliance started yelling ''Why the hell are you idiots doing this, are you trying to cause a war?!'' or ''What! Why weren't we informed about this!'' and ''That damn president was right for once, you idiots are really intending to take over the planet through war and deception!'' and lastly ''We should have seen this coming after what you did to the Russians back in 2020''.
With the exception of admiral Kastanie Drescher. ''Ok, nice and all but how is this really that surprising, tensions have been rising ever since the Americans and Chinese tried to force the world to follow them through whether they would or wouldn't give access to military level Mass Effect technology. And when this failed in some cases they tried to bully those remaining countries in submission by creating as many economic problems for them as possible.''
She then turned towards Rutte and asked ''And what exactly are those plans? We can talk all about what was wrong about how you went about keeping this a secret later, right now we need any way to fight back against these Xeno's that we can get our hands on otherwise the people of Shanxi and most likely also some of the less well defended colonies nearby will be doomed.''
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Kastanie Drescher POV
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He nodded and pulled up a file that showed a very strange skirmish between what seemed to be a first generation British Dread class light cruiser and 3 Mao class frigates.
What was strange about the fight was that the outdated Cruiser was actually winning with relative ease, which became even more obvious when one of the frigates was mission killed within 20 seconds after the recording started by a shot of the Cruisers main gun, the second breaking in half less than a half a minute after that due to the Dread class simply ramming it out of the way, with the final dying when the due to the frigate taking a direct hit from the cruisers main canon to what seemed to be the ships engineering section.
After the fight ended Mr. Rutte paused the hologram, while saying ''This is the incident on which we based the early plans for any confrontation with Element Zero using groups, with no distinction if this would be a human nation or an alien race. What you might not have known about this incident is the fact that we later found out that these pirates were hired by the Chinese government with only sending these three after the cruiser as a way to showcase how 'outdated' Earth created energy tech would be in comparison with everything they learned from the ruins of the Protheans.
What they hadn't thought about yet at the time was the simple fact that frigates relying on Mass Effect are mainly meant for so called 'knife fighting' range, both anti-fighter and anti-torpedo screening and lastly torpedo delivery. The reason why this is a problem for them is simple, both A: energy weaponry is more dangerous the closer the fighting is, and B: The ship they fought is a light cruiser that fires shots that are close up the same strength as a mass effect light dreadnought's main canon, but with a lower firing rate so that if they ever come to face with an American light dreadnought and miss their first shot, they are pretty much doomed.
Usually, frigates could just stay out of its range without problems and have bigger escort ships take care of them, but because the Chinese government was so in love with the idea of making us look like outdated primitives, they gave us all the advantages in that fight and payed for it since after gaining the data stored in the frigates we were prepared for a number of their other plans that happened in the following period.
Because of this, one of our main tactics to take down Element Zero reliant ships, is to somehow make it a battle in knife fighting range, where the main canons of their larger ships will have less of an effect and a lower firing rate out of fear of hitting allies, while our own weapons cause higher amounts of damage. Though this should already be known since it is also in the very manual of our tactics to the ships and crews we give to the Systems Alliance Navy.
In this war said advantage should be multiplied by the fact that as the Admiral just revealed to us, our opponents do not have the same energy impact reducing factor to their shields that their Terran Mass Effect counterparts have, which coupled with their ships not being armoured will make anything smaller than a light dreadnought equivalent a single hit kill for our own cruisers. However sadly enough this will mean that in exchange for that their ships will be a lot more manoeuvrable and probably also have faster FTL then most of our fleets do.
To counteract this we will have to once again fall back on getting close enough to force them to keep engaging us, making them unable to just dodge shots aimed at them. On top of this with the stronger, better armour and much heavier weight similar sized ships from our side and their side have, we can just ram them if they get too close for main guns to be used, or hold our own against multiple ships of theirs at once just by using our broadsides.''
While a very basic strategy for such a large and apparently secretive plan, it is also a good base for a solid defence and attack plan, and will also reduce the chance of either side hitting planets by accident. There probably is a lot more, so let's get answers about more of this. This is probably the best option we have.
''This is a good starting point for a strategy to counter this opponent, but I assume you have a lot more? Can you explain some of the other plans that have been devised, and do you have something that our own Element Zero reliant ships can exploit in combat against other factions that depend on it?''
''I will, but can you first tell us what numbers both quick reaction fleet you have on the way towards Shanxi has and what the exact number of ships under the third fleets command is?'' I thought for a moment to get the exact numbers. ''The quick reaction fleet consist mainly of 32 frigates, 24 light cruisers, 6 heavy cruisers, 2 carriers and 2 light dreadnoughts, however…''
And with this I looked at the French and German representatives ''we were hoping some of the ships you have patrolling near the system would join ours to add to that size.'' The two groups had a minute of discussion, then the Germans turned towards me ''We are willing to lend 5 of the 12 wolf packs operating near the Shanxi system join your fleet at the Relay to it.'' After which the French President spoke up ''And we will add another 4 wolf packs to join your fleet.''
Let's do the math for a moment, both of these nations use the 5 frigate one light cruiser type wolf pack with the frigates mainly using Mass Effect while the cruisers at the very least have an DEW main gun, so that would be 45 frigates equal to my own ones in everything except FTL speed and 9 light cruisers with the firepower and armour of my heavy cruisers but the shields only slightly better than a frigate joining the fleet. ''Ok so that would bring our total number up to 77 frigates, 33 light cruisers, 6 heavy cruisers, 2 carriers and 2 dreadnoughts, so a total of 122 ships.
To answer your earlier question, the 3rd fleet consists of 159 frigates, 53 cruisers, 40 of those light cruisers the remaining 13 heavy cruisers, 4 light carriers, 3 light dreadnoughts and a heavy dreadnought as the flagship. Everything cruiser weight and above is either American or Chinese, while 22 of the frigates are Russian, with the Flagship being the American dreadnought Eagle's Flight. It would leave from Earth in a week after all repairs on the four carriers are finished and start heading towards Shanxi.
The reason why the whole group would be so slow in getting there even after repairs are finished is once again because of the carriers. They are all of the Yuhan design, and thus are dealing with heavy quality control issues to their engines which means that they can only travel at slightly less than half the speed that they are supposed to be able to.''
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Planet: Citadel Station, Location: Council Meeting Room, Year: 2157 C.E. Time: Roughly at the same time as the meeting of the Systems Alliance and other factions on Earth
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Councillor Tevos POV
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''Ok, I have both good and bad news.'' began Councillor Sparatus ''The good news is that the Fifth and Sixth patrol fleets have been put at our disposal and will join any fleet we assemble to put a stop to Desolas Arterius, while Desolas himself has been put on the Hierarchies wanted list and as such is considered a traitor which if they learn about it in time will cause most if not all of the Hierarchy troops with him to turn against him.
The bad news is that we miscalculated how many troops Desolas had with him, he apparently also recruited the entirety of the nearby Eclipse chapter and gained another 8000 organic soldiers, numerous smaller transport ships, 12 repurposed cargo freighters, 10 older Asari frigates, one cruiser, and 8000 synthetic troops from it.
After this the nearby Asari republic of Minbara was contacted by him, they believed his reasoning thinking that we had given at least tacit approval and sent him a force of eight freighters and some 4000 infantry units.
This means that his total ground forces compose of 35000 Turian Hierarchy soldiers, at least 8000 Asari and Salarian mercenaries, 8000 Synthetic support troops and 4000 Minbara Republican Guard units. Meanwhile his ships are made up of a combination of most of the 34th Turian defence fleet, the numbers from that being 40 frigates, 30 cruisers and a single dreadnought.
Add in two still full or mostly full QRF fleets of 32 frigates and 8 cruisers each and one QRF fleet that is at least halfway dead with most if not all of its cruisers killed in action, though we are unsure of how many frigates survived. On top of this they have another 10 frigates and 1 cruiser as actual combat ships from a mercenary organisation and then some 26 transport freighters of varying kinds and a few dozen smaller transports as their logistical element.''
Damn it, while we already knew about most of that it's still very frustrating for them to get even more re-enforcements. Him having 55000 ground units alone already at his command, the chances of them actually believing this is just the action of a single high ranked officer going rouge is dropping fast.
Though there is at least some good news on that front with the Turian fleets, two are more than I feared they would send, if less than I had hoped for. ''The Asari Republics have agreed to put a bounty of 50 million credits on the capture of Desolas Arterius. The Destiny Ascension is being prepared to be used in this campaign, along with 2 other Asari dreadnoughts and whatever ships we can scramble together from the Citadel Defence Fleets without endangering the station.
The current number is 100 in total, if given a week time we could rise it to 400 without endangering the station too much in the absence of the Destiny Ascension, but with the support of the Hierarchy fleets we shouldn't need any more than 300 or so to force Desolas to stand down even if his troops keep following him after the campaign begins.'' And sadly enough it will also have to function as a warning to this new species about our power, that we can bring 2 fleets of such size to their borders within a few weeks of each-other while still holding most of our ships back to defend our territory.
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Councillor Sparatus POV
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After Tevos finished speaking the Salarian imp spoke up ''I have gathered whatever intelligence the STG and I could on this species, both from the information that Desolas got from one of their ships, the recordings of the battle and the recording of the interrogation performed against one of the captured survivors of their fleet.''
He seemed to become very nervous, but pulled up a hologram... oh ok now I understand why he was so nervous. This is pretty much a mix between Asari and Quarians back when they didn't require suits to survive.
''The species calls themselves 'Human' as far as we know, can range in height from 150 centimetres to the height of the average Krogan, till the tip of the hump included, and is bi-gendered. They seem to not yet have fully united, but if true, then this struggle might according to our psychologists very well be what makes them even more dangerous, since they had a good reason to actually create large fleets to defend themselves from each other, and now that we are intruding upon the situation we would cause those groups to unite to take us out.
From what we can put together, even though they have only been exploring Mass Effect technology for 30 years at the very most, their military is already pretty much at the same level as the Hanar, Elcor and Batarian ones are technology wise, however unlike with those three races we have no idea at all what they specialized in, they might even have Krogan level abilities to soak up damage and regenerate, any combat situation is to be approached with as much caution as possible.
It is of the upmost importance that once Desolas is taken out, we try to keep them friendly to us, they are only the third race ever met by this council since its founding while said race already had both achieved and to a degree mastered space flight. We literally have no contingency plans for the scenario of a war with this kind of faction outside of possibly heavily outdated ones that handle how we should respond to another race that is almost exactly like the Ranchi being discovered.''
While refreshing that the Salarian is willing to admit to the fact that he has no true contingencies in place, it is also very worrying. Especially since one of those three times such a race was met it where the Ranchi, who would have defeated this council in war if it hadn't been for the Krogan.
And this time around we don't have a race of overly large warriors with regenerative abilities to uplift to do the fighting for us if these humans decide to strike back with that same amount of strength, outside of the Yagh, and I would sooner die then uplift the Yagh, both of the other councillors also know my stance on said idea.
Because that would cause an attack from them at Citadel Space later on that makes the Krogan Rebellions seem like a bar fight in comparison. We would eventually win against the Humans to be sure even without uplifting anyone, but we might lose dozens of planets and millions if not billions of people in the process. And while if we do try the uplifting idea we would win with ease now, but lose four or five times that amount of planets and population a century or two in the future.
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Ok, so a few things. First yes, due to me learning alot about some of the specific characters that weren't present that much in the original games themselves, whom I only knew about through fanfiction and a few mentions by characters in-game with not much of an actual explanation given, I made some mistakes with my early plans for the Arterius brothers.
I will rectify this now and say, that while Desolas will be a madman and racist(or specieist however you want to call it), he will be a competent ground force commander who has earned his rank at least partially because of experience in combat situations. The council, if anyone is going to complain about them actually having some form of common sense/intelligence like a lot of people seem to do at fictions that depict them as capable leaders.
Thing is, they are actually somewhat good leaders. However, they are very conservative leaders who are used to a status quo with relatively little change happening in centuries and looking more at threats from a political point of view and how it will affect their own species individually rather than seeing things from a military point of view and about the entire council space.
This causes them to be well suited and relatively good at ruling a semi-peaceful society and not very well prepared for a war with any group anywhere near the level of power they themselves possess. They are not at all prepared for a war with semi-immortal space ships that want to harvest the Galaxy, and thus since it has never happened before, they don't actually take the threat seriously.
I apologize once again for this coming out so late, I have had a number of problems at work and in my social life that took precedent over this, but here it is. The next chapter will contain part one of a rough time-line and a load of information about the factions at play during and before the first contact war. Please leave comments, also tell me what I'm doing wrong so I can improve it for the next chapters.
