Resistance: Fall of Man - An Oral History

[Chicken]

Great Update!

But is there any chance we can see a larger version of the map of Europe?

 

[Ermac]

It is time for mankind to unleash its greatest weapon.

 

[unmerged(53232)]

Subscribed. Really awesome writing there man.

And what kind of Space Marine dreadnought is that?

 

[Admiral Fyyar]

And how about a small bit about the fanatic Austrian architecture teacher with the funny beard who managed to rally troops and civilians to the defense of Vienna from the Vienna University of Technology?

 

[TheExecuter]

Sooo creepy. I had a good laugh at the 'biology' lesson there...seems we're still stuck on 'evolution' philosophy in this timeline. One can only hope they figure out the reality of the Chimera before ultimate downfall occurs.

Looking forward to the invasion!
TheExecuter

 

[Enewald]

noes.... btw, do you have many European generals in your general pool?
Sure they must have escaped Europe, unless half of them died in the frontline...

and the virus seems scary... and maybe make SU colour black?

 

[unmerged(27576)]

very nice

I'm eagerly awaiting the invasion chapter!

 

[Ermac]

Subscribed. Really awesome writing there man.

And what kind of Space Marine dreadnought is that?

That my good fellow is a Lazy Marine.

Now behold the might of the electro nipples!

 

[unmerged(53232)]

:rofl: And to make sure this post is on topic...

Update please!

 

[Ksim3000]

A frighteningly yet beautiful update Tre. It was interesting to read about the technological side of things, let alone Manstein and Rommel's brave defence of Germany. Certainly am holding out here The Rhineland Fox and Herr Manstein were able to make it out of Europe alive.....

Still, make sure you do update soon. Will this update be based on the actual Gameplay of the AAR with the first chapter simply introducing us into the story?

And how about a small bit about the fanatic Austrian architecture teacher with the funny beard who managed to rally troops and civilians to the defense of Vienna from the Vienna University of Technology?

I believe Hitler is head of the Nazi Party in this timeline still, just that his party haven't been able to get into power due to the economy not having a downfall. Could be wrong though.

 

[TreizeV]

CHAPTER 2​

New Warsaw, Iowa​

[The American Resettlement Program, christened by the Administration to help relocate the fleeing refugees from Europe, calls for resettling the entire American Midwest and interior. Already over a dozen towns have sprung up overnight across the continent, providing thousands of jobs in construction of highways, buildings and infrastructure. The success of the program is such that plans for additional settlements are being made, as far west as California. New Warsaw itself sports a munitions factory and a tank factory, where thousands of former refugees now work to arm America for the coming Chimeran threat. Maria Kowalczyk is a recent arrival and worker in one of these factories.]

It all began with the birds.

There were thousands of them, literally blackening up the sky. I’ll never forget that day for the rest of my life. It was like something out of a dream, one moment I was on my way to work at the hospital, and the next, it was this huge black cloud over the horizon. I remember all the cars in the city coming to a halt, and almost everyone looking with amazement at the sky.

It was though mother nature was gathering itself, battening down the hatches in the face of some storm we could not yet see. I was a young girl by my parent’s standards, having been born after the construction of the wall. My mother would use to frighten me at night with stories of the Russian bogeymen, how they lay hidden behind the walls and would come out at night to kidnap any naughty children. That story went through my head as I saw the swarm. To my generation you see, the Russians were a big mystery, similar to a fairy tale or an urban myth. We had no clue what they looked like or how their mannerisms were, since it’s been so long since anyone ever had contact with anyone Russian. I’ve heard talks from police and soldiers passing by in the streets, how the Russian guards along the wall simply vanished one day, never to be seen again.

I’ve never been told the official history, only that we had ceased to travel east of the wall for decades now, and that no one knew what went on from the other side. It like the Russians were keeping a secret from the world and completely cutting themselves off as a result. Eventually as the years went by, we just forgot about it. For the first time in centuries, my mother told me, our people were left alone by the evil Tsar.

The swarm of birds lasted for several hours, all of them coming from the east. I noticed something was wrong, considering they were coming out of Russia, not only that, but aren’t migratory patterns usually from north to south, not east to west?

In any case, the authorities just shrugged it off, animals had been going crazy in Poland for days now. There were reports of cows, pigs, even horses running about wild eyed, kicking, biting and trampling anything in their path with foamed mouths. I’ve seen a fair share of patients who came in to the hospitals with animal bites or broken limbs from their stampeding cattle. The police were called out to stop the rampage of livestock, it took them three days just to clear downtown of them before any semblance of normal traffic continued.

That all changed forever once the birds left, it took a few minutes before the sky became clear again, and then people started going back to their daily routine as though nothing had happened. Most got back into their cars, while the street vendors continued selling their goods.

I was exiting Warsaw grand station when I next heard a thunderous roar coming from the East, followed by some slight tremors from the ground. At that moment the citizens stopped to watch again, and we could see, clear as day, a pillar of smoke rising from where the Russian wall was, but it was not just in one location, there were multiple pillars, all of them forming a neat line in the horizon. Someone had blown up the Russian wall at every point. At this point, everyone on the street was in a commotion, talking about what exactly happened at the wall.

Did you feel any sense of urgency? To get out of the city?

To be honest, I did. The European governments had always warned us Poland was the first line of defense against a Russian invasion, and now we saw what looked like to be the beginnings of one in front of us.

I instinctively started running when I heard the first air raid sirens go off. People at this point started panicking, running back to their homes and clearing the streets. I saw cars screech to a halt, causing several accidents as the drivers ran out of their cars. I guess everyone figured they would be smaller targets in the upcoming airstrike. All the Tramcars also let off their passengers, and more people started running.

This lasted for a few minutes, until people started realizing that something was wrong. There were air raid sirens, but no one heard the noise of any plane engines or even saw anything in the sky. The crowd, myself included, took this time to gauge the situation, the entire city now stood mutely, staring off into the sky in anticipation of the planes, of something. We were like a bunch of idiots, staring off into the distance as if in wonderment, having no clue what was about to hit us.

We knew soon enough

The first explosions came as a shock, shells landed in the crowded downtown area and the residential neighbourhoods of the city. The Russians weren’t bombing us with planes they were shelling us! Somehow. From their own border!

I did not even have time to think about how they did it, the first thing I did was run, covering my head and trying my best to avoid the explosions that followed. I saw several houses flattened by the concussions from the explosions. Debris and scraps of metal flew everywhere, decapitating this one unfortunate woman I happened to see fleeing by the cinema. The telephone exchange was hit, and I saw the huge office building just fall in on itself, into a pile of rubble and broken switchboards and control panels. I think the worst parts were the screams, from so many trapped people inside the buildings.

My family lived on the outskirts of the city to the west, so I was comforted that they were somewhat far away from this disaster, but I still had to get back to them. Firemen arrived now, trying to put out the fires on every single building in downtown. One woman, holding her baby in her arms, was crying hysterically, standing right in the middle of the street during this whole bombardment! I couldn’t believe it myself. Shouldn’t she be protecting her child instead of just losing it right there? Luckily a fireman grabbed her and threw her into a nearby alleyway, just as another blast killed him before he could even dive after her. Meanwhile, the air raid siren kept blaring, and I swore it was the only thing I heard even as I ran for the next few blocks to the residential area.

Luckily for me, I managed to escape the madness that was downtown, hitching a ride on the last train in the station leaving westwards. I reached my house to find my mother burying the old family heirlooms in the backyard, an odd thing to do considering the entire city was burning around us, but she insisted. My father was already packing up our belongings into the family car, while my mother argued with him on what to bring and what not to. It was pandemonium. A perfect scene to the end of the world, my neighbours, my parents arguing whether to take the car or flee on foot while Warsaw burned in the background.

It was then that we saw it in the sky. Dozens of them. I’ve heard my father talk about rockets before, but these things looked like nothing I’ve ever seen. They had a sinister red glow to them, and to me, they resembled a metallic hornet’s stinger. Within minutes they all landed in downtown. My family and I dove behind the car anticipating the blast but nothing came. Instead, the rockets just dug themselves into the ground all over the city. It was a weird sight, as though dozens of church spires just popped up in the middle of downtown Warsaw.

I was too far away to see anything, but I could hear the sounds, the screams erupting from downtown and the disturbing sound a wave of locusts and insects.

Within minutes though, everything went quiet. I couldn’t hear anything, no screams, no shouts, nothing except the cackling of flames from what used to be downtown Warsaw.

I didn’t know how much time passed, I was still dazed from the whole day’s events. The next thing I knew I was in the car, my father driving like a demon to get out of the city. We were joined by others, some running on foot and others in their own cars. But what struck me the most was the lack of people. My family expected the entire highway to be crammed full of people fleeing, which was why we considered leaving the car back at home, but instead, it was like we were driving out of a ghost city. We were done now, my father was already making plans, telling my mother that our family was to head west, every day, every hour, every second. To not waste any time. We did not even pause to see the convoys of soldiers in their trucks passing us on the highway, heading towards the broken city.

The last thing I remembered hearing before I dozed off to sleep, was this inhuman screech. It was faint at first, coming from the other side of the city, but before long, the burning downtown area was alive with sounds. Not the frenzied panic and screams of before, but with gunfire now, and something else….this inhuman scream that drowned out everything in the night……God help me, I don’t think I’ll ever forget that sound.

[United European Defense (UED) reports at the time indicate that out of a city of almost 2 million, less than five thousand refugees from Warsaw had managed to make it to UED lines]

 

[TreizeV]

BritishImperial Gotta watch that movie again it was awesome. I do hope to recreate that feeling of hopelessness like in downfall

Kurt_Steiner ITs a minor detail, but I'll look it up! Partisans are annoying hehe

Chicken Ill post in game maps eventually

Ermac The Chimera will stand no chance against that!

LordoftheMind yes sir!

Ksim3000 Yes, anything in the Invasion chapter will be loosely based on events that happened in game. Manstein and Rommel won't be the only ones at the party and you are dead on about the current state of Germany in the resistance timeline.

 

[trekaddict]

BritishImperial Gotta watch that movie again it was awesome. I do hope to recreate that feeling of hopelessness like in downfall

You want hopelessness? I cn recoomend "the day after".

 

[unmerged(59737)]

I don't think anything else is needed. The mood in that update was incredibly creepy.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

Excellent. However... why bombing so heavily if you are going to send the spires later on?

Mmmh... another mistery to take care of...

It all began with the birds.

Just this short sentence gives a feeling of impeding doom.

 

[unmerged(85800)]

on the other hand, the story could go: it all began with the birds. Then came the butterflies, finally followed by the fluffy bunny rabbits.

 

[unmerged(61606)]

So many birds... wherever they land, they are all going to starve to death because there won't be enough food...

Very nice update though. So much of Warsaw was destroyed.

 

[stnylan]

As others have said, the line "It all began with the birds" is a wonderful way to start. It sets the scene just right.

So we have reached the point of break-out.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

on the other hand, the story could go: it all began with the birds. Then came the butterflies, finally followed by the fluffy bunny rabbits.

The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog !!!!

Run, fools, run!!!!








Couldn't resist...

 

[I Killed Kenny]

I love your writing, very world war Z.

Question: Will you really play HoI2? Or will this story all come from R:FoM?