What Happened After Yuri? Thread - Nod's Revenge mod for C&C: Yuri's Revenge

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Yuri was defeated. The world breathed a collective sigh of relief, only to realize something was still not quite right. Rumors began to spread about the secret use of time-travel in the previous wars against the Soviets. No one knew what kind of long-term impact the use of chrono technology might have on the fragile planet. Worldwide riots soon forced a hasty disbanding and disassembly of all of Einstein’s chrono-shifters.

In the months following Yuri’s defeat, leaders all across the collapsed Soviet Union began to mysteriously disappear. The supposedly victorious Allied Nations slipped back behind their borders as U.N. troops stepped-up to relieve peacekeeping operations in the many war-torn cities around the world. Back in the United States, it was all the Defense Forces could do to simply maintain order and relocate thousands of displaced civilians in the wake of two prolonged conflicts.

Terrorism began to spread at an alarming rate in U.N. occupied cities, but peacekeepers believed many of the bombings could be traced to a common source. Some captured militants called themselves “The Brotherhood”; others, “The Black Hand”. Most captured suspects claimed allegiance simply to “Nod”, and investigations confirmed that agents of this organization had been present at almost every level of Soviet leadership since the First Great War – possibly sooner.

Its not certain what connections Yuri had to the Brotherhood of Nod, but the fact that Nod was a well-kept secret until after Yuri's defeat has led many to suspect an alliance.

Civilian reports began to trickle-in about strange lifeforms and poison gas in regions near ruined Yuri bases. Although Allied commanders refused to comment on the reports, the U.N. issued a decree for the formation of an anti-terrorism and HAZMAT containment operation named the “United Nations Global Defense Initiative”. UNGDI solders were on the ground within weeks in the regions around the destroyed Yuri outposts, but they were not the first...

GDI containment units discovered illegally armed harvesting operations in the contaminated zones. Not only did the hazardous materials found by GDI seem to have spread far beyond the Yuri storehouses, but they were also being nurtured and protected by mercenaries and scavengers. Bolstered with abandoned allied and soviet weapons, the armed defenders of Yuri’s secrets bore the colors of the Brotherhood of Nod.

The most dangerous of Nod’s secured assets was a poisonous green crystal (called “Tiberium” by most Nod crews) that grew like grass on the ground and thrived when exposed to other mineral deposits. GDI immediately began designing harvesting vehicles based on captured Nod equipment in order to safely collect and contain the poisonous Tiberium crystals. The back-and-forth between GDI Forces and Nod Militants over sectors poisoned by Tiberium showed no signs of slowing down, as both sides began to utilize methods for extracting profit from the harvested crystals. The conflict came to be known as the First Tiberium War.

The Brotherhood of Nod's silent infiltration into world governments over the centuries had witnessed the failure of multiple empires to accomplish their objectives, and it is still uncertain whether Yuri was a powerful rogue or a clever pawn in this game of thrones . . .

Whatever his loyalties, it seems Yuri had successfully sown the seeds for Nod’s Revenge.

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Edited by: Bucknife

The story is good so far, but there's more I think you can add to it. Namely, you have an opportunity here to address and fix one of the most glaring plot holes in the C&C multiverse that both Westwood and EA either never noticed, or deliberately chose to ignore.

As you can see from the following Wiki page, the "Soviet" factions in the Red Alert timeline can be roughly divided into three distinct blocs: the Soviet Union(Russia+Eastern Europe+a few East Asian countries), Latin America(Cuba+Mexico), and the Islamic Nations(most of the Middle East+North Africa). These blocs are the ones that banded together in order to form an opposition against the Allies, and they are also the ones who would later follow the Brotherhood of Nod in the Tiberium timeline. Despite them working together, however, each bloc and each national power within the blocs has its own interests and, most importantly, ideology. They do not form a single entity.

• Soviet Union: their ideology is Communism. As we know from our own real world history, Communism is strictly against religion, "the opiate of the masses", and the USSR under Joseph Stalin (to whom Kane was an advisor in Red Alert) went to great lengths to outlaw and eradicate all forms of religious practice within its borders.
• Latin America: while sympathetic to Communist ideals, the majority of the population is also devoutly Catholic. Cuba, for example, did not outlaw religion after the Communist revolution, unlike the USSR.
• Islamic Nations: the dominant religion here is, obviously, Islam. They use a lot of Soviet hand-me-down equipment but for the most part do not partake in Soviet ideals.

Considering the Brotherhood of Nod as we've come to know it -a messianic cult whose followers literally worship Kane and Tiberium, and who form a single, global, political and economic statelike entity (when Kane is alive and his generals aren't busy squabbling amongst themselves)- one must wonder: how did they do it? How did Kane and his handful of followers manage to unite all these different peoples, with vastly different ideologies that cannot be reconciled with each other or his own? All logic dictates that the Communists, for example, would see a person like Kane as a lunatic with a god complex, and the Muslims would see him as an infidel and a false prophet. Why would they abandon their respective philosophies and start to worship him?

Westwood and EA never really addressed that issue, but since your mod is literally about how the Soviet factions came to form Nod, I think you should give some thought to this particular aspect of the story. Even if you don't address it directly in the campaign missions, having it in the background would make for a better story and thus a better mod.

Great points, P.Rex.

You're right; EA never really did address how all these different people groups supposedly abandoned their religious/national identities to form a religously-loyal-to-Kane Brotherhood of Nod.

I do respect, at least, that they portrayed Nod as rather back-biting and divided throughout its years of public activity. I imagine the points you mention may very well be contributing factors to division at different points in Nod's history.

Here's my thoughts regarding the specific time period of Nod's Revenge, and the "Coming Out" of Nod as a worldwide terrorist entity.

While it is true that the traditional representation of Nod is very much a religious group as you mentioned (especially in later chapters in the story), at this early stage of the tiberium story we like to imagine Kane himself would be almost an entirely unknown entity. It is a kind of "veils-behind-veils" concept where the head of the snake is always hidden and a mystery. It is a great conspiracy, you might say, and Yuri's role in setting the stage, whether intentional or not, brings a deeper reality to that plot.

We assume that most of Nod's Rebels don't even know the name of their great mastermind, but rather fly the flag of Nod because of their distrust of GDI, and because of Nod's economic and military contributions in their respective region (a similar issue in the original C&C).

Public relations catastrophies like the Allies secret use of Einsteins time travel and weather machines during the wars caused an even deeper distrust for the victorious Allied nations - especially for the many countries formerly associated with the Soviet Union. As we understand from history ... hate can be a powerful unifying force.

With such ripe circumstances after the fall of the Soviet Motherland, we imagine that all Nod would've had to do is stir the pot - simply show up and give people money and weapons. Taking advantage of human ignorance and widespread anger is a proven method of terrorist organizations, and Nod could use this to arm multiple people groups under the Brotherhood flag.

Kane may have an advantage by staying the "Secret Bad Guy" for a while, which would also keep the UNGDI occupied not knowing who was really in charge.

This may not address every point of concern, but I hope it clears up where we are coming from with Nod's Revenge!

Do you have any thoughts about how to say this better in the Main Plot above?

Thanks!

-Bucknife

Yes... I can see where you're coming from with this.

It makes sense for Kane and the religious aspects of Nod to be a well-concealed secret in the earliest stage, only revealed to a chosen few within the highest ranks of Nod leadership. After all, if they came up front as religious missionaries, many people would antagonize them. Instead, Nod would be likely to first reach out to the poorest rural areas in the countries whose economy was affected by the collapse of the Soviet Union. There, as you said, it would lure the hungry and desperate into its ranks with gifts of guns and cash. Tiberium itself would also by a likely catalyst to Nod's rapid growth; I imagine the Brotherhood would set up a massive, global illegal trade network for capitalizing on the harvesting and mineral extraction of Tiberium. Then Nod would offer Tiberium as a magical "cash crop" to the poor farmers, promising to buy all the Tiberium they grow, but at the same time also causing a Catch-22 of sorts: the rapid reproduction rate of Tiberium would cause massive inflation, but because Tiberium renders the land around it useless for agriculture, the people have no choice but to keep growing Tiberium for a living- thus only plummeting deeper into poverty and into Nod's clutches. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood itself continues to blame the Western powers and UNGDI for all financial problems, thus only fueling the hatred necessary for keeping the Nod war machine going. Nod would keep using this method to conquer region after region until they got self-sustaining cells in many different countries.

Once Nod got itself a steady foothold in the former Soviet-associated countries, it would gradually start trickling its quasi-religious venom into the bloodstream through propaganda, as well as brainwashing the next generation through the gift of free education in Nod-sponsored schools. Once these children grow up (at least old enough to carry a gun- Nod wouldn't be the first terrorist organization to use child soldiers), Nod would be ready to begin the uprising and usurp the former Soviet nations entirely, forming a global superpower that would rival the Allies once more. But before that can happen, the Nod cells are likely to meet some resistance within the former Soviet countries themselves, from those people who oppose the Nod faith (due to the reasons I have already counted on my last post) on top of their ongoing conflict with UNGDI.

Perhaps this is something you can mention in the plot summary at the first post- at the very least, the economic repercussions of Tiberium and its use by Nod.

Edited by: P.Rex

Good story, but do you have an explanation in mind about the naming of Tiberium and how it got onto the earth at the first place?

@ RedTwilight:

An explanation about naming tiberium/how it got to Earth? No, not specifically.

We considered the meteorite landing in the Tiber river in Italy while creating our new map, but the exact lore regarding Mobius/Kane naming tiberium isn't really as important from our written perspective in terms of "what happened between Yuri and now". I don't think we will specifically discount these facts when it comes to any future campaigns or anything, but we did want to highlight the GDI HAZMAT forces stumbling upon tiberium through contact with Nod's mercenary harvesting crews around the ruined Yuri bases, rather than the actual "official" naming by either Mobius or Kane.

A reasonable conclusion from our story that it was, indeed, Kane and the Brotherhood who named Tiberium first and not Mobius, and also that at least SOME of those crystals came from a meteorite that landed in Italy.

We would like to think tiberium is part of why Yuri had a base on the moon in the first place...but that's a story for another battl- , uh, time.

Great question!

-=Bucknife=-

Thanks for the explanation.

Since the plot is supposed to be a retelling of TD (instead of an interque between YR and TD, if I get it right), are you planning to integrate the Funpark storyline of TD into the main storyline? The best explanation for Dinosaurs' existence is that they are brought from the past by dimensional anomalies caused by the Allies' chrono-weapons. This seems to fit the story of Nod's Revenge pretty well (and T-Rex and Brachiosaurus are already in YR as units). Nod can even try to make Dinosaurs attack UNGDI bases or civilian population centers like what they do with Tiberium wildlife in their second mission in TS:FS. Then they can blame it all on Einstein’s "black magic" and strengthen the hatred toward western countries in the area under their influence.

Edited by: RedTwilight

The Jurassic Park missions in TD were pretty classic. I wouldn't be surprised if the inclusion of dinos in YR was a hat-tip to those days as they developed the campaign.

Eventually, I would love some new dino-stuff in NR. Maybe P.Rex can supply us with some expertly-modeled and professionally exported othographic perspective new raptors and T-Rexes...........?

-=bucknife=-

Bucknife wrote:

The Jurassic Park missions in TD were pretty classic. I wouldn't be surprised if the inclusion of dinos in YR was a hat-tip to those days as they developed the campaign.

Eventually, I would love some new dino-stuff in NR. Maybe P.Rex can supply us with some expertly-modeled and professionally exported othographic perspective new raptors and T-Rexes...........?

-=bucknife=-

It would be my pleasure.