By the mid 1930s, it had become obvious to the nations of Europe that something was deeply
wrong within Russia.
While it had successfully defeated the Bolshevik Revolution more than a decade earlier, the
Russian Empire had seemingly never recovered and the entire nation had retreated into a
self-imposed isolation, driven, it was said, by the increasing paranoia of the Tsar.
With strange broadcasts and reports intercepted from deep within the country, it was suspected
that this isolation might have been intended to conceal a general mobilization and the
United European Defense or “UED” was established in response.
Slowly but surely a clearer picture began to come together of what was truly happening
inside Russia.
Entire villages and then towns had been abandoned and strange creatures, believed to have been
the result of a Russian experiment gone wrong, were spotted across the country.
When war finally came, the full scale of the UED’s miscalculations were made clear.
The creatures that would become known as the Chimera were not born of any experiment, or
even Earth itself, and they came not to conquer, but to exterminate.
The Chimeran War would determine not the fate of nations, but the survival of mankind itself.
For much of their early existence, the Chimera had been confined to Russia, in part because
the nation’s arctic climate perfectly suited their physiology but also because of the “Red
Curtain”, an enormous fortification stretching from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black
Sea in the south.
Despite their preparations, when the Chimera overcame the final remnants of the Russian
Imperial Army and breached the wall in December 1949, the United European Defense fell apart
almost immediately.
The Chimera’s numerical and technological superiority were their most obvious advantages
over the UED, but the speed with which they advanced across Europe was unprecedented.
Any static lines of defense were overrun or circumvented entirely.
By January 1950, the Baltic States, Poland, and much of the Balkans were simply gone.
The rest of Europe was stretched to the limits in trying to accommodate the enormous number
of refugees who had fled westwards trying to stay ahead of the Chimera’s advance.
Startlingly, almost no refugees escaped from territories that had already fallen to the
Chimera; only two thousand survivors managed to escape from Warsaw when it fell, a city
of roughly two million people.
This was later realized to be the result of the Chimeran’s conversion process, which
transformed captured men and women into horrific creatures or biomechanical machines.
Even German panzer divisions were helpless when facing the increasingly advanced mechanized
weapons utilized by the Chimera.
In a desperate attempt to prevent the Chimera from reaching the refugee camps established
on the banks of the Rhine, the German army adopted a complete scorched earth policy,
destroying anything that might be of value to the Chimera.
Unfortunately, they remained ignorant to the fact the Chimera had no need for human industry
and resources, apart from human bodies themselves.
When the futility of the struggle was finally realized, plans were made to evacuate Germany
and the rest of Europe, though many of these efforts would be swept up by the enemy, condemning
millions to the horrific conversion process utilized by the Chimera.
In only two months, most of Europe had been defeated utterly, with the last line of defense
centered on the mountains of Northern Italy.
With the knowledge of what was happening in the rest of the continent, hundreds of Italian
soldiers committed suicide rather than becoming part of what they called the “Deathless
Plague”.
When Genoa was finally taken, Italian resistance ended completely.
For nine months, hope remained that the United Kingdom might remain free of the Chimera and
perhaps become a staging ground for some great counterattack.
In October 1950 however, the Chimera crossed the channel, having secretly tunneled beneath
it.
The British Army fared no better than their counterparts on the continent.
The primary British headquarters in London was flooded by Chimeran creatures and its
14,000-man garrison was trapped and left to die.
With this, the tattered remnants of the British military retreated from the cities, intending
to wage a guerilla campaign until reinforcements from the United States could arrive.
In July 1951, after months of negotiations, a joint British-American strike on London,
named Operation: Morning Star, successfully destroyed an enormous Chimeran Tower - skyscraper
sized structures raised in every territory conquered by the Chimera.
The London Tower in particular seemed to be at the center of some type of Chimeran network
and with its destruction, every Chimeran creature across the British Isles died en masse.
Among the most important intelligence gained during the operation was the knowledge that
the Chimeran towers seemed to have been excavated rather than constructed and could be the key
to their defeat.
With the defeat of the Chimera in Britain, the British military was contacted by the
Maquis, a resistance organization gathered from the remnants of the UED.
They intended to replicate the success of Operation: Morning Star and destroy a Chimeran
network centered in Paris.
A method of resisting the Chimera’s conversion process was discovered during the campaign,
and together with the destruction of the Paris Hub Tower, delivered to the Chimera the largest
decisive defeat since the start of the war.
The Maquis and their British allies pushed onwards into Russia, hoping to find some secret
that might reverse their fortune.
Ultimately, the respite gained here was short lived.
The Chimera had developed new conversion methods and worse yet, began constructing fleets of
Battleships intended to reach the yet unconquered nations across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
In August 1951, the Chimera invaded Canada and the United States, testing local resistance
with small scale, yet highly damaging strikes.
President Noah Grace, believing a military victory to be impossible, enacted Project
Omega, a top-secret contingency plan that proposed negotiating a truce with the Chimera,
sacrificing the rest of the planet if the United States were left in peace.
The plan hinged on a Chimeran entity known as Daedalus, the only creature yet encountered
capable of high-level communication.
Despite its capture, Daedalus was only amused by the proposal and President Grace was later
executed for his betrayal of mankind.
Prepared to make a final stand in the heart of the country, the United States constructed
the Liberty Defense Perimeter.
A safe zone in nation’s interior surrounded by heavily armed defense towers.
Between 1952 and 1953, the Chimera overcame their natural inability to survive in higher
temperatures and swept through Africa and Asia.
As in Europe, they unearthed enormous towers and herded the surviving population into vast
conversion centers.
The Royal Navy managed to evacuate roughly 170,000 civilians with the rest left to fend
for themselves.
Additional attacks occurred in South America and Australia and every city with a population
over 100,000 was targeted for conversion.
In May 1953, the final campaign of the war began when the enormous Chimeran warships
constructed across the conquered territories of the world arrived on both coasts of the
United States.
Resistance to the invasion lasted only 8 days before the Liberty Defense Perimeter was breached
and the 80 million people trapped within it were killed.
In one last desperate gambit, remnants of the American military attempted to destroy
the Chimeran fleet which had gathered over the Chicxulub crater in Mexico.
The detonation of an atomic bomb annihilated many of the armada’s warships and Daedalus
himself was killed in the attack, but the explosion had the unintended effect of opening
a direct rift to the Chimera’s homeworld.
By 1957, 90% of the human population had been killed or converted and any semblance of organized
military resistance was over, and with it, the Chimeran War.
With additional soldiers for their army no longer needed, the conversion camps were dismantled
and any survivors were simply exterminated by the Chimera whenever found.
Mankind was reduced to a few scattered communities.
If any hope remained in victory, it would be found in one of these last isolated pockets
of humanity.