Story: The Dallas Incedent news

Hey, fellow RPG fans! Mr. Nixon here. As I mentioned earlier, I’d like to devote every update to one of After Reset RPG’s three main features (atmosphere, story, or mechanics). Today’s Update is dedicated to STORY.

But before sharing this new lore with you, I’d like to share our plans for the Kickstarter campaign. A lot of people asked me: what will we do after if we don’t reach our goal of $900k? Don’t panic! We have plan B, C, and even D. :)

Our plan B is to offer direct backing on our website, adding unique features for those who supported us here. We will also put all backers into an exclusive group of 'co-founders' on our forum, so that we can keep you updated on our progress, and also give you the ability to participate in the development process together with us - primarily through polls and other interactive formats. Our goal here is to collect $50k in direct donations, as this will be enough to finish the prologue with a high level of quality. We can then proudly put it on Steam Early Access, and gain the momentum we need to complete the game.

Plan C is to merge our team with another developer that has like-minded goals, and I've got two decent proposals from respectful studios. We will reach out to them after the campaign. So the more backs we collect here on Kickstarter, the easier for us will be negotiating process.

We’ll post more info about this as we get closer to the end of the campaign, but regardless of what happens - we’re committed to making this game a reality. Now, back to the Lore…

LORE: THE DALLAS INCIDENT

The Dallas Incident: In 129 AR, the United Governments (UG) left their underground sanctuary for the first time in over a hundred years, and their first landing was in Dallas, Texas - one of the largest cities from the past era.

The UG troops, with vastly superior technology compared to the desperate survivors that inhabited the city’s ruins, blitzed into the city’s center within minutes, and would have taken the city without bloodshed - if not for the Stalkers. It was here, in the heart of Dallas, that the UG forces encountered these strange, unknown forces, which protected the Artifact of the Incorporeals.

Despite being out-gunned and surrounded, the Stalkers fought to the last man - combating the UG’s superior technology with unknown powers that allowed them to confuse the UG’s soldiers, and tricked them into firing on each other. Capitalizing on this element of surprise - the Stalkers killed 843 soldiers before the UG forces finally broke through and destroyed the Artifact, which the UG believed to be the source of the Stalker’s power.

The historical significance of the Dallas Incident is impossible to overstate - the UG successfully destroyed an Artifact which all humanity had thus far been unable to do. There was no sign of the Incorporeals, and the UG forces became even more convinced that they were destined to revive humanity. Dallas therefore became the symbolic birthplace of a new world - a world that rose from the nuclear ashes of a dying one… like a phoenix. In memory of the UG soldiers who fell that day, they constructed a memorial called: Tower 843, which sits atop the shattered ruins of the alien Artifact.

"... Despite the losses suffered, I would still not recommend a full-scale military operation against the remaining survivor gangs, because these ‘desperate groups of savages’ - as they’re hastily described by my colleague - have perfectly mastered a cheaper and easier way of fighting, which does not require the elements of a usual war. The survivors do not need industry, aircraft, armor, or a large army. Any of these schizoids are capable of sending a dozen daredevils behind our lines, and it will wreak havoc on us. All that is required of them are small arms and unrelenting malice - which most of these gangs seem to have in abundance.

For more than a century, their generation was raised on hatred towards organized government. They put the blame squarely on us for the Reset. Therefore, proposals to conduct ‘educational work’ or introduce a Green Card system, for these radical groups—are simply laughable. It would even be better to declare a general amnesty and release all the “graduates” of San Quentin to the streets!

As for weapons, yes ours by far exceed theirs in terms of technical capabilities, but that doesn't take into account the Stalkers. Moreover, we don’t even know whether or not they’re human, but we should not underestimate them in any case. Before the Reset - the U.S. had the highest number of weapons per citizen, within the whole of the United Governments. Though time has certainly worn them down, I assure you that there are many jury-rigged rifles still in use.

It simply does not matter whether our equipment, weapons, and technology, are better than those of the survivors - they are still capable of utterly destroying us. Colleagues, now is the time to remember history - in most conflicts before the Reset, one or the other party did not use tanks, aircraft or artillery. If you want to know about the war looming on the horizon, you will have to plunge yourself into the intricate world of asymmetric warfare.

It’s this kind of war that gets into your head, and if we are to survive it - we will have to remove all self-deception from our minds, and brace ourselves for what comes next. We should therefore consider the following:

1. There should be battles in a war.
This is not true! Most of the armed survivors in the modern world avoid battles, mainly terrorizing the passive population for immediate profit. It’s a tactic as old as man himself - and while most of my colleagues from the Military Corps find it difficult to understand, the reality is that the army can simply decide not to try and win - but to simply avoid battle, and instead constrict the enemy’s movements and power bases by wearing them down in a war of attrition. The less mobile they become, the stronger we become. They will have to work harder as a result, while we can simply perch ourselves atop resource hubs and wait for them to come to us. This is the key to victory - for if your enemy takes refuge in a forest, so that you cannot find him - burn down the forest.

2. To win, you must kill your enemies.
No, no, and again I say no! In asymmetric warfare, which is looming on our doorsteps, the enemy wants us to kill many people. Please recall our first days in Dallas after the Incident, when many paramilitary forces of the survivors began their campaigns with suicide attacks, hoping to be martyred themselves. Bloodshed only amplifies the cycle of violence, creating more orphans, widows, and leaving those who do survive conflict maimed. No - this will only spawn another generation of rebellion. To truly win this war, we must take away their will to fight.

3. High technology beats low technology.
Though classically accurate, this argument doesn’t always hold true. Here, again the issue of the Scientific Corps coming to terms with a harsh truth is all too relevant. All our technology counts for nothing if we cannot force our enemies into a direct conflict. Even if our enemies were unarmed, they would still ambush us using improvised explosives, and homemade weapons! A year has passed and these simple weapons are still effective and are, in fact, becoming less, and less, technological! When urban gangs started using homemade mines, they detonated these mines with a remote control signal issued from a handheld radio transmitter. To combat this, our engineers have deployed electromagnetic interference generators to block these signals from reaching the detonating fuses. So, now these thugs are using even more low-tech solutions, such as wires, to detonate these improvised devices. There is nothing you can imagine that can be less technological than a wire - but it still works.

4. "A crushing superiority! Break the survivors with full force and they will grow quiet."
This is very doubtful. Yes, our fellow citizens are not too fond of dying, but many tribes and groups of schizoids adore the ideas of martyrdom. All that is required, to carry out effective insurgent activities, is a couple of hundred “urban guerrillas” that do not fear death, especially when supported by the much more numerous civilian population. The survivors will always have men in abundance, where as we cannot replace very much of our preserved technology. No amount of military superiority can solve this problem. The only option would be to employ nuclear weapons a second time - which serves only to delay our expansion even further, and won’t actually prevent any future insurrections.

5. These people are just like us. They want democracy, peace, and all other similar things that we also want.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING! Let’s repeat your first lesson: resort to your own experience rather than believing some corporation’s ad campaign. What does Democracy mean to a man that can’t read? What does peace mean to a people who have lived their entire lives scavenging for scraps? These words are meaningless to the survivors who remember only one thing - we struck them first. Natural law gives us an eye for an eye, and that is the absolute best we can hope for from them. We all know that, at the municipal level, the local policy is in the hands of the Social Corps - but the federal level is in the hands of corporations. This quite suits me, and the majority of citizens, but why should we call it a democracy?

Look at the Yellow Zones and you can see that the people are divided into ethnic gangs. These territories have become one big prison in San Quentin, and all these people want is for their gang to win. If they have any other ideology beyond this - then it must be a belief in God and others like God. You can’t be cured from this without chlorpromazine. God-fearing street muggers - like the kind at Waco - make up half the population, and they pounced on our men who were trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the starving! They do not desire peace. They wouldn’t know what to do with it, if they had it. They want only for their clan to win. That is the measure of their resolve, and you can’t fight it with all the technology in the world.

Intelligence is everything. Therefore, despite my inner solidarity with those of us who would like to put an end to the brewing problem, before it gives birth to consequences - I am compelled to ask you to postpone full-scale military operations and organization of demonstrative ‘retaliation.’ We should rather use the near future to strengthen our presence on the already occupied territories and to send out reconnaissance units to the neighboring states. Meanwhile, if we simply leave the survivors alone - we may yet prevent this conflict from getting out of hand..."
from a speech of John F. Gornick,
Major General of the UG Military Corps, 129 AR

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