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Kobol was the ancestral birthplace of humanity; a verdant world of golden fields and broad plains,
turquoise seas and great oceans. It was a paradise in which the gods and man lived together. Until a
blaze consumed and pursued them and the people of Kobol had a choice: to board the great ship,
or take the high road through the rocky ridge. The Sacred Scrolls record this history, and form the
basis of founding myths and enduring religions, but what they truly describe is a cycle.
A cycle that began with a war on Kobol, one that unleashed the terrible fires
of destruction that would repeat again across its 12 colonies, 2000 years later.
The destruction of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol was in many ways the final battle of the First
Cylon War. Within a decade of their introduction across the worlds of the Cyrannus Star System,
the mechanical Cylon race, consigned to roles as laborers and cannon fodder, turned against their
human masters. For twelve years the war raged on. The Cylons ignored every attempt at peace,
until finally, for reasons entirely unknown to the Colonials, they abruptly conceded to an armistice.
The Cimtar Peace Accords delineated a new border between the civilizations of Cylon and Man
where both might live in peace. The created and their creators parted ways.
Despite attempts by the United Colonies of Kobol to maintain diplomatic relations,
the Cylons retreated wholly into seclusion and contact was completely severed.
Unbeknownst to humanity, the Cylons had been convinced to end the war by their distant cousins,
five humanoid, biological Cylons who had themselves escaped destruction by their
mechanical creations on a distant world called Earth. Desperate to end the cycle of war between
organic and artificial beings, this group, later known as the “Final Five,” provided to
the Cylons of the Twelve Colonies the means to enrich and uplift their civilization.
Through their united efforts, the Cylons were able to create their own organic beings
capable of deeper emotion and personality.
The first of these models was able to gain significant influence across the younger 7,
eventually eclipsing and exiling the Final Five themselves. The base emotions of this first model,
principally anger and jealousy, would greatly influence the Cylon race, and convince them of
the need to exterminate humanity. Each Cylon model justified this decision differently.
Some saw it as a necessary preemptive strike against an aggressive and powerful adversary.
Those more pious models who had become devoted to the nascent Cylon religion,
approached the extermination of humanity in more philosophical terms,
believing that parents needed to perish for their children to grow and truly live.
The Twelve Colonies themselves undertook actions that only strengthened Cylon perceptions and
attitudes towards them. In at least once instance, the Colonial Military conducted a
covert reconnaissance mission across the armistice line, breaking the terms of the Cimtar Accords.
As a result, influential parties on both sides,
considered the resumption of hostilities if not inevitable, at least highly likely.
Confronted by a vastly expanded Colonial military apparatus
with far greater capabilities than it possessed during the First War,
the Cylons were not confident of victory in any hypothetical war of attrition. Instead,
they worked to create the conditions for a single decisive strike from which the Colonial military
could never recover. The Cylon’s new organic models, of which the Colonials were still entirely
unaware, were uniquely suited to infiltrating human civilization and accomplishing this task.
Cylon infiltrators would attain powerful positions in both civilian and military institutions, but
the greatest success was found in the manipulation of Dr. Gaius Baltar. A renowned systems developer
working within the Colonial Ministry of Defense, Baltar was largely responsible for the development
of a Command Navigation Program, an operating system to be used across the Colonial Fleet
and various civilian spacecraft. A Cylon agent developed a romantic relationship with Baltar,
whom he believed was merely a spy from a rival corporation
vying for government contracts. Unable to fix some deficiencies in the CNP’s code himself, Baltar
allowed this agent to rewrite large portions of it, in which secret Cylon backdoors were added.
The attack on the United Colonies of Kobol occured on the 40th anniversary of the Cimtar Peace
Accords with the first shots fired on Armistice Station. Once the vulnerabilities within the CNP
had been confirmed, the main Cylon attack force, clandestinely mobilized just outside the Cyrannus
System, swept inwards. They converged on each of the Twelve Colonies, and every major Colonial
base and station in orbit. The Cylons achieved complete surprise and Colonial military forces
remained on peacetime deployments right up until the Cylon strike force arrived.
The Cylon exploitation of the Command Navigation Program proved decisive. Once within range,
a virus transmitted by Cylon Raiders was able to completely disable the main systems of every
Colonial ship or station. Whole battlestars and their accompanying squadrons were left adrift
and without any means to evade or counter Cylon attacks.
The first wave destroyed thirty battlestars, nearly a quarter of the fleet.
With complete orbital supremacy over each of the Twelve Colonies,
the Cylons began the sustained orbital bombardment of every world.
Cylon basestars fired hundreds of “multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles”,
or MIRVs, each containing several nuclear warheads programmed to hit different targets. Colonial
strategic defense systems were overwhelmed and Cylon strikes began destroying every major city,
piece of infrastructure or military installation. One of the first sites
to be destroyed was Picon Fleet Headquarters, eliminating much of the Colonial Admiralty.
In a desperate attempt to rally the Colonial military and retaliate against the Cylon forces,
Admiral Negala took personal command of the Fleet with the Battlestar Atlantea serving as flagship.
The size and disposition of Cylon forces however remained obscured by sensor jamming and decoys,
and the full extent of their penetration of the Command Navigation Program
remained unknown. The only major counter-attack occurred in orbit of Virgon, in which the main
fighting strength of the Colonial Fleet was destroyed in just a few hours. As had been the
case in the first wave, the majority of its assets were disabled before the first shots were fired.
As the scale of the military disaster became clear, the President of the United Colonies
of Kobol offered a complete unconditional surrender, to which the Cylon’s did not respond.
Cylon Centurions, killing machines echoing the design of the very Cylon constructed across the
colonies, were landed by the hundreds of thousands. Those that survived the initial
nuclear attacks were massacred wherever found with no prisoners taken and no mercy granted.
As the Colonies were systematically destroyed by nuclear attacks, an enormous impromptu evacuation
effort developed. Every transport, freighter and civilian craft fit to fly took off from
Colonial starports, filling the orbit of each world with a confused mass of civilian vessels.
Most would be destroyed, though some equipped with faster than light drives
would manage to escape. They joined the scattered fleet of ships that were already in orbit
or between planets at the time of the attack, many of which had been saved by a last heroic
order from the Colonial government that halted all civilian vessels in place in the opening minutes
of the attack. Yet with no safe destination, they drifted across the system aimlessly.
There was no firm conclusion to the Fall of Twelve Colonies, the slaughter would continue
for weeks and months after the last nuclear attacks had occurred. But the scale of their
triumph was beyond even the most optimistic Cylon estimates, with nearly the entirety
of humanity killed in the opening 24 hours of the attack. Compared to this, the last major
battle fought within the Cyrannus Star System appeared to be of little consequence, merely an
obsolete Battlestar and a flotilla of civilian craft slipping through the Cylon Blockade.
This force in itself was of little threat to the Cylons, but in their relentless pursuit,
Cylons would be led back to Kobol, to Earth, and their destiny itself.
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