Saga Epilogue

Author’s Note: This is the last chapter for the Pre-War Saga, I hope you enjoy it. I’ll be giving the info about what happened within the last two and half years before the Great War for those who don’t play the game, it’ll be some main basic staff, which I hope will explain why the Great War happened and other staff to explain why a few things happened. After this chapter, I’m going to take a break and work on some of my other stories, so during this time, I hope you can give me ideas as to what you would like to see to happen in the next saga. Now, onto the story.

(Pre-War Saga - Saga Epilogue!)

Dawn of the Great War.

23rd of October 2077 - Brooklyn:

It has been almost two and a half years since Kaidan Alenko became a Techno-Mage for the Spectres, and started work at Apotheosis as the Head of Security. During this time, many things happened, some good and some bad.

In the months that followed, there was some big news about the United States Space Administration awarding the contracts to ArcJet Systems, to develop what is known as the XMB booster engine and some deep range transmitter, for their Mars Shot Project, which with luck, it would be the first manned mission to Mars.

As a Spectre, in November of that year, Kaidan heard that there were some unidentified submarine contacts, rumoured to be stealth subs of the Chinese known as the ‘Ghost Fleet,’ was spotted by U.S. monitoring stations A-31 and B-19. Seeing that there were no further sightings reported, many thought it was a computer glitch at the monitoring stations or something.

But a month later though, Kaidan learnt that a general from the US military visited the Switchboard facility. The Switchboard was one of many secret facility’s that the military had. Now the Switchboard was a hidden bunker used as a secret base of operation for the Defence Intelligence Agency. It seemed that the general was sent to see the Predictive Analytic Machine, otherwise known as P.A.M.

P.A.M. was a project that was green-lighted in 2067, commissioned under the P.A.M. Initiative. It was a joint project between the Defence Intelligence Agency and the military to develop an advanced supercomputer capable of accurately predicting possible future outcomes, utilizing the most sophisticated algorithms and mathematical formulas known to man.

Her prediction models depended on the data fed into her systems by her human operators. Because of this, if the data she was given wasn’t one hundred percent right, P.A.M’s predictions would have a margin of error, depending how much bad data she was given. Because P.A.M. was primarily intended for use in performing complex modelling for war, all the data she was given, was doubled even tripled checked before giving the data to her.

For years P.A.M. was nothing more than a powerful computer, but as the Chinese became more of a threat, they needed her to be more mobile.

So she was eventually wired to a modified Assaultron, a military designed and created by RobCo Industries. Granting her mobility to relocate, in the event of an enemy attack.

The Assaultron was primarily designed after that of a female figure, to give better close combat ability, and allow it to close into their enemy quickly. It had three point claws to fight with, so it could tear off its targets armour, flesh, and bone alike.

While it is fully capable of using ranged weaponry, its accuracy wasn’t as good as other robots. But it did have a mounted laser on its head, just in case it needed s range attack. Whilst its carrying capacity was decent, there was other robots that could carry more. Then again, Assaultrons was designed for close combat fighting, and not for carrying things.

Anyway, when the general visited P.A.M., she reported that Chinese stealth technology was far ahead than anything that the United States had, and that the unidentified submarines spotted by U.S. monitoring stations a month prior might have been the Chinese ‘Ghost Fleet,’ an elite naval unit rumoured to possess stealth-capable submarines.

Kaidan heard that the general was dismissive of this intelligence as unsubstantiated, but he also heard that P.A.M. responded to this by stating that no actionable intelligence has come out of the Shaanxi Province of China since November 2072, except for a reported increase in the importation of complex polymers and key synthetic compounds. P.A.M. indicates that these are consistent with research into stealth technology on a large scale, but the general states that unless concrete evidence can be provided, such information would be considered as rumour.

Although what she predicted whilst he was there, was something the general couldn’t over look. P.A.M. predicted that at some point within the next three to five years, China would deploy nuclear warheads at the United States, as for why, she didn’t have all the data to explain it.

This was something the general nor the Spectres could easily overlook, true or not they had to prepare just in case the prediction came true. It didn’t help that P.A.M. had no idea if the Chinese would strike first or what, so all the general could do was report to the President with his findings. At which point the President had the military mobilize its own fleet of ballistic missiles, and create even more of them and place them in key points of the country, and raise the DEFCON status to the highest level in preparation for an upcoming invasion.

As for the Spectres, seeing that they didn’t know who would make the first move, they didn’t know how to stop it, seeing that the preparation had holes in the area as to how it was going to happen. So all they could was prepare for the aftermath, and saving what they could of the civilization that they knew of. So they had Apotheosis sell Memory Crystals to the public.

Now Memory Crystals were like Holodisk, a durable laser-readable storage device produced by Wattz Electronics, based on the tape holography technology, storing their information safely for extended periods of time. Whilst normally Holodisk held written or audio notes, like a dairy, training notes and such, but at other times instead of written or audio notes, they sometimes had holograms of people showing and explaining things.

Memory Crystals were different, they were made from magical crystals, and whilst they were able to hold written or audio notes like a Holodisk could, and were able to hold holograms, they also way more data. Not only that, but with a Memory Reader and a Data Import, they could feel like they were in a room full of people where someone was giving a lecture and such. Before now, these Memory Crystals were used to teach new teachers, doctors and help train new soldiers and such. But now that the Memory Crystals were being sold, the Spectres hoped that whoever survived would find and use the Memory Crystals to hopefully rebuild civilization, with the knowledge of the past so not to repeat it, and use the knowledge rebuild the buildings.

Kaidan found it funny, when Robert House predicted that Chinese might hit the U.S with nuclear warheads, they did nothing. In fact, they laughed at him for it, as he had no proof, but now a super computer tells them the same thing with no proof either, everyone is running about trying to deal with it in one way or another.

During this time, Pulowski Preservation Services started to create Pulowski Preservation shelters. These shelters were coin-operated, one-person fallout shelters found on street corners throughout the more urban areas of the East Coast. They were advertising that these shelters were a ‘sensible’ and ‘affordable’ alternative to the Vaults, so that people could ostensibly use them as a last-minute resort in the event of a nuclear attack. The shelters themselves were firmly secured to the ground, and ventilation piping is attached to the rear of the booth.

Kaidan didn’t like these shelters, as they were very ill prepared, whilst they had air supply, they had no food or water within them, so the only way anyone with them could survive, was if they had anything on them at the time they entered them. So any ill-prepared occupants that entered them, would most likely resigned themselves to die from starvation if they were lucky enough to survive the high radiation levels.

In early January of 2076, Kaidan heard from some of his old friends in the military, that a military team under the command of Colonel Spindel, was sent to the West Tek research facility to monitor the experiments in the interest of national security, due to fears of international espionage. What the experiments were, Kaidan didn’t know as they were considered top secret out of the interest of national security. Even as a Spectre he couldn’t find out, as his clearance wasn’t high enough. Although he did hear about some sort super smart raccoons escaping the place, but Kaidan couldn’t find any info about them and so put it down to a rumour.

At some point in the same month, the United States annexation of Canada was complete. There were open orders from the military that au Canadian protesters or/and rioters, were meant to be shot on sight, and the Alaskan Pipeline swarms with American military units. Pictures of atrocities made their way back to the United States, where it caused even further unrest and protests with the people.

In June a new Power Armour prototype, the T-51b, was completed. This this new armour was the pinnacle of Power Armour technology before the Great War. Many of these units were sent to China, and they begin to carve a swath through the Chinese forces. Over the following months, news returned to the U.S. that the Chinese resources were becoming strained, to the breaking point, and the supply lines from the nations China was slowly to break down.

In the United States though, in August of that year with food and energy being so low and rationed so much in the major cities, there were riots in them. Because of this, military units were deployed in the cities, to contain the rioters. And to do this, they set up many temporary prisons were constructed to hold them. And to make sure that riots didn’t happen again, a state of emergency was declared and martial law soon follows, with curfew set in place too.

Over the last year, Kaidan done a few missions for the Spectres, mainly keeping dragons away from the public areas. But there were some missions that the Commonwealth Council and the Spectres felt the public should never know about, the darker secrets of magic and some other things that they only knew about. The first one was of the Dark Creatures: the Dementors. Dementors are a gliding, wraith-like dark creatures (considered to be one of the foulest creatures to inhabit the world.) These creatures were something everyone wanted to keep quiet, as they feed upon human happiness, and thus cause depression and despair to anyone near them. They were also able to consume a person’s soul, leaving their victims in a permanent vegetative state, and thus are often referred to as ‘soul-sucking fiends.’ As they were known to leave a person as an ‘empty-shell.’

Another dark secret that was kept from the public was about those who use magic to experiment on others, and it wasn’t always people with magic who experimented on people, but those without a magic focus too. I know what how can some who didn’t have a wand or another focus experiment magic on others with magic? Who said they used spells to experiment on people, it was normally potions and runes that they used, to see the effect they had on people. As you didn’t need much magic to use potions and runes, for when you need magic, if you were a L’Cie, then you would be fine, as you didn’t normally need to use spells to magic he potions or runes to work, but to push raw magical power into them, which any L’Cie could do. And for the rare times they needed to use spells, but a threat to their life or their family life, in one form or another, would make a Wand User to cast the spell you needed.

Two such experiments that Kaidan was sent to stop, was a group of people who used the homeless, those who won’t be missed and the Chinese-Americans who were in the internment camp for experiments to create new races. The first experiments that Kaidan stopped, was a group who were crazy cat lovers who believed that like the ancient Egyptians, cats were superior and Bastet was their god. And this group believed that to be closer to Bastet, they should become a hybrid cat and human. And thanks to learning about magic they could, they called the new race Khajiit, after a card game known as Elder Scrolls.

Then there was another group, this group didn’t do what they did because they believed that a certain race was better than another. They were doing this to see if they could, and like the other group, used those who homeless, those who won’t be missed and the Chinese-Americans who were in the internment camp for their experiments. In this case, they were using different sort of reptiles, to find a match to fit their needs, and those they didn’t like or failed for some reason were killed. Like with the other group, they used the name from the Elder Scrolls card game to name their new race, and it was Argonian.

Kaidan was able to shut down the experiments, but the thing was what to do with them. As the Spectres and the Government wanted to keep them secret from the public, as they won’t ready for such things. So the Spectres took over two of the Vaults that were created, so each race could live in peace and don’t have to deal with each other. The other options for the Chinese-Americans though was either send them back to China, which they didn’t want, as they feared that the Chinese would try and copy the experiment to create their own Khajiit and Argonian race. The other option was to resend them back to a internment camp which wasn’t something they wanted either.

As the internment camps were hell on Earth for the Chinese-Americans, as they were believed to be Chinese spies. This happened since the start of the Resource Wars with them, in 2066. But the thing is that not only were adults being sent to these camps, but also children and the elderly, and the government didn’t seem to care about them. To them anyone could be a spy and need to be dealt with, but instead sending them back to China, they sent them to these internment camps, where they have no rights at all. There’s only a few ways out of the camps, death, being used with someone’s experiments and then maybe dying during them, or being sponsored by an American, where the Chinese-American would have to work for the American for the rest of their life.