The Necessary Babylon

[Sonereal]

Excerpt from The Necessary Babylon by Chairman of the International Leadership Assembly of Earth Chuma Adeyemi, 2194.

In the eons since the first primitive communities took shape on the grassy savannas of Africa, human civilization has spread and prospered.

Technological progress has been swift, but as our numbers increased, the civilian population grew increasingly restless. With our world on the brink of anarchy, the military stepped in to restore the rule of law.

A new order was established to safeguard all nations from all threats, both external and internal...

Excerpt from Lessons Learned by Former Chairman of the International Leadership Assembly of Earth Chuma Adeyemi, 2243.

The build-up to the International Leadership Assembly Selection in 2200 is still the stuff of legends to me. Four decades separate me and those brutal four months between New Year's and the ILAS, and given how dark those informal campaigns to win over the delegates of the ILA were, I don't feel like four decades is quite enough time.

By mid-February, the field narrowed down to Hasegawa and I. I became good friends with her after the ILAS, but if you're reading this Kimiko, do not take this the wrong way. I was very surprised to learn you were my only real opponent. During the god awful rebellions of the 2190s, I had risen from being just another soldiers to being just another general very quickly, despite my youth. Every time I went to talk to an ILA delegate in January, the delegate would tell me, "So and so says you're too young for the job."

Yet somehow, the field narrowed down to you and I. About the same age, same meteoric rise through the ranks, same everything it felt other than people loved me just a little bit more. I was surprised you were my only opponent in the end because I had expected an aging general staffer who can recite every major action during the Chicago Incident of 2155.

I'm glad it was you. You may not have been Babylon's first chairwoman, but you certainly are the best archon Earth could ask for.

Prologue​

On 9 May 2016, what became known as the "Phantom Army" materialized on military bases and inside capitals across the planet. The perpetrators of the global coup called themselves "Babylon", a name they would choose as the title of the new supranational state in 2032. The original Babylon can be traced back to the waning days of the Second World War. A cadre of Western military officers and liberal high-staff saw the great calamity of the World Wars as a great waste of human potential, but also a great opportunity.

By the end of the 1950s, Babylonians could be found in every country on either side of the Iron Curtain. Some Babylonians, after the Third World War, would claim that Babylon prevented a global thermonculear Third World War in 1963 and the 1980s. The establishment of the military regime over all of Earth in the 2030s has meant that historians haven't been able to challenge this notion directly.

What historians do seem to believe, however, is that Babylon initially lacked their Phantom Army, the fleet of black drones and helicopters that marked the opening salvos of the global coup, until the 1980s. Between 2004 and 2016, dozens of PMCs with ties to Babylon fought in theaters ranging from Mexico to Indonesia while the inner cadre could claim to be a truly international group, with representatives from almost every armed forces in the world.

The Third World War raged from 2016 to 2034 and ended when President-in-Exile of the former United States signed the UN Instrument of Surrender at Pensmore, the headquarters of the Babylon group.

The story of Babylon, Earth, and humanity until 2195 is full of stories, but those aren't the stories you want to read about. The story you're looking for begins in 2195 when Zuberi Gatyeni revealed to the world his creation of experimental subspace fields and the invention of the Gatyeni Drive...

[ROLL CREDITS]

[PLAY THEME]

Notes About Game

This is a 2,600 star modified campaign. I wanted to see how the game plays out when you start out on your lonesome. The mapscript I'm using scales up nebulae (but NOT the star name listing unfortunately), lowers the number of fallen empires to zero, and starts the game with zero other AIs. Technically, I already won because I got a conquest victory at start-up.

What I'm saying is that if you are looking for an AAR to help you get good, this one isn't it.

Any and all criticisms of the writing is encouraged. If you like what you read, drop a "good job man" in the thread. Really gets the motivation up, you know?

Table of Contents

Prologue: 1945-2200
Year One: 2200

The Fist of God Saga

Fist of God: 2201
Open Fist of Babylon: 2201-2204/5

 

[Lupis Volk]

Man reading all these AAR's make me to want to give them a try as either my Fox race or space Cats.

 

[Rabbit Burgher]

I'm certainly curious as to how far Babylon will go before imploding or causing an end game event.

 

[Deaghaidh]

Our last, best hope for peace!

 

[Sonereal]

The history of our collective civilization has never been clean. Wherever the specter of disagreement arose came the threat of bloodshed and disorder. My predecessors realized that the only viable path into the stars was one where we all came together, united by arms in diversity for the betterment of all.
Chuma Adeyemi, Political Writings, 2227 AD

Year One
​

The creation of the Gatyeni Drive revolutionized space travel and mankind's relationship with the stars. Before that momentous invention found itself at the heart of every ship Babylon would build from that day forward, mankind's relationship with the stars was like the relationship between distant relatives. Science fiction writers talked of terraforming Mars or building domed cities as the "realistic" alternative to the dreams of a cohesive stellar civilization. When the nearest star can take decades, even centuries, to reach at sublight speeds, one didn't talk of sending colonists to Alpha Centauri to create an empire.

But for now, Alpha Centauri was far away in the minds of Earth's rulers. The name of the game in 2200 was rebuilding Earth after centuries of warfare. Great industrial wastelands and slums littered the Earth, and many starving mouths lacked the means to meet their stomachs' nutritional demands.

Chuma Adeyemi and Kimiko Hasegawa enjoyed a tense relationship during these years. As Archon of Earth, Hasegawa made sure the trains ran on time while Adeyemi spearheaded infrastructure programs, such as his beloved farming initiative, programs Hasegawa believed she herself should have been responsible for. Besides these initiatives, Adeyemi had a nascent space fleet to manage and an exploration program to give guidance to. In 2200, the totality of Babylon's power were three Grey Wolf-class corvettes, armed with He Laser Cannons, named after renowned engineer Wei He, a man seen by his contemporaries as "maniacal".

The fourth ship in humanity's space fleet was the Yeager, a construction ship equipped to build orbiting platforms and mines. The fifth ship, the one that would spawn hundreds of books, VRGs, and movies, was the Balao, a Magellan-class science ship. The Balao was commanded by Yu Yang, an up and coming scientist seen by her peers as a carefree and competent woman.

In March, Earth's spaceport finished construction of the Sealion, which would be commanded by the 28-year old Caterina D'Antoni. The Sealion and Caterina D'Antoni together would spawn thousands of pieces across all forms of media, including artwork and music. For now, D'Antoni was seen as a young and promising scientist whose heart already roamed the stars in the science fiction novels she read religiously up til the day she finally passed. Together, the Sealion and Balou took on the task of surveying the home system of mankind using a suite of advanced analysis equipment which drained most of the power on these ships.

Excerpt from Gone into the Stars by Caterina D'Antoni

Near the end of May, I received an urgent comm from Yu. She told me that her team discovered something on Mars that didn't sit well with earlier observations made of the planet from Earth and that she was going to investigate. We didn't know what we would know later about how dangerous investigating anomalies could be, but even if Yu had known the potential dangers, she would have taken the plunge anyway if she believed she could discover something interesting.

She spent nearly two months in orbit above Mars. She kept me up to date, and I was jealous. While she was discovering the secrets of the cosmos, I was busy looking at rocks in the asteroid belt! In July, Gatyeni sent both of us a report on the data streamed by the Balou and concluded that there were traces of warp drive usage on the planet long ago.

You could just imagine our excitement with that report! Just five years ago, we were trapped in the cage of our home system. Now, we were a spacefaring civilization who just found evidence that actual aliens may have visited us! I wondered what that civilization was like. I wondered what happened to them.

Excerpt from The Autobiography of Muhammad El-Farouk by Muhammad El-Farouk

The Gatyeni-Yang Study hit us all like a brick in August that year. Everybody remembers the celebrations in the streets, the fireworks and all that. Not many people remember how scientific progress simply up and died for a while. Every scientist, from xenologists to omnidisciplinarians like myself, rushed to have a paper on the Mars finding. What did it mean? What were they like? Who were they? Science fiction replaced science, and unfortunately for myself, I didn't enjoy the attempts at speculative fiction by otherwise respectable scientists. I feel so sorry for the crew of that ship that built the first offworld mine in orbit around Uranus.

Except from Mars and Sol Yu Yang

My father gave me the biggest hug in the history of human civilization when I returned to Earth for a spell. I didn't realize how famous I had gotten until I saw my face on the big screen in Times Square. My father asked, "How does it feel to be bigger than life?" I told him it felt pretty cool, pretty scary too. The Balou finished surveying the last planet of our solar system on Christmas Eve while the Sealion surveyed the last moon. I wish the last planetary body to investigate had been our moon so I could have been on Earth for New Years!

I was so happy to be back on Earth, but I wanted nothing more than to return to space and take the next step in my career by being the first person to go to Alpha Centauri. Just picture how jealous my husband was of every bright light in the sky those years!

​

Notes

I have a huge backlog of screenshots for the campaign, but Steam is pretty terrible about organizing and naming screenshots, so there's my heads up to people thinking of screenshotting with Steam.

As always, all criticisms, critiques, feedback positive and negative, are welcomed!

Edit to Add: I'm going to start naming stars in my campaign after users in this thread. If you have ideas for star names, feel free to comment with them as well. Note, it will be a while before any of these names appear in the AAR since I'm 75 years ahead.

 

[Rabbit Burgher]

Your style of the combination of book excerpts and history is very interesting. Can't wait for the next post.

 

[Sergei Meranov]

Great read so far. I've been looking forward to the AARs for this game since the events seem like they'd lend themselves well to it. Keep at it!

 

[DavidMK]

No AIs? Do you plan on uplifting any planetary civs?

 

[Sonereal]

Your style of the combination of book excerpts and history is very interesting. Can't wait for the next post.

Great read so far. I've been looking forward to the AARs for this game since the events seem like they'd lend themselves well to it. Keep at it!

Thanks a lot you two!

No AIs? Do you plan on uplifting any planetary civs?

When I say "no AIs", I mean there were no spacefaring AIs at game start. Without giving too much away, there certainly will be other spacefaring empires soon.

 

[Attalus]

Subscribed !

 

[Nikolai]

Nice story so far. And interesting premise, with no AIs in play! I guess there will be the odd advanced industrial civ gaining space travel over the time. And a lot of uplifting. Will be interesting to see!

 

[MichaelMaverick]

Subbed!

 

[klanky]

Loving the premise for this one! Definitely subbing!

 

[volksmarschall]

Best of luck. Stellaris is great. Plus, you can tread the final frontier for AARs now!

Cheers!

 

[Sonereal]

I am only an instrument of the Lord. I do not lead the Greater Struggle against the Whore of Babylon for the Spirit of Man, but I do lead the Lesser Struggle, the military struggle, the struggle for his Body.
Brianna Fuller, Fist of God, 2043
[WARNING: Fist of God is a Keter-class Social Hazard. Unsanctioned Possession is punishable with up to 25 years imprisonment on Triton.]

Fist of God​

Excerpt from The Second Autobiography of Muhammad El-Farouk by Muhammad El-Farouk

Looking back on things, I will admit that the Mars findings and hysteria eased us into discovering life beyond our planet. People celebrated, but not on the scale they did four or so months ago. Isn't hard to see why that's the case. What utterly bizarre creatures could ever warrant August Celebrations?

Excerpt from Tower of Light and Lightning by Zuberi Gatyeni

What absolutely incredible creatures the void clouds were! It is unfortunate we, more or less, exterminated them all. Hard to build an orbiting platform with a void cloud nearby zapping your ship to literal death.

August of 2200 showed humans that intelligent life may have paid us a visit a long, long time ago. January 2201 showed humanity that life existed, and it was a lightning cloud of dust. Before the official designation, state press referred to void clouds as "Alpha Aliens". Adeyemi pressed then leading scientist in the field of social and biological studies, Muhammad El-Farouk, to spearhead a study. Unfortunately for the otherwise independent El-Farouk, Adeyemi would push him down avenues of research that El-Farouk found, in his own words, "Boring and dreadful."

For the first half of 2201, government expectations had been modest. The crisis that would unfold in orbit of Venus in September hadn't entered the Temple of Reasonable Expectation for Babylon, despite the inherent irony of the events soon to unfold.

Excerpt from The Necessary Babylon by Chuma Adeyemi

I know my history very well! Better than most I would say. I view history from a humanist perspective, and when I read about the World Wars, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the genocides and hate and bloodshed, I am grateful for what we have created and maintained. We created world peace. We've, mostly, maintained world peace. Yet, I've had women spit in my face in Chicago. Am I, a single man, the Whore of Babylon? Is the world worse off now that I exist? Compared to the twentieth and twenty-first century?

It seems that the Whore of Babylon was a Necessary Babylon, and that our seven years in the sun will be eternal.

Except from Political Writings by Chuma Adeyemi

The less said about the Venus Incident, the better.

Excerpt from Open Fist of Babylon by Honoka Yamamoto

I'll never forget the day when Adeyemi awarded Admiral Swanson command of the First Fleet of Babylon, a shiny fleet of three Grey Wolf-class corvettes. It had been raining all day in Berlin, which I find darkly humorous now given it would soon be a rainy day over Venus. Am I bitter that a man ten years my junior and cautious to the point of suicidal cowardice was put in charge?

Yes. You should be bitter too, given the Venus Incident.

Excerpt from Engineering Tomorrow by Wei He, ghost written by Muhammad El-Farouk

The He Laser Cannons performed remarkably on both sides. There were no hard countermeasures to my weapons during the Venus Incident.

In 1919, a group of radical priests broke off from their churches along with devoted followers to form the Fist of God, a religious organization that believed that the First World War was the opening salvo in the Apocalypse. Between 1925 and 2045, the Fist of God claimed responsibility for thousands of acts of terror, including the Saigon Atrocity of 1975 and the New York City Subway Bombings of 1992. The group entered a new phase with the advent of the Third World War, allowing them, for a short time, to field conventional force against what they say as the Ultimate Enemy, Babylon.

Babylonian forces soundly crushed FoG's last standing force in Mexico City in 2045, and the group went dormant. Many believed the group simply disbanded. As we learned from Venusian broadcasts, this was not the case. The tragedy that would go down in history as the Venus Incident began in March when Adeyemi received a message through his secret communication server from an unknown informant who reported that the Fist of God had infiltrated the military so thoroughly that the group had secretly constructed warships, which currently orbited Venus.

This report came with attachments with details of these ships. Adeyemi, a military man himself, realized immediately he was looking at a Grey Wolf-class warship.

News of the Fist of God and their secret fleet was released to the public in May as well as an announcement that Admiral Swanson had been hand-selected to command the First Fleet to destroy the Fist of God fleet. The First Fleet set off for Venus on the 16th of May 2201. The Venus Incident began the 4th of June.

From data recovered from a cultist warship later, Tao Zhu commanded the Fist of God fleet. Tao Zhu had been a classmate of Chuma Adeyemi in the academy.

The Venus Incident unfolded over the course of three months in which both sides maneuvered against one another. The more aggressive Tao Zhu finally made her assault on the 5th September 2201. We would learn later that this battle severely crippled the cultist fleet, destroying one ship and crippling two more. Even if this news had been known on Earth, it wouldn't change the fact that the entirety of the First Fleet had been wiped out, and Rodney Swanson died on the O'Hare.

The fanatically militarist Babylon lost her very first space battle.

Author Notes

This update was originally going to cover most events occurring between the beginning of 2201 and a little into 2206, but there is simply so much I can do creativity with the Fist of God that I decided to focus on them. That, and I was nearing my thousand word limit for updates (which is there for YOUR sake as well as mine).

As always, criticism and critiques are welcomed. Thanks again to everybody who has shown their support for the story so far.

 

[Sonereal]

Subscribed !

Subbed!

Loving the premise for this one! Definitely subbing!

Welcome to the party! Not as banging as a Blorg Party, but a Babylonian Party has class.

Best of luck. Stellaris is great. Plus, you can tread the final frontier for AARs now!

Cheers!

Cheers

Nice story so far. And interesting premise, with no AIs in play! I guess there will be the odd advanced industrial civ gaining space travel over the time. And a lot of uplifting. Will be interesting to see!

The odd industrial civilization may find some technological help from their friend Babylon in the future as well

 

[Idhrendur]

Oh man. I've been eyeing the Stellaris AARs for the last several days in the hopes of finding a AAR style I could crib from once my AAR gets this far. Yours is the first I'm really admiring. Plus it's just fun in its own right.

 

[Deaghaidh]

Rod Swanson's distant ancestor is deeply ashamed.

 

[Sonereal]

Oh man. I've been eyeing the Stellaris AARs for the last several days in the hopes of finding a AAR style I could crib from once my AAR gets this far. Yours is the first I'm really admiring. Plus it's just fun in its own right.

Thanks a lot, man. This kind of praise keeps me motivated.

Rod Swanson's distant ancestor is deeply ashamed.

Believe me; his superior was deeply ashamed as well.

 

[Sonereal]

Babylon's first victory in space wasn't.
-Hanoka Yamamoto, Open Fist of Babylon, 2210 AD

Open Fist of Babylon
​

Excerpt from Yu Yang's Alpha Cen-Kills-Me, originally published in the New York Times

Alpha Centauri IIa is a desolate, barren moon orbiting Alpha Centauri II. We discovered a ship drifting aimlessly above the planet with massive solar sails used to collect solar power to power the ship. We knew it wasn't one of ours right away, so we knew it was an alien ship!

The ship exploded as we neared it. I was upset for about five seconds, but chalked it up as "too good to be true" until several cultist ships swarmed us. I ordered an emergency warp jump back to Sol. We barely escaped with our lives.

​

Yu Yang's unfortunate story illustrates the risks inherent in space exploration. Two weeks later, the FoG Venus fleet destroyed the First Fleet. The Fist of God had thrust Babylon into her first interstellar war, and Babylon was reeling. As Earth's spaceport churned out corvettes for a second battle above Venus, the Balao and Sealion continued their journey through the stars, without much of the excitement of Balao's run-in with cultists in Alpha Centauri.

To observers of Babylonian events, the well-spring of momentous events dried up in preparation for the coming rematch. The new First Fleet, commanded by Hanoka Yamamoto, left Earth's orbit 2203.01.02, reached Venus 2203.01.21, and defeated the savaged Fist of God fleet in only thirty minutes. Yamamoto ordered a boarding party to board a drifting, defeated ship.

Excerpt from Open Fist of Babylon by Hanoka Yamamoto

The survivors fought hard, but not to the death and several prisoners were secured. During the search and seizure and following interrogations, I managed to make one prisoner believe we knew his identity and would soon come after his family on Earth unless he gave us something. The man gave us something! A cache of data with a lot of sadly familiar names...

The March Purge of 2203 led to thousands of arrests. From flag officers to high-ranking government officials to two CEOs, nobody escaped the wrath of Babylon. The prisoners became the first inmates in the newly constructed prison on Triton.

Back on Earth, scientists pondered the nature of ancient mining drones discovered in some systems surveyed by the Balao and Sealion. These mining drones no longer seemed to mine, as the autonomous orbital mining operations they oversaw barely operated. However, all attempts to investigate the drones have been met with resistance. As one officer on the Sealion noted, mining lasers could rip through the hull of a science ship as easily, if not easier, than the He Laser Cannons.

Wei He ordered the construction of a listening post on Earth. Nobody understood exactly how the listening post worked but He, but like most things He did, it worked. Wei He's Mining Drone Study formed the basis for a government edict that would drastically increase industrial and mining productivity with only mild strain on Babylon's energy resources. Gatyeni's annoyance with the affair stemmed from, once again, there was evidence of a great interstellar civilization that no longer existed. Pings from the drones sent out into space received no response from long dead masters.

Zuberi Gatyeni's annoyance didn't stop him from unveiling a new invention soon to bare his name: Zuberi Sensors. More powerful and sensitive than last-generation sensors, Zuberi Sensors allowed warships and science ships to detect danger in ever more distant star systems. Wei He followed up in 2204 with Wei Exoskeletons. It would be decades before soldiers wearing these suits would see combat, but the suits proved another boom for Babylonian mining operations.

Excerpt from Open Fist of Babylon by Hanoka Yamamoto

I now possessed a fleet larger than our original fleet in 2201. Adeyemi ordered me to take the fight to the Fist of God at my own discretion. By now, the Fist of God wasn't really a threat to Babylon anymore. The destruction of the Venusian Fleet and of Fist of God operations on Earth saw to that! Still, as I neared Alpha Centauri II to destroy the Fist of God fleet that nearly destroyed the Balao, I felt pride in what I was doing.

I still do. My victory that year wasn't celebrated, and that's fine. Doesn't change the fact that I scored the first real victory for Babylon in space.

The victory in space revealed a defeat on another front for Babylon.

Excerpt from Lessons Learned by Chuma Adeyemi

Our Grey Wolf-class ships, indeed all our ships, in 2204 were powered by fission. Nobody could tell me how the Fist of God ended up with fusion reactors on their ships. Nobody. Nobody even understood those reactors fully. What else did the Fist of God know that we didn't know?

Author Notes

The gears are beginning to turn! In Babylon's earliest years, we only had to focus on a handful of often-related events at a time. Poor Adeyemi now can no longer focus solely on his agricultural programs or the Fist of God, but now has to think about the technologies that will make his dreams become reality.

In other news, weekend updates will follow a different theme and format from "weekday" formats. They will be more character-focus, often on singular events from the point of view of only one or two characters.

As always, all criticism is welcomed! If you like what you read, don't be afraid to let me know too. I'm very happy with the good words I've received so far, and hope to only improve as time goes on.