Wednesday, November 27, 2013

331: Revaunchists

ENTRY 331: Revaunchists

"The memories are dim for some of you. To move under an open sky, without a breather. The scents and sounds of millions of people, living and working together. The certain knowledge that you could walk forever, without checking your power or oxygen levels. To swim in warm oceans and cold rivers. This is not the world we left behind. When we left Earth to its new masters, it was a world of poisoned skies and burning waters. What I ask of you today is to reach back before the Fall, to hold onto the memories of Earth as it was - and will be again. We fight today not for the Earth we left behind, but the Earth we will build again. Before that happens, we will have to wade through oceans of blood, but I promise you - it is worth it. Navigator, set the course. Home."
- General Kalpa, Commencement of the Antarctic Campaign

Reclamationists want to return to Earth. The Revaunchists are actively trying to reconquer it. Considering the Planetary Consortium as having abandoned the struggle and Reclaimers as being too passive in their efforts to return, the Revaunchists are a small guerilla army actively engaged in planning the return to transhumanity's home planet, gathering intelligence and undertaking scouting missions and occasional raids. To most in the Planterary Consortium, they are dangerous outlaws antagonizing with enemies that transhumanity is still unable to defeat, and extremists that value immediate action over long-term, considered strategies that might give better results. If anyone outside the organization had any clue as to their real intentions and capabilities, the Revaunchists would probably be seen as madmen and put down before their plans could be put into effect.

The Revaunchists are organized in a cell structure, and their history fades hazily into the paramilitary groups that were in responsible for the rampant global insurrections prior to the Fall. Their most notable leader and spokesperson is General Jules Kalpa, formerly a major Reclamationist on Vo Nguyen who proved too extreme. A skilled military strategist Kalpa is developing a coordinated, comprehensive military strategy to reconquer Earth - and to lead by example, her cell has participated in multiple bloody "test strikes," including the disastrous but inspiring Antarctic Campaign of AF 8, where her platoon managed to maintain a position on Antarctica for 93 days before local opposition caused her to order an organized bug-out, covering their retreat with a low-orbital bombardment. Total casualties were reported as 103 morphs lost out of an initial strength of 120 and 52 egos lost, but restored from forks held in orbit; survivors of the campaign claim as many as 17 of those "egos lost" were missing in action or left behind during the retreat. Rumors suggest that Kalpa and the Revaunchists may be in contact with - and even supplying - ongoing guerrila groups still extant on Earth, though the Planetary Consortium denies the existence of these groups, and claims little evidence on the continued existence of transhumanity on the surface of the planet.

Objective outside observers note that the Revaunchists and their supporters believe in a number of questionable theories regarding the surviving exsurgent and TITANs forces that occupy Earth, with the most prominent being that belief that an intact Pandora Gate exists on the planet. Most intelligence services that have any knowledge of the group believe that the long-term Revaunchist strategy lies in either driving the enemy forces back through the Gate with a sustained assault, or else locating it and cutting them off from it. Without resupply and reinforcement, Kalpa believes that the remaining forces will be vulnerable and eventually succumb.

Using Revaunchists

The call of Earth is a powerful theme for an adventure or a campaign, but it is not exactly a common one in Eclipse Phase. Earth is inhospitable to life, poisoned, damaged, and still crawling with monsters. It could be the work of decades of warfare to clear out the remaining TITANs and their creations, and centuries to undo the damage - and even then, there is a good case that Earth as it was will never be the same, too much of its biodiversity lost, its cycles too broken. Against this difficulty, exploring the Pandora Gates and the prospect of colonizing Mars and Titan and Venus seem much more enticing. So, having abandoned Earth, many transhumans are content to leave it - but not all. The Revaunchists are a group actively at work to retake the Earth, the most extreme branch of the Reclamationists and willing to put morph and ego on the line to gather the critical data and perform the suicidal missions - all good fodder for player character backgrounds or adventures.

Seed

  • Alamein Al-Hussein abandoned the Revaunchists after the Antarctica Campaign, dismayed at the sacrifices that Gen. Kalpa was willing to endure just to gather data or prove a point. Yet his brother Khem is still under Kalpa's spell, and is preparing for a "reconnaissance in force" on a fortified site outside the ruins of Mecca. Alamein asks the PCs to rescue his brother before his efforts at heroics see him captured, dead, or worse.

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