Muv Luv Alternative: Legacy of Palaiologos
You'd think that when the planet was in the middle of a nuclear standoff, things couldn't get any worse short of mutually assured destruction. Going out in a fireball would probably be better than what happened to most of Central Asia and the Middle East.
The Canadians were lucky then. When the BETA landed at Kashgar back in '73, the Chinese gave the rest of the world the finger, and said they had the situation 'under control'. Of course, nineteen days later they managed to lose air superiority and had their ground forces completely overwhelmed. So what did they do? They turned the Tarim Basin into a nuclear wasteland and forced the BETA west into Central Asia.
Now at this point, the US of A sure as hell wasn't taking any chances. When the BETA landed in Saskatoon the next year, Uncle Sam decided to skip the 'get our army overwhelmed' bit and go straight to launching half their nuclear arsenal at the BETA LZ. Sure, we may have scorched half of Canada, but we saved hundreds of millions of lives in the process!
Back in Eurasia, things weren't looking too good. By 1975, the BETA have overwhelmed most of the Middle East and Central Asia, and at the rate of things were pushing across the Volga right into Eastern Europe. The US and most of Europe twiddled its thumbs whilst the Ruskies bled for every inch of land. It took three years before we finally got our shit together and began our first real counterattack.
Now, a lot of rumours get spread around about what happened during Operation Palaiologos, that it was a slaughter, that we lost half a million men contesting the Ukraine and the Volga, that we had infantrymen try to infiltrate the underground chambers of the Dnipro Hive, only for them to get ripped apart and their remains uncovered weeks later. I'm not going to confirm or deny any of them but I'll tell you this:
If Operation Palaiologos had gone south, all of Europe would be gone. The BETA would have pushed west into Poland, Hungary and Germany and by then, it would've been far too late to stop them. Luckily for us, we won, by the skin of our teeth, and pushed those alien bastards back across the Volga. That was all we could do, though. The costs were just too damned high, too many men were dead fighting over ground in Eastern Europe, and we were spent. No morale, no political will to push forward and most deadly of all, no unity.
The alliance between East and West broke down months after the end of the operation. The West said that it was a 'resounding victory that broke the enemy advance'. The Russians retorted that 'the West didn't have the nerve to push forward’. Now, it's trench warfare all over again, with us sitting in our trenches and mountain holdouts whilst these aliens throw wave after wave against our defenses, and everyone else back at each other's throats, playing the same political game they've always had.
Not much has really changed, other than that we all might end up getting wiped out by alien invaders if we play our cards wrong.
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Hello all and welcome to my first attempt at running an NRP. If you're still reading after that opening blurb, congratulations, because whilst this setting may seem a bit complicated if you aren't familiar with the Muv Luv setting, I assure you, it's not, and I'll be doing my best to give you the rundown on the 'history' of this alternate Earth, as well as an explanation of the key concepts and plot elements that are gonna be in play.
First of all, to rehash the history as succinctly as possible:
In 1973, an alien race known as the BETA (Beings of Extra-Terrestrial Origin which are Adversarial to the Human Race) landed in Kashgar. The existence of the BETA was not unknown to humanity. A probe sent to Mars transmitted pictures of strange lifeforms to NASA, and a few years before the first landings, the BETA attacked a US moon base and kicked off the Lunar War which ended with a US withdrawal just before the Kashgar Landings. Once they landed, it was hard to stop them short of launching nukes, which ended up just forcing the BETA west into Central Asia and the Middle East which they overran within a few years.
NATO and the Warsaw Pact basically got together for the first and only time in the largest military operation in human history in early 1978, successfully infiltrating a BETA Hive under construction in Dnipro, Ukraine, and then destroying it, as well as pushing the BETA out of European Russia. From there, they lost momentum and pretty much stopped after setting up a new defense line in the Caucasus and northern Kazakhstan where the BETA have been bashing their heads against a brick wall for the past decade.
The year is now 1988, and with the alien threat mostly contained to these regions, the Cold War which was on pause for a few years is now back in full swing.
Extent of the BETA Advance in 1988
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Now you might be shouting: "Hold on a sec, Predawnia, Lunar War in the early 70s? Probe to Mars before that? Did you fail middle school history or is there an alternate history timeline you forgot to tell us about?"
To that question, it's none of the former and a bit of the latter, with a lot of ambiguity and 'undefined' events to allow for sufficient freedom to design your own nation, so you can play your alternate history communist Nepal or whatever tickles your fancy. The only really concrete and 'happened without a shadow of a doubt events' are as follows:
19th century: The Shogunate wins the Boshin War and as a result, the Emperor remains a figurehead. Rest of history proceeds as normal up until World War 1
1919-1944: World War 2 ends in 1944 with the United States nuking Rostock and Wurzburg in Germany instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Shogunate issues a surrender and signs a peace treaty with the United States, with the Shogun becoming a figurehead much like the Emperor did OTL.
1950s: United States, Western Europe and the Soviets set up their own space agencies, using Orion Drives, and the United States sends a probe to Mars which transmits back pictures of the first BETA.
1960+: Refer to the previous section where I summarized the history.
Tl;dr rules and guidelines for the lazy among us
1. There are alien invaders on Earth known as the BETA, and they've took out most of the Middle East and Central Asia.
2. There's also a cold war going on in an alternate history Earth.
3. Mutually assured destruction through nukes is a big no no, and if nukes are going to fly, it's going to be flying towards the BETA instead of towards another nation.
4. Everyone has troops in some form or another on the frontlines against the BETA. It might be an entire army if your nation is on the frontlines, or it could just be a few TSFs if you're some Himalayan country with a population lower than the state of Wyoming. You don't always have to use them as in write a battle post or whatnot every time you make an IC, but you should have guys there. The idea here is that we have a persistent conflict going on regardless of the politics and diplomacy going on in the rest of the world. Lots of room for plot developments.
5. Everyone has TSFs. TSFs are more or less set to completely overtaken conventional jet fighters yet and form a large portion of a nation's air force. TSFs follow 1st/2nd/3rd gen configurations similar to OTL jet aircraft development. TSFs are currently in the 2nd generation phase, with 3rd generation TSFs currently in R&D and not slated for deployment for a few more years.
6. Play nice and sort out any disputes/differences politely among yourselves. I'll only intervene if its really necessary and probably deliver some objective judgement. Be reasonable with each other and have respect towards them and the premise of the RP. If anyone tries anything crazy, I'll come down on them.
7. This is a writing-focused NRP, not a stats one, so no dice. Don't pull shit out of your ass, thanks.
8. More rules and will be added as GMs see fit, I'll make sure to both inform everyone involved and update this list accordingly.
Is there a discord?: Yes, here: discord.gg/JNPJAXs . Feel free to hop in and get to know everyone else participating.
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Template Nation Sheet below, I'm more focused on the quality of IC posts rather than the number of words in your nation sheet so I've left it relatively sparse.