Forsaken Lands Incident

SPOILER WARNING
This page contains spoilers for Beyond the Sky!

The Forsaken Lands Incident was an international incident, and narrowly-averted nuclear war, on the industrial-era planet Lemuria. A group of aquatic Deep Ones, in conjunction with a Burrower town in Jepsei, recovered a trio of nuclear bombs from a sunken bomber and refurbished two, intending to detonate them and provoke all-out war between the planet's two superpowers, the Kingdom of Mespreth and Iruktak Amalgamation. In this they were opposed by an Exploration Service mission led by Captain Benson, whose vessel was gathering information in preparation for first contact.

Background

Lemurians invented nuclear weapons approximately 20 metric years ago (40 Lemurian years), during the Long War between Mespreth and the Amalgamation. Both sides conducted about a dozen nuclear strikes between them until their stocks of bombs depleted, and they agreed to a peace. This concluded a world war which had raged for over 50 years, killed over 100 million people, and rendered several entire countries uninhabitable—the Forsaken Lands. A cold war began immediately afterwards, both sides building up their nuclear arsenals to apocalyptic levels and introducing fleets of ICBMs.

Occurring contemporaneously with the Long War was the much shorter War Against the Sea, in which one of Lemuria's native sapient species, the Deep Ones, rose en masse against the shipping traffic and fishing of the land-dwellers, threatening with attack any ships venturing out of sight of land. Nevertheless, the Deep Ones' situation grew increasingly dire over the next decades, as pollution continued to foul their habitats.

Some years after this, a Mespreth bomber carrying at least three atom bombs (presumably as part of a patrol or airborne-readiness mission), disappeared over an ocean. With the exact cause unknown, Mespreth wrote it off as crashed and its payload lost. Later still, a band of Deep Ones happened upon the wreck, resting on the seafloor.

by Alexander Antropov

The incident was triggered by the detonation of a salvaged nuclear warhead, in an attempted false-flag attack.

---

Date

UE 176

The Scheme

The Deep Ones who salvaged the warheads devised a plan: Through their intermediary, Jepsei slave-lord Elacmagolintec, they would transfer the bombs to a town of Burrowers known for technical skill, who would restore them to functional condition and return them, whereupon they would be placed in politically sensitive locations and detonated, in hopes of provoking a war.

These initial steps were taking place when the Exploration Service expedition arrived at the planet and went largely successfully, though one bomb was too damaged to be repaired and Elacmagolintec reneged on part of his deal by abducting the entire Burrower town after he receieved the warheads back from its workers. Also around this time, a crisis began to brew between the superpowers when the Amalgamation began establishing a base on an island directly adjacent to the Forsaken Lands, which treaties had declared off-limits for military activity. An obvious opportunity presented itself: by smuggling their bombs to this location and detonating them, it would be very probable a panicked Amalgamation would respond by initiating a nuclear exchange against Mespreth, which was certain to respond in kind. Thus, the civilization of the surface-dwellers would be laid low, and the Deep Ones given breathing room to recover.

Alien Intervention

“What are you doing?”
“Saving the world.”

— Velli and Selva (Beyond the Sky)

What they did not forsee, and hardly could have in any case, was the alien expedition aboard the ESV Challenger. Detecting signs of nuclear materials in the nation of Jepsei, Captain Benson sent surface teams to investigate, eventually resulting in the abduction of resistance fighter Velli and Mespreth princess Takji. Both agreed to help uncover the truth behind the plot.

Things came to a head when a fleet of Mespreth hydroskimmers (ground-effect vehicles) closed in on the Amalgamation base. Realizing this was a likely strike point, Captain Benson enacted a plan: one team went down to the Forsaken Lands, while another eturned Princess Takji to Mespreth stealthily, to attempt to convince her fahter, King Delvar, not to blame the Amalgamation for any imminent attacks.

Led by XRD agent Selva, the away team found and defused one bomb, but failed to find the second, hidden underwater, before it detonated. A crisis ensued. Panicking, the commander of the Mespreth fleet ordered his fighter jets to attack their Amalgamation counterparts, while in the War Room King Delvar recieved reports of the blast and prepared to launch a nuclear strike.

Only quick action prevented all-out war. Selva and Velli intervened in the aerial battle, shooting down missiles and dazzling both squadrons of fighters with their alien scoutship, while Takji convined her father to contact the Amalgamation prime minister and hear him out. At the last moment, he relented.

Aftermath

With nuclear apocalypse narrowly avoided, both sides withdrew their forces from the Forsaken Lands and agreed to conduct an inquiry into the cause of the blast. As public contact had not yet been made, Takji kept secret her source of intelligence and concocted a cover story to explain her absence, while in orbit Captain Benson was recalled to face an inquiry over potential Perelandra Protocol violations.