Bug War

The "Bug War" is a generic term given to multiple conflicts between the Earth Federation and the Arachnid race. Since these aliens are able to live buried under rubble and dirt for years, areas that were originally believed to be pacified, occasionally erupt with Bugs. Although easily destroyed in space, once they land on a planet, they become nigh impossible to defeat.

Origin[]

The Arachnids were originally designed by the Horadrim to defeat the Caal. Not possessing souls, they were the perfect foot soldiers to fight the soul-jumping beings. Their ability to breed quickly overcame their difficulty to use Horadrim weapons. After bringing the Caal to a stalemate, they became the weapon of choice among the Horadrim. However, despite fighting the Caal to a stalemate, the losses among the slow-breeding Horadrim themselves were so great that there were no longer enough of them to maintain effective control over their Bug armies, and several swarms went rogue and began colonizing planets on their own.

Prelude to War[]

The Bug War started when one of these rogue swarms landed on Earth by crashing an asteroid they had hollowed out into a spacecraft into Rio de Janiero, Brazil, in 2001. This invasion was defeated by Bruce Von Eisenstein channelling a massive paradox backlash into an explosion that destroyed the invasion force. This act broke the Masquerade, damaged the Gauntlet, and brought about Gehenna. After a prolonged war among mages, vampires, werewolves, and their various factions and sub-factions, the Mages of the Technocracy emerged supreme, and to unite humanity behind them, they set out to find the origin of the Bugs and eliminate this common enemy.

While exploring for the Bug homeworld, mages from the Void Engineers managed to discover Hodraida and steal some of the Horadrim children for experiments. Once the theft was discovered, the aliens were outraged. They released the suppressed reproduction genes among the Arachnid swarms they still controlled and sent them to overwhelm Earth's defenses.

1st Bug War[]

The Bugs managed to seize several systems surrounding Earth, after their second attempt to bombard the humans failed in 2017, only managing to destroy Paris. The Tech Infantry proceed to cleanse the aliens off every system they discover the Arachnids on, clearing space for the Fed's later expansion. The biggest conflict was the battle for Proxima Centauri. Their forward base against Earth, it had to be defeated, so after a failed assault in 2010, Earth Fleet managed to isolate it by keeping a constant picket squadron to destroy ships erupting from the surface. In 2035, the Tech Infantry go in and finally eliminate the Arachnid threat. After searching more systems for Bug presence, the Grand Council declares the Bug menace over in 2040.

2nd Bug War[]

Although the initial batch of Arachnids were destroyed, a few Bug scouts settled on distant systems, breeding wildly against the human threat that never appeared. One of these was found on Epsilon (J9) in 2152, whereupon Earth Fleet glassed the planet. Eventually they evolved and totally overcame the control genes that the Horadrim had implanted in them and became wild. They developed Queens and started being able to coordinate their efforts on a planetary, and eventually interstellar ability.

In 2194, the Arachnids were ready, and launched a series of attacks to finally defeat the humans. In 2196, they land on Fieras, which leads to a strange three-way conflict between them, the Tech Infantry, and the Soul Eaters. This conflict catches the notice of the Horadrim, who decide to stop the attacks, but suddenly discover that after generations of breeding, they no longer control the Bugs at all.

By 2197, the Bug campaign was working against the Earth Federation. They begin losing systems and even sneak behind their lines to threaten Earth, but their fleet is destroyed off Mars. Two years later, the Drakat managed to communicate with a Queen Bug and offered an alliance. The Queen accepted, then promptly betrayed them to gain their systems. In 2200, the former Drakat worlds give them a base to attack the Katarn Protectorate, which are unable to get support from their allies, the Federation, due to the continued upswing in Bug attacks. By 2205, the Katarn are also eliminated. However, by 2208, the Fed have managed to reclaim their systems, and start to move to drive the Bugs away from their borders. In 2215, the Bugs have been pushed off of former Drakat worlds, and have begun to lose their core production capability. By 2223, this phase of the Bug War ends, leaving the only active Bug hive on Fieras.

3rd Bug War[]

In 2239, Bugs suddenly appear out of nowhere in the galactic southwest, reclaiming worlds that were supposedly free of Bug taint. Many worlds that were colonized suddenly found their settlements surrounded by Bugs. Unable to count on the Tech Infantry to defend against so many attacks, many settlers were evacuated, leaving much of the frontier to the Arachnids. Appearance of the Vin Shriak and the 3rd Civil War prevent an active campaign against the Bugs. The Bugs settle into a vast empire at the edge of known space.

Attempts by the Federation to reclaim former Bug worlds do not begin until 2264, when Arthur Clarke orders the Ares Battle Group into the Chapman's Folly system. Unfortunately, they meet the Caal instead, which leads to the collapse of the Earth Federation.

Season 8 Alternate Timeline[]

After the declaration of the Middle Kingdom in 2254, with most of their opposition either weakened or destroyed, Emperor Chiang decides to provide space to resettle troublesome populations that might threaten his reign. A campaign is launched against the Arachnids, reclaiming much of the galactic southwest. MK scientists --with assistance from the Horadrim-- learn how to reclaim control over the genetic marker that tames the Bugs. The only remaining wild Bugs are left in a four system quarantine zone.

Behind the Scenes[]

As should be obvious by now, the Bugs are based directly off of Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, and the Bug War was the focus of Season 1. Elements of the campaigns resembled more of Armor by John Steakley Much of this history had to be retconned recently. When we were actually playing Season One in 1997, it was set in around the year 2010, hence why the original version of this article mentioned things like a disastrous landing on H4 (New Madrid) in that year. This is of course the first mission of the 86th Platoon described in the article on Adam Selene. But when we were playing Season 4.3 four years later, Marcus set that season in 2243, and then when he realized that several first-season characters such as Arthur Clarke were still running around, he had to move the events of First Season up to 2197 to maintain a plausible timeline. Since this Wiki is mostly focused on the online story-writing version of the game rather than the tabletop dice-and-paper version, we have retconned this history a little bit to remain consistent with the published stories.