{{Infobox_event|title = The Great Defensive War|image = StellarisWar1.jpg|imagecaption = Artwork by JuanPabloRoldan|date = April 22, 2090 - December 23, 2097|location = Earth, Sol System}}The '''GreatDefensive War''', otherwise known as'''The Tyrum Invasion''', or simplyas '''TheInvasion''', was the invasion of Earth by the [[Tyrum Consciousness]] between 2089 and 2097. The invasion resulted in a defensive victory for Earth and was instrumental in creating the [[Greater Terran Union]].
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==History of the War==
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|date= February 2090 - 2097
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On April 22nd 2089, space surveillance satellites from nine different nations detected large, artificial craft quickly approaching Earth. Terrified, the nations of Earth quickly attempted to create an orbital defense grid, but their primitive constructs were easily destroyed by the greater Tyrum forces.
The '''First Contact War''', otherwise remembered as '''The Invasion,''' the '''First Human-Tyrum War''', or the '''Great Defensive War''' was the invasion of Earth by the [[Tyrum Consciousness]] between 2090 and 2097. The invasion resulted in a defensive victory for Earth, throwing off the invasion, and was instrumental in creating the [[Greater Terran Union]].
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The invasion began on February 17, 2090 as cities were destroyed in an apocalyptic opening volley from the attacking craft. The Tyrum followed a policy of directing their attacks upon regions of the earth with the greatest ambient light, as an indication of that regions economic, population, and political importance. As such the Tyrum directed the vast majority of their fury at East Asia, utterly devastating China and Japan. Europe and the United States were not spared however, with attention directed at the American Eastern and Western coasts, along with most of the primary European cities and all major human population centers in South America and Africa. The only exception to this was London, which had enacted archaic laws dating back to the second world war to declare black out provisions after the tyrum fleet had been detected. This resulted in the city being largely ignored in the opening barrage.
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== The War ==
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The destruction of the major population centers one earth coincided with the decapitation of much of the central authorities on the planet, though enough of the military command survived the opening barrage to launch a counter attack. Mainly in North America and Russia. While Washington DC was destroyed, along with the Strategic Command Headquarters bunker located in the nearby Bull Run mountains, the vestigal North American Aerospace Command bunker at Cheynne Mountain Colorado was ignored. As part of standard NATO practice, the second in command of NORAD was a Canadian General, in this case Lieutenant General Mark Templin. With the absence of communication from Washington DC and the clear indication that the alien invaders had initiated strategic strikes on the Earth, General Templin ordered nuclear retaliation. Hard line communication links with Russia, a product of the Cold War remained, and surviving military staff in the Russian Federation rapidly coordinated with Templin for a joint ICBM strike. The missiles were rapidly reprogrammed for orbital targeting, and launched at the Tyrum fleet.
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On 22 April 2089, military surveillance satellites operated by nine nations individually and simultaneously identified a collection of large objects passing through the orbit of Neptune, effectively entering the Solar System.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkpv5QMxQkw <nowiki>[1]</nowiki>]</ref> In the course of the following weeks, both civilian and military observatories continued to track the object until an announcement was made by the United Nations Security Council on the almost certain artificial nature of the objects, marking the confirmation of the existence of life and intelligence beyond Earth. The announcement by the UN also revealed that the objects’ orbit would directly intersect Earth’s within a year.
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When the objects, later identified as some kind of spacecraft, arrived over Earth on 17 February 2090, their function as warships were revealed as the spacecraft destroyed the minimal amount of space-based defenses Earth’s nations could construct and deploy in the course of a year. At the same time, the same warships began a campaign of orbital bombardment of Earth’s surface, targeting major population centers.
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To the shock of all, the Tyrum warships had no point defense systems and were utterly defenseless against the sudden ICBM barrage directed at them. The largest and most powerful ships were soon taken down, as a coordinated launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles disabled the larger ships, limiting the Tyrum's ability to bombard the planet from orbit. Undeterred however, the Tyrum brought up their nesting ships and launched a ground invasion, focused primarily upon the regions they had managed to devastated before their primary warships were disabled. Landing in Australia, Germany, Virginia, California, Rio de Janeiro, Japan, Manchuria, and Sichuan, the Tyrum swarms rapidly began to spread out, constructing massive terraforming spires as they went to fundamentally alter earths biosphere to better suit their needs.
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In response, Earth’s militaries coordinated a global-scale intercontinental ballistic missile nuclear strike against the invading warships, destroying a significant amount of the largest and most heavily armed ships in the course of the action. This action would severely limit the ability of the alien invasion to conduct orbital strikes against Earth, leading to a prolonged global war of attrition against the now revealed aliens.
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Russia, and at what at this point constituted a military union of Canada and the United States unleashed what remained of the earths nuclear arsenal, this time at the ground landing sites. The result of which plunged the planet into a nuclear winter but also caused spectacular damage to the Tyrum swarms and allowed for the Human armies to rally. The Indian Republic, bolstered by reinforcements from the Middle East mounted a powerful defense of the Himalayan Line, while a Joint Army of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay engaged in furious resistance within the Amazon rain forest. General Templin, now declared Marshall of the North American Union attempted to hold the line on the North American Heartland using the Appalachian Mountains and Rocky Mountains as a buttress. Initial efforts failed, and Cheyenne Mountain had to be abandoned following the defeat of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Denver. The subsequent retreat, all the way to Edmonton was finally halted when the Canadian 2nd Armored defeated the swarm at Boise, Idaho. A counter attack by the American 10th mountain and 101st Airborne at the battle of Pittsburgh also halted efforts by the Tyrum to breach the Appalachian line. The Russian Tomoskya Division also held on the Dnieper river.
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The following seven years of war would see the collapse of every nation-state, the reduction of global infrastructure to pre-industrial conditions, and the occupation of one-third of the entire landmass of Earth. At one point in the war, there were ongoing engagements between the Humans and the alien invaders, later revealed as the Tyrum, on every continent, most notably Europe and South America.<ref>[https://shop.templin.institute/collections/flags/products/european-commissariat-flag <nowiki>[2]</nowiki>]</ref><ref>[https://shop.templin.institute/collections/flags/products/south-american-commissariat-flag <nowiki>[3]</nowiki>]</ref>
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The United Kingdom for its part, having avoided the vast majority of the orbital bombardment rapidly established itself as the center of human command and control, with the scattered war fleets of the United States, Russia, China, and Japan rapidly relocating to the British Isles for protection, while simultaneously protecting the archepelego from invasion by the Tyrum swarm which had overrun France and Spain. With masses of Refugees pouring into western spain and Portugal, an emergency council of war declared in the same bunker that had once housed Winston Churchill during the london blitz. The British Officers demanded immediate action to save Portugal, Englands oldest ally. They were backed up by the American contingent led by the acting commandant of the US Marine Corps, who by rank also by the archaic vagaries of rank structure in the US military was the senior surviving officer of the US navy. The decision was final. Humanity would counter attack in Europe. Despite its protestations as part of United Nations disarmament treaties, it was revealed the United Kingdom still possessed 12 trident tipped nuclear weapons. On August 7th, 2091, british Submarines launched a nuclear barrage on the tyrum swarm in Spain, followed up by landing by the British Army, and the Royal and United States marines at Lisbon. The Tyrum were held outside the city, while a spearhead by the 2nd Royal Grendariers Regiment in the north rushed largely unopposed to secure the northern coast and open up the Tyrum Swarm in spain to attack from its flank rear. With their annihilation, the 2nd grenadiers retook of the advancing American Marine Expeditionary Force, cementing its position in the annals of honor of humanity and continuing its existence as a division of the GTU.
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== The European Theatre ==
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With the major Army formations forcing the Tyrum into a stalemate, their invasion faltered, and soon came under massive attack by surviving human populations within the occupation areas.Eight years of Guerrilla warfare followed, along with hit and run attacks that eventually weakened the Tyrum. Their inability to destroy the central Asian, North American, and Indian manufacturing centers that were not colocated with major cities allowed for ever greater amounts of war material to be produced and used against the invaders. A strengthened humanity, now under the direction of the Emergency Provisional Government launched a counter offensive on all fronts, to the point that they could reclaim the occupied third of the planet and dismantle the terraforming spires that had been constructed and ending the war with the death the remaining Tyrum.
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On February 17th, 2090 CE, the Tyrum launched their first orbital strike, destroying the city of Berlin. The Tyrum's orbital bombardment inflicted cataclysmic damage to the civilian government of the European Federation. However, the Federation's military was very decentralised with several regional commands and was unable to be crippled in a single decapitating strike. This redundancy allowed the EUROCORPS to remain organised while the Tyrum landed ground forces in Europe. Landing in Central Europe the Tyrum overran several German, Belgium, and Czech States, threatening to split what remained of the European Federation in two.<ref>https://youtu.be/O6sKRICU20s?t=37</ref>
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In response to the deteriorating situation EUROCORPS military authority was further decentralised. The remaining European forces organised themselves into a loose coalition of battlegroups, each capable of acting independently and without external support. The size and composition of these battlegroups varied wildly, some were little more than scattered battalions garrisoning small towns, while others consisted of entire army groups which controlled vast territories and integrated themselves into local governments. This so called "European Strategy" was later discovered to have been the most effective in the entire war.<ref>https://youtu.be/O6sKRICU20s?t=149</ref>
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== Aftermath ==
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Following the defeat of the Tyrum, the various military commands would relocate to the United Kingdom which remained one of the few places left on Earth with developed infrastructure relatively undamaged by the war. London would play host to the Emergency Provisional Government, which at the time had been a largely loose coordinating body directing the various human militaries and resistance organizations. With Earths biosphere in collapse and a full third of the human population dead, along with the collapse of virtually every national government, the Emergency Provincial Government became the de facto world government . It was led by the executive council representing the principle military commanders, with General Templin chosen as its head with the rank of "Marshall". It would form the core of the future human government that would be known as the Greater Terran Union. [[Category:Military]]
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The improvised command structure of the coalition made the integration of foreign elements easier than it might have otherwise been. Over the course of the war, surviving battlegroups from the Middle East, Eurasia, Africa, and North America were integrated into the coalition command structure. This command, rather than a rigid, traditional military hierarchy, consisted of a coalition of high-ranking military officers drawn from the battlegroups making up the coalition. This coalition command was able to organise the coalition, resulting in the European Counter-Offensive. The Franco-German Counterattack and the Spanish-Italian landing at Algiers began to turn the tide of the war against the Tyrum in the European Theatre. The success of these offensives cemented the Coalition as the most effective human military force on the planet.<ref>https://youtu.be/O6sKRICU20s?t=288</ref>
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The Franco-German Counterattack and the Eurasian push from Dresden pushed the Tyrum out of Europe, liberating the continent and ending fighting in the European Theatre. Following the liberation of Europe, the Coalition's forces were increasingly deployed to other theatres of war across the Earth.<ref>https://youtu.be/O6sKRICU20s?t=322</ref>
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== The North American Theatre ==
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In the opening hours of the war, the North American continent suffered a disproportionate number of orbital strikes from the orbiting Tyrum fleet. These strikes devastated the population and infrastructure of the North American Commonwealth, which was subsequently thrown into disarray. Weeks after these initial orbital strikes the Tyrum began landings in North America.
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By 2091 the Mt. Weather Emergency Operations Centre, the Raven Rock Mountain Complex, and Commonwealth Aerospace Defence Command had all been destroyed or captured by the Tyrum. By 2092 four Presidents of the North American Commonwealth had been killed and the Federal Government collapsed, afterward all functions of the state were run by the North American Commonwealth Military under the authority of Executive Order 19,407.
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Famous battles and events from the North American Theatre; such as the Vancouver Evacuation, the Jalisco Offensive, the Dakota Salient, and the Liberation of Chicago have gone on to form part of the founding mythos of the [[Greater Terran Union]].
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In 2097 the Emergency International Coalition committed significant forces to the North American Theatre to liberate occupied American territory. This offensive consisted of Chinese, Russian, Indian and European Soldiers alongside remnants of the Commonwealth military.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFYVMoQ_FMY <nowiki>[4]</nowiki>]</ref>
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== Known Events ==
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* Battle of Jeddah: Notable Major Human Victory during the war, the Battle of Jeddah is considered a seminal moment for the foundation of the Greater Terran Union, as an army composed of 19 former nations, notably including the North American Commonwealth, successfully repulsed a Tyrum attack.<ref>[https://shop.templin.institute/collections/flags/products/arabian-commissariat-flag <nowiki>[5]</nowiki>]</ref>
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* [[File:GTU Emblem2 Black.jpg|thumb|220x220px|The modern version of the GTU emblem, it is believed that the Budapest Campaign was its first appearance.]]Budapest Campaign: Notable as it was during the Budapest Campaign that the first claimed uses of the Greater Terran Union's emblem were recorded.<ref>[https://shop.templin.institute/collections/flags/products/balkan-commissariat-flag <nowiki>[6]</nowiki>]</ref>
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== References ==
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<references />
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[[Category:Greater Terran Union]]
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[[Category:Stellaris Invicta Season 1]]
Revision as of 18:20, 17 December 2020
The First Contact War, otherwise remembered as The Invasion, the First Human-Tyrum War, or the Great Defensive War was the invasion of Earth by the Tyrum Consciousness between 2090 and 2097. The invasion resulted in a defensive victory for Earth, throwing off the invasion, and was instrumental in creating the Greater Terran Union.
On 22 April 2089, military surveillance satellites operated by nine nations individually and simultaneously identified a collection of large objects passing through the orbit of Neptune, effectively entering the Solar System.[1] In the course of the following weeks, both civilian and military observatories continued to track the object until an announcement was made by the United Nations Security Council on the almost certain artificial nature of the objects, marking the confirmation of the existence of life and intelligence beyond Earth. The announcement by the UN also revealed that the objects’ orbit would directly intersect Earth’s within a year.
When the objects, later identified as some kind of spacecraft, arrived over Earth on 17 February 2090, their function as warships were revealed as the spacecraft destroyed the minimal amount of space-based defenses Earth’s nations could construct and deploy in the course of a year. At the same time, the same warships began a campaign of orbital bombardment of Earth’s surface, targeting major population centers.
In response, Earth’s militaries coordinated a global-scale intercontinental ballistic missile nuclear strike against the invading warships, destroying a significant amount of the largest and most heavily armed ships in the course of the action. This action would severely limit the ability of the alien invasion to conduct orbital strikes against Earth, leading to a prolonged global war of attrition against the now revealed aliens.
The following seven years of war would see the collapse of every nation-state, the reduction of global infrastructure to pre-industrial conditions, and the occupation of one-third of the entire landmass of Earth. At one point in the war, there were ongoing engagements between the Humans and the alien invaders, later revealed as the Tyrum, on every continent, most notably Europe and South America.[2][3]
The European Theatre
On February 17th, 2090 CE, the Tyrum launched their first orbital strike, destroying the city of Berlin. The Tyrum's orbital bombardment inflicted cataclysmic damage to the civilian government of the European Federation. However, the Federation's military was very decentralised with several regional commands and was unable to be crippled in a single decapitating strike. This redundancy allowed the EUROCORPS to remain organised while the Tyrum landed ground forces in Europe. Landing in Central Europe the Tyrum overran several German, Belgium, and Czech States, threatening to split what remained of the European Federation in two.[4]
In response to the deteriorating situation EUROCORPS military authority was further decentralised. The remaining European forces organised themselves into a loose coalition of battlegroups, each capable of acting independently and without external support. The size and composition of these battlegroups varied wildly, some were little more than scattered battalions garrisoning small towns, while others consisted of entire army groups which controlled vast territories and integrated themselves into local governments. This so called "European Strategy" was later discovered to have been the most effective in the entire war.[5]
The improvised command structure of the coalition made the integration of foreign elements easier than it might have otherwise been. Over the course of the war, surviving battlegroups from the Middle East, Eurasia, Africa, and North America were integrated into the coalition command structure. This command, rather than a rigid, traditional military hierarchy, consisted of a coalition of high-ranking military officers drawn from the battlegroups making up the coalition. This coalition command was able to organise the coalition, resulting in the European Counter-Offensive. The Franco-German Counterattack and the Spanish-Italian landing at Algiers began to turn the tide of the war against the Tyrum in the European Theatre. The success of these offensives cemented the Coalition as the most effective human military force on the planet.[6]
The Franco-German Counterattack and the Eurasian push from Dresden pushed the Tyrum out of Europe, liberating the continent and ending fighting in the European Theatre. Following the liberation of Europe, the Coalition's forces were increasingly deployed to other theatres of war across the Earth.[7]
The North American Theatre
In the opening hours of the war, the North American continent suffered a disproportionate number of orbital strikes from the orbiting Tyrum fleet. These strikes devastated the population and infrastructure of the North American Commonwealth, which was subsequently thrown into disarray. Weeks after these initial orbital strikes the Tyrum began landings in North America.
By 2091 the Mt. Weather Emergency Operations Centre, the Raven Rock Mountain Complex, and Commonwealth Aerospace Defence Command had all been destroyed or captured by the Tyrum. By 2092 four Presidents of the North American Commonwealth had been killed and the Federal Government collapsed, afterward all functions of the state were run by the North American Commonwealth Military under the authority of Executive Order 19,407.
Famous battles and events from the North American Theatre; such as the Vancouver Evacuation, the Jalisco Offensive, the Dakota Salient, and the Liberation of Chicago have gone on to form part of the founding mythos of the Greater Terran Union.
In 2097 the Emergency International Coalition committed significant forces to the North American Theatre to liberate occupied American territory. This offensive consisted of Chinese, Russian, Indian and European Soldiers alongside remnants of the Commonwealth military.[8]
Known Events
Battle of Jeddah: Notable Major Human Victory during the war, the Battle of Jeddah is considered a seminal moment for the foundation of the Greater Terran Union, as an army composed of 19 former nations, notably including the North American Commonwealth, successfully repulsed a Tyrum attack.[9]
The modern version of the GTU emblem, it is believed that the Budapest Campaign was its first appearance.
Budapest Campaign: Notable as it was during the Budapest Campaign that the first claimed uses of the Greater Terran Union's emblem were recorded.[10]
