Vivactan Campaigns

The Vivactan Campaigns were a four year series of bloody struggles between the Systems Alliance Military and the United Vivactan Republic Army over the uranium rich Vivacta colony. Starting with Jason Debec's coup in Spring 2182 CE and ending with the repulsion of the geth invasion in early 2186 CE.

With hundreds of small skirmishes and conflicts during the course of the war between the VRA and the Systems Alliance over the four years of warfare, the Alliance won the majority of conflicts, but lost considerably more men than the defeated VRA, which hindered Alliance progress by using human shields, bombings, the ambush of supply convoys, and multiple other unconventional warfare tactics.

By the end of the four years, the colony of Vivacta was devastated with over ten million people including Alliance soldiers, civilians, and VRA Troopers. Making it one of the bloodiest wars of the last part of the 22nd century.

Genesis
The Vivactan Campaign's roots started in 2180 CE when geth interests from far beyond the Persues Veil offered Major Jason Debec a means to acquire vast power and wealth by giving him a proposition to take over the fledgling colony of Vivacta.

The geth offered the means to back his soldiers with weaponry and supplies and to fund his armies. They also offered to invest large amounts of money in trying to win him the support of the people by propaganda supporting Debec, who was the appointed "Military Regent" of the Co-Der Province where he served as the province's leading military commander and assistant to it's governer.

The advertisements were run under a front pro-alliance company and gathered much support for Debec and allowed him to pursue political matters with the backing of the populace. This allowed him to succeed in passing Co-Der Province Mandate 43, a bill which called for the active training in large numbers of militia groups all throughout the highly populated Co-Der Province.

This training began in March 2181 CE and by November, Debec had trained a full eighteen thousand men and women and had supplied them with military grade weaponry and armor. With this continued force presence Debec waited until 2182 in April to set events in motion with geth aid.

Debec's uprising
Using forged documents, a well repected Jewish Rabbi, Joshua Clarke who was an outspoken opponent of Co-Der's governer, John Halfaway was arrested and executed without trial. The forged warrants accused Clarke of conspiracy against Halfaway and called for his immediate execution as a traitor.

This move outraged the people and caused giant riots and cries for the death or imprisonment of Halfaway. Two days later Debec, under orders from the geth called upon his soldiers and militias to overthrow the Co-Der Province's government in a coup.

The uprising was an easy victory and with Halfaway executed Debec took control of the province as the "President" where he ruled with dictator-like authority. With his new twenty-thousand man army, Debec gathered massive amounts of small-arm weaponry, armored vehicles, artillery grade weapons, ariel fighters and dropships, and multiple weapons of mass destruction including missiles with biological and chemical weapon warheads from his allies in the geth.

VRA Conquest of Vivacta
Rapidly moving to enact his plans for control of the colony, Debec started massive campaigns against the Forad, Xoxamia, Grofia, Tamchickia, and Fomalka Provinces. All, save for Fomalka were captured in less than a week with over fifty-thousand civilian deaths at the hands of Debec's forces, the Vivacatan Rebuplic Army or the VRA.

Accounts from survivors of besieged provinces claimed that VRA soldiers had executed families and children, burned and destroyed houses and towns, had looted cities and people, and raped women, children, and even men in some cases.

By the end of the one week "blitzkrieg" launched by Debec, all but Fomalka had fallen and had been annexed into the Vivactan Republic. Fomalka, the one surviving province immediatly put out request for Alliance aid and started training and preparing militias and soldiers throughout the province.

First VRA Offensive on Fomalka
Hoping to quell the one surviving pocket of resistance, Debec immediatly tried to gather his now fourty-five thousand man strong army to launch an assault on Fomalka Province which had exhausted it's stockpiles of artillery and other heavy ordnance while pushing back the VRA's first assault on the province.

Taking advantage of this fact and using knowledge of Fomalka's defenses gathered from his previously failed assault on the province, Debec moved six thousand men into the province in an area off Fomalka's defensive artillery grid.

Battle of Bagrasa
The first major engagement in the VRA's campaign to take Fomalka was fought in the city of Bagrasa. Realizing the helpless position that they were in due to the VRA's bypassing of their security grids, the Fomalkan government moved to reinforce Bagrasa where the entire six thousand man army was likely to be heading to.

The guess of the army's destination turned out to be correct as within two days of mobilizing forces into Fomalka, VRA scouts had been engaged less than three miles away from Bagrasa. Fortifications were prepared and civilians evacuated via commercial in-atmosphere transport shuttles.

Combat began on the 23rd of April when an advance two thousand man force began engaging Bagrasa with three 189mm Tigerclaw Howitzers. This inflicted large damage on defensive positions and allowed VRA soldiers to move into the area.

Deploying two columns of M62 LAVs the VRA moved into the downtown area of Bagrasa which had been shelled extensively by the Tigerclaw Howitzers. Slaughtering the remaining defenders and civilians who had yet to evacuate alike, the VRA easily gained control of the downtown district and held position for around two hours following orders from tactical genius, General Vi-Day Shang, the commander of the VRA 2nd Shock Division, a collection of twelve thousand former Alliance soldiers who had deserted and joined Debec when he took power.

Falling perfectly into Shang's trap, the majority of the heavily entrenched defenders left in Bagrasa moved to investigate the downtown district which had gone completely dark and had shown no signs of enemy activity. This move exposed the defensive positions of the Fomalkan Army perfectly to high altitude UAV drones. These positions and troop locations were marked targets of interest and fired upon by limited bomber support, artillery, and light gunships.

This seventeen minute targeted bombardment crippled the already wounded defenses of Bagrasa as the force holding the downtown district and the undeployed four thousand man relief force moved into the city to finish off the remnants.

The surviving defenders retreated to an armory where one hundred and fifty eight men were soon surrounded by six thousand soldiers. Small scale fighting ensued until the surviving eighty eight soldiers surrendered to the VRA.

The commanding officer of Bagrasa's defenses, Colonel Henry Maddigan was taken into VRA custody to the soon to be infamous Mao-Dack Prison Camp where he became the first inmate. He was interrogated, beaten, and tortured for three years before his death by hanging at the hands of VRA guards.

Maddigan's men were given the option to join the VRA, of the now eighty seven infantry left, twenty six accepted the officer and were inducted into the VRA as basic infantry. The remaining men refused and were given numbered lottery cards. Most of the soldiers were executed by decapitation execpt for two men who had cards with the numbers "666" and "13" which had been deemed to be "lucky" by the field commander, Captain Abdul Hamed.

The two who were spared were beaten and stripped of their clothes. Now naked they were ordered to proceed into the desert to the city of Camadel, a full one hundred and seventy eight miles from Bagrasa and tell its occupants and military what had happened in Bagrasa and to deliever an ultimatium of surrender to the Fomalkan government in exchange they be spared.

While the two survivors were walking into the desert Hamed told his sniper it took only one man to give a message and ordered that one be shot in the leg and left to die. His sniper obliged and the non-wounded survivor ran into the desert towards Camadel. He was found by a patrol two days later around one hundred and fifty miles miles from Camadel near the small town of Vici. The survivor, Private James Samson reportedly said that the VRA was "Coming from hell. To consume Camadel." Samson then died, offiically marking the end of the Battle of Bagrasa

Battle of Camadel
Seeing a need to stop Shang's advance into Fomalka, Colonel Fitzgerald, the Military Regent of Fomalka moved his forces to stop the advance in Camadel. Hoping to put Shang in retreat rather than defeat him fully, Fitzgerald started utilizing massive minefields, hit and run raids, and sniper shootings that would claim only around four lives on average but demoralize enemy soldiers.

This all occured over the four days it took Shang's forces to reach Camadel. Of the fifty five hundred soldiers that left Bragrasa, around two thousand had been killed by the time they reached Camadel. This damaged VRA morale severly and weakened their force greatly to a point where the defenders of Camadel outnumbered it's attackers.

Using mortar systems, Fomalka fired upon advancing infantry and armor when they entered a half-mile radius around the city. This weakened and scattered the advancing army and sent many soldiers running in retreat. Following Debec's orders, Shang had his men fire on deserters, distracting his force while snipers and guided rockets started to bombard the now stopped advancing attack force.

Shang managed to from his armored car in the rear of the group organize his men and prepare them for a full assault before by a stroke of luck a mortar impacted his vehicle, destroying it and immediatly killing Shang. This sent the survivors in retreat back to Forad Province which was on the border of Fromalka where Debec decided to wait and gather his strength before sending in another force. Thus ending the first VRA Offensive against Fomalka with a humiliating defeat.

Alliance Aid and Relief
Believing another offensive to be inevitable, the Fomalkan government sent a plea for aid to the Systems Alliance embassy on Durea, the closest Alliance colony to Vivacta on May 16th 2182 CE. This was responded to on May 18th when two Alliance cruisers from the Third Fleet, the Beirut and the Oklahoma City entered orbit over the planet with the intent to kill or capture Debec, who had been labeled a terrorist.

Upon their entry into the system a message was sent by Debec threatening the utilization of all of his captured nuclear arsenal on citizens all over Vivacta if the Alliance took steps against him. This message was relayed to Fleet Admiral Groves, commander of the Third Fleet by the Oklahoma City, however the message was also intercepted by the Special Tasks Group of STG of the Salarian Union who would later deploy agents to attempt to recover the nuclear arsenal's in Debec's hands.

After contacting Alliance ambassador Donnel Udina, Groves ordered that the Alliance was to not engage Debec but instead mobilized nine thousand members of the Alliance Planetary Aid Corps to aid the situation in Fomalka and the 591st Airborne Infantry Division to act as peacekeepers, train militia, and to defend Fomalka if needed from another VRA offensive.

The 591st arrived on May 23rd with around ten thousand men who immediatly set to work securing the Fomalka Province which was on a state of panic as tens of thousands rioted in the streets over the loss of power, food, water, and other necessities which had been redirected from them by the government to the armed forces.

Soldiers started distributing limited amounts of supplies, restoring order to the streets, and training militia volunteers to help defend Fomalka. On May twenty sixth two of the nine thousand volunteers arrived, the rest would arrive over the next several months. These volunteers in the Planetary Relief Corps, a group similar to that of the twenty-first century Red Cross relief effort or Peace Corps started distributing food, rebuilding homes destroyed by the VRA, providing medical therapy to victims of the VRA offensive such as those who had lost family members or women who had been raped, providing medical aid through clinics they had opened, and multiple other activities such as supplying electricity and shelter to refugees.

This effort was done with the intent of eventually preparing an army that could effectively destroy Debec's Vivacta with minimal civilian losses. By March 2183 CE, the quality of life had improved for many citizens of Fomalka and the militia had grown to around thirty seven thousand strong, however this failed to prove itself as incredibly impressive to Alliance Command who's intelligence reports indicated the VRA's strength had grown to around three hundred thousand strong.

This prompted the Alliance to send multiple relief workers and covert agents into the Forad Province in the hopes of stirring an uprising against Debec. This effort however proved to have a negative effect on the Alliance as when Debec's men found and tortured one of the spys trying to recruit a soldier for a resistance movement. The spy eventually broke after repeated beatings and gave up information. This revealed the Alliance's intentions to Debec, who paranoid and willing to respond violently set out to retaliate.

VRA funded Terrorism in Fomalka
Eager for revenge on the Alliance, Debec decided to fund multiple mercenary and terrorist groups to launch campaigns against Fomalka's civilians. It was also hoped that through this plan that the citizens of Fomalka would soon give up and decide to join the United Vivactan Republic.

Starting with forces on planet, Debec funded the communist terror group, The Iron Brotherhood to launch attacks on Fomalkan citizens. Using sixteen million credits from Debec, the Brotherhood started launching car bomb attacks, shootings, sniper attacks, robbings, and rape attacks against Fomalka. Within three months, the lives of five hundred civilians and military personnel were killed. The Brotherhood would continue to launch strikes with the funding of the VRA for two more years. However they were mainly defeated at the battle of James Brant Hill.

Battle of James Brant Hill
The main operating headquarters of the Brotherhood in Fomalka, a former Alliance military stronghold on James Brant Hill, ironically named for a capitalist enthusiast was located in an interrogation session of a captured officer in the Brotherhood's organization.

Looking to put the Fomalkan army and militia to the test, the Alliance agreed to provide artillery support courtesy of two emplacements of 321m Howitzers operated by Alliance Strategic Artillery and Howitzer Weaponry Corps operators. As well the 591st provided armored vehicles and Valkyrie gunship support.

On November fifth seven hundred militia and one thousand soldiers of the Fomalkan army were mobilized to James Brant Hill along with eight R57 Tanks and four Valkyrie gunships. Going up against an estimated force of fifteen hundred insurgents which actually numbered around seventeen hundred, the Fomalkan defense forces arrived at around noon and announced their presence with shelling from their Howitzer emplacements.

This weakened the defenses of the Brotherhood and allowed soldiers from the 6th Fomalkan Militia Division to move into the area. The soldiers were immediatly met with sniper fire from foxholes located around the area and machine gun fire from entrenched positions.

With lack of cover, the majority of militia troops were gunned down within the first six minutes of combat. Using fire support from three of the R57 tanks that moved in to reinforce the militia, the surviving two hundred and eighty nine militia managed to secure a small entrenched position from which they could further progress on the hill from the right.

With the right flank under seige, the army of Fomalka moved in to take the left which was more heavily secured. Under orders from Colonel Jack Mays, the battle's commanding officer. Two Valkyrie gunships flew over dropping smoke canisters on the Brotherhood's defenses. This allowed the army to advance on the Brotherhood's defenses surrounding the hill.

Using the cover of the smoke, the five hundred defenders of the left flank were overwhelmed in around thirteen minutes. Something that the soldiers reffered to as a "record in ass-kicking". While taking around two hundred losses, the army managed to push up the left flank and regroup with the militia forces at the base of the three hundred and twenty nine foot hill.

The hill was configured with a network of tunnels and bunkers. This ensured that a long and bloody fight would ensue if one was to try to secure the complex. Under orders to try to gather intelligence, Mays ordered that soldiers push into the complex.

After a bloody fight inside the complex which took around four hours and claimed two hundred lives of the militia and army and five hundred lives of Brotherhood soldiers. After the complex's capture the remaining soldiers fled out and into the desert.

These fleeing soldiers were then killed by Alliance Valkyrie support. This ended the battle of James Brant Hill and would forever cripple the Iron Brotherhood's operations in Fomalka. This was deemed a major victory by propaganda and turned to boost public faith in the Fomalkan defense forces and morale in soldiers.

However the stunning victory of James Brant Hill would not be the end of the terrorism in Fomalka. Multiple radical anarchist groups, the Blue Suns Mercenary Group, the fascist group, Soldiers of the Reich, and the Lost Souls Mercenary Group would all answer Debec's call for murder and mayhem in Fomalka.

The Soldiers of the Reich enter the war
Still looking within his area of dominance, Debec called on the Soldiers of the Reich, a fascist group dedicated to the preservation of the ideaology of the dictator Hitler's rule over Germany in the 20th century including fascism, belief in aryan dominance, and mass discrimination against others especially aliens and those of Jewish faith.

With the offering of power over the Groufia province where the Soldiers of the Reich's headquarters were, millions of credits, and weaponry ranging from small arms to white phosphorus tipped chemical warheads the Soldiers of the Reich started moving around fifty percent of their twelve thousand man militia into Fomalka with the intent to kill and murder citizens and soldiers alike.

The first organized attack by the Soldiers of the Reich was on April ninth, four days after the main organized defeat of the Iron Brotherhood at James Brant Hill when a violent street shooting occured with around two dozen men all armed with automatic rifles, sub machine guns, machine pistols, grenade launchers, and shotguns approached a synagogue in Camadel in broad daylight at around two o'clock in the afternoon and began firing at the building to send a message.

The group then began firing on citizens in the street and detonating IED explosive devices and charges placed around the street, these explosives detonated a crowded sports bar, a school, medical clinic, and a Militia guard post.

With the explosives set off the assailants continued shooting both innocents and military forces that had moved into respond to the explosives for around fifteen minutes leaving exactly eighty nine civilians and thirteen militia troopers dead. The surviving fifteen gunman took shelter in a pawn shop about two blocks away from the location of their shooting.

After taking the nine people in the store hostage, the Soldiers of the Reich attempted to fortify the building using furniture to make cover and barricade the doors. In around two minutes after the fortification of the store, over fourty and Fomalkan army soldiers arrived outside the shop.

After two hours of tense standoff, multiple gunshots were fired inside the pawn shop which prompted the platoon sized force outside the store to directly engage. Within fourty five seconds the platoon of men had stormed the building killing seven of the fifteen gunman. Six of the eight survivors commited suicide, one with a grenade which claimed eight lives.

The remaining two gunman were captured and interrogated for information. After being beaten, held underwater for extended durations of time, and having cigarettes extinguished on their faces the two gunmen finally cracked and revealed their allegiance, this began the official and public war on the Soldiers of the Reich.

Attacks continued for around a month, however unlike their terroristic predescor in the region, the Iron Brotherhood who conducted small scale hit and run attacks, the Soldiers of the Reich conducted much larger attacks in a smaller frequency that always resulted in the death of at least three dozen people.

The Fomalkan armed forces, some of whom were terrorized to assault the Soldiers of the Reich in fear of retaliation on their families or themselves openly deserted or commited insubordination. Others fled to join the Reich's ranks offering information and servitude in exchange for their safety.

Attacks and murders in the cities of Camadel, New Venice, Moracka, and Comanche by the end of April had risen to a count of fourty leaving five thousand dead. This and open fear caused the Alliance to mobilize it's forces once again.

Utilizing the Fomalkan government's intelligence agents in brothels scattered throughout the province the Alliance managed to know the location of one of the Reich's top captains, Karl Mudachi who had been sleeping with two women of african and asian heritage. This was considered an offense to the creed of the Soldiers of the Reich who saw it as betrayal to sleep with any one who was not an aryan woman.

This was used to lure Mudachi out and for the Fomalkan militia to capture him with Alliance aid. The militia, who captured him to boost public morale turned Mudachi over to the Alliance who tortured him for four days before he gave up information concerning the Soldiers of the Reich's operations in Fomalka giving up their headquarters which was located in the Fomalkan border town of Grimacka, a small hamlet whose main economic revenue was mining titanium from nearby hills in deep elaborate mines which made the perfect headquarters and were easily defendable, this prompted the Alliance to relay the information to the Fomalkan military who mobilized four hundred army troopers and two hundred militia recruits to Good Fortune Mine.

Seige of Good Fortune Mine
On May the sixteenth the full six hundred man force arrived in Grimacka with the intent of seizing the mine with hopefully no bloodshed, their expectations turned out to be wrong as upon entering the town, the first two platoons of militia troopers who had been the advance group were ambushed with sniper fire from enemy combatants stationed on the roofs of the towns tallest buildings a lutheran church, a public high school, and the town hall.

These positions were reinforced with twelve snipers each and chosen for their vantage points and the fact that Fomalkan soldiers would not assault the structures due to rules of engagement which prohibited attacks against government structures, places of worship, and buildings of public education which may contain hostages which in this case contained thirty school children and two teachers which were held captive by five Soldiers of the Reich.

The Fomalkan military responded by deciding to use less lethal tactics to eliminate the threat posed to their troops by the enemy snipers. Chlorine gas was loaded into in air exploding canisters which were fired via an Alliance provided M145 Systems Alliance Howitzer Weapon System.

The shells which contained chlorine gas were locked onto a target and were then guided via an installed VI. The shells would then explode mid flight exactly thirteen feet from the target where the chlorine gas would be released and move to take effect.

This brought down the defenses of the church and town hall within fifteen minutes allowing four platoons of Fomalkan military soldiers to move into the area. Realizing the hostage situation in the school, chlorine gassing was spared and the Fomalkan troops sent in three squads of elite troopers to clear the building and deprive the Soldiers of the Reich of their hostages.

This plan however unfortunately failed as when the soldiers had overtaken the room in which the hostages were, the last surviving combantant who was also mortally wounded detonated sixty pounds of homeade explosives made from mixing TNT and napalm which resulted in the majority of the school being destroyed via explosion and the remainder burning leaving no survivors on the side of the hostages, Fomalkan military or the Soldiers of the Reich.

However this gave the Fomalkans the ability to advance on the town. After an hour of securing Grimacka it was found that of the two hundred and ninety four civilians that lived in the town two hundred and fourteen were confirmed dead and the eighty remaining citizens were missing.

Seven hours later at two A.M. a radio message was sent by the Soldiers of the Reich claiming the location of the hostages to be in Good Fortune Mine where around four hundred soldiers of the reich were located. The soldiers offered to release the hostages if given leave to retreat. The Fomalkan commander, Colonel Daderath refused and moved soldiers in to begin the Seige of Good Fortune Mine.

Hoping the Fomalkans would eventually take up the Reich's offer, the hostages were kept alive and a live broadcast of them was recorded and streamed to multiple extranet sites. This ensured the entire galaxy would be watching and would see if the Fomalkan military allowed the hostages to die or killed them to ensure victory.

With this brought into play, Fomalkan soldiers were called off by the Alliance who worried that the death of hostages by an Alliance trained military would hurt their image. The Alliance sent in soldiers from the 324th Army Airborne Division to fully take over combat operations. This deployment took two days and resulted in three hundred soldiers ready to begin the Seige of Good Fortune Mine.

Initial combat began a on May nineteenth at around noon when Alliance soldiers tried to push into the mine. This turned out to be lethal due to heavy numbers and superior firepower that the Alliance could not break through.

This prompted the Alliance to resort to a standstill where the hope was that food and water deprivation would bring the Soldiers of the Reich to an eventuall standstill. This hope turned to be misplaced as it was soon discovered via the hostage's extranet feed that large amounts of food and water were stored in the mine.

Seeing the fact that it would take months to starve the Soldiers of the Reich, the Alliance decided to push a more agressive strategy. Marines from the 939th Biotic Special Forces Regiment who were stationed on the destroyer, SSV Portugal were deployed to the area within a day and on May the twenty-second a new strategy to safely take the mine was formed.

In what some called a combination of ancient tactics with modern technology, soldiers in the 939th formed a 'turtle' formation modeled after ancient roman strategy with biotic fields that could block projectile rounds due to their highly concentrated and thus strengthened nature.

This allowed the Alliance to push it's troops behind the biotic wall and move them safely through the mine, dispatching combatants as they entered the shield. After two hours and heavy losses on both sides the Seige of Good Fortune Mine was won with the hostages rescued and over a dozen high ranking operatives in the Reich captured along with data on their operations in Fomalka. This would allow the Alliance to deploy sting groups to precise locations and destroy the threat posed by the Soldiers of the Reich within the week.