Wangdaio Colony Blackout

The Wangdaio Colonies, established in 3008 GSC, were a self-declared nation originating from Empire of Tai Pan. The nation lasted for two years until a series of events led to a civil war and a subsequent cease in all communications and relations. The “Blackout” as it was dubbed by its survivors, came from the complete jamming and shutdown of all Wangdaio Shouwei Forces communications relays leading to no inter-system communications and isolated every colony and fleet from each other. This allowed the Heise, Prime Minister Ayana Morita's and Prince Yue Ziyi's personal guard and the Colonies' Intelligence and Research division, under the leadership of the Crown Prince to stag a coup d'état to depose the Prime Minister for unknown reasons. The coup led to the destruction of much of the Shouwei fleet, but also the destruction of most of the colonial infrastructure and a significant power vacuum following the disappearance of Prime Minister Ayana. What confuses most intelligence officials to this day is why the Crown Prince also disappeared following his own coup which suggests something did not go to plan.

The exact cause of the coup and Blackout is unknown, but the steps that were taken are not so. From the published account of a former Shouwei Captain on his and his crew's attempt to break the blackout, the jamming originated from Shouwei Fleet Headquarters on Saint-Yves as a strong and adaptive electronic countermeasure frequency which overran the long-range frequencies required for inter-system communication. This jamming cut off all communications between Saint-Yves and the other primary colonies while partially blanketing in and outbound communication traffic from Ehrenzeller, Gavreau, Kotoku, andKowloon. The communication buoys established for long distance communication between the colonies and the other nations were remotely disabled, cutting off outside communication completely.

At the same time as cutting off jamming, the Heise were also tasked with the seizure of the various fleets of the Shouwei through various means as well as cutting off supply lines between colonies to ensure the capitulation of the individual colonial governments. Two anchorages: Alpha Anchorage “Midway”, near the Nepe system, and Bravo Anchorage “Fullway,” nestled between Topia and Gavreau were ordered to be captured or destroyed at all costs to guarantee the Shouwei would be limited in operation, and while Fullway was captured intact along with a number of docked vessels, Midway was damaged and abandoned after all remaining docked ships were either destroyed or escaped.

Without Shouwei Fleet Communications, ShouCom, nor the individual Fleet long range Communications, FleetCom, each fleet was isolated to local, short-range, visual bands of communication between ships. Various fleets were lost completely, the Tenth Fleet in Ehrenzeller seemingly disappeared completely and are listed missing in action to this day. Due to this lack of communications, various groups of ships from various fleets banded together as impromptu battle groups, some even going into formalities of naming while others ignored the procedure in favor of more important things.

There was no known complete keys to see through the jamming, though several partial keys were made in various areas which allowed for varying levels of breaking. These keys allowed some groups to push towards less damaged systems to try and regroup while for others it allowed for easier striking of target, both Heise or Colonial. Keys found their way around through the capture or recovery of different ships, letting curious minds find the similar lines of code and isolate them. As the system used to create the blackout was always adapting, ships from closer systems had similar codes while ships from farther out had drastically different ones.

As the blackout developed more chaos rose between systems. Without the regular patrols executed by the now frantic Shouwei, piracy ran rampant and hostile Xenos began to eye the weak and vulnerable honeypots of the colonies.

While not immediately known to the Shouwei, not every member of the Heise personnel were in on the coup nor did most of the covert operatives know the plans of their kindred. While the various covert operatives planned and wargamed to put down the Shouwei resistance to their plans, others were going about their regular occupations of intelligence and research. This led to another, secondary force of chaos that plagued the organization and redeployment of Shouwei forces. Once it was discovered that the “Heise” were the guilty party, the innocent were suddenly forced into a varying manner of treatment. Numerous were slain before proper identification was given and ever more were captured in jails and brigs without a trial.

After the coup was sprung, and the shockwaves were felt from border to border, some Heise defected from the Prince once the destruction was seen while others clutched to their missing leader with hope that he would reappear. Treatment of the Heise varied wildly across the remnants of the Shouwei, from the relatively few who tried them to the rising majority who viewed them as open traitors and opened fire with no question.

The Heise themselves had varied opinions on themselves too, with their own vessels being used as tools of destruction and death. The covert research leading to extremely effective weapons and stealth technology being implemented on their regular ships as well as the development of secret vessels designed to match their new operations. Information on these covert ships is a mystery, with the large majority of them either still unseen or completely destroyed.

As the struggle to regroup and attack commenced, the large fleets tried their best to keep together and fight off their regular enemies, the pirates and Xenos, but now the Heise on top led to stressed crews that were already wrung nearly dry. Supplies dwindled down to extreme minimums. Morale was all but gone, and this in turn led to increased desertions. Some wanted to return to their homes to hopefully find survivors while others tried to make tracks for the borders to escape the chaos.

Despite being noble in cause, these deserters met more hardships which drove them to extremes. Good men became murderers, bad men became an uncomfortable norm, and desertions continued to rise. Piracy became a desperate attempt to gain necessary items such as food and water. Raids were a common occurrence, and this stress was the final star that broke the back of the already damaged and fractured infrastructure of the colonies.

Fires burned in the cities for days instead of minutes, shortages of water led to draining of rivers and extreme rationing by the remaining communities and group planetside. With food an extreme commodity, a fair number of people fell into carnal desires and became more feral, turning to feast on their own kind.

Each planet had its own chaotic twists and turns. Cities collapsed in on themselves, each of the government buildings in some state of damage or, shouwei Headquarters especially, destroyed. High rises became self-sufficient communities of scavengers while others as dwellings for the now wild populace. Power stations eventually failed due to the lack of maintenance and without something keeping them there, fires burned without being tended.

Pockets of resistance to the attacking Heise stood for a time but organized resistance was a rare occurrence. Most symbols of the once standing government fell, while other communities held on to the lost with unbridled defiance. Life attempted to forge on among the dead. Leaders rose and fell, small factions gained power and at the same time consumed themselves. The Heise occupiers held their lines until the breaks in their ranks and quickly dropping morale affected them the same as the Shouwei. Desertions broke the fragile breaks and tears and without Ziyi's guidance fell in and consumed themselves in the confusion.

As the days became months, and then years, more began to rise out of the ashes. Planetary fighting had risen to a daily grind, with spaceports being the prized lands and the ships which laid dormant in them their road to freedom. Pirates syndicates backed both sides, Slavers, both inside the border and out, had begun to take advantage of the fighting to bolster their inventories and sell to the highest bidder.

The remnants of the Shouwei tried to hold the lines against the pirates, traitors, Xenos, and sometimes themselves. Survivors were cut off and without safe ways to communicate, they could only think about themselves. This is where certain known heroes began to rise. Various admirals and leaders amongst the Shouwei united the castaways into regulated standing militias and battle groups and began to harass the groups of Heise or try to rescue as many as they could. The Heise had begun to split into factions of their own, particularly between loyalties to their missing leaders. Those loyal to the Prime Minister backed up the Shouwei or left to find their family, those with the Prince attempted to hold their ground to await his return. The hot coals of the coup erupted again and again as each faction fought the other.

As the old factions had begun to shift, the secrets of both sides had begun to leak out. Some of the experiments that the Heise had developed had begun to be unearthed. Men had gone mad, people had disappeared, women had become barren after already given birth to healthy children. Even the great ships were destroyed without a shot fired. In some rare occurrences, the dead had risen to be put down again. Communities were forced to move or be consumed by death.

A group of Shouwei ships, led by Captain Yelran Jandar on the WCS Caliburn, had been executing raids against groups of Heise vessels in an attempt to keep space traffic open between the Nepe and the rest of the core worlds. Eventually after one year of continuous fighting, the battlegroup was pushed towards Saint-Yves after the destruction of Midway Anchorage. Having taken heavy weapons and components from Midway before its destruction, Jandar's battle group was able to secure garrison in the Saint-Yves system near La Fleur's moon.

Concealing their presence by staying in shadow of the moon on low power, Jandar sent a handful of scouting parties down to the Capital to investigate the silence of ShouCom and the jamming while the fleet was repaired and system galvanized for parts and ammunition. The scouting party revealed that the jamming seemed to be originating from the transmitters in what was left of the Shouwei Headquarters building. He ordered a strike team to destroy the Shouwei Fleet Communications System in hopes of dropping the blackout but upon arrival the strike team was met with resistance. Ziyi's Heise had the building booby trapped and had a substantial force still living in the former headquarters building. After finding the transmission system routed into an unknown source in the bunker beneath the building and already effectively destroyed, the strike team returned with casualties, intelligence, and a captured Heise operative.

The captured operative confessed to Jandar that the Heise had jammed the Shouwei to keep them in the dark about the Coup but that the second stage of the occupation had never arisen. They force was only supposed to capture the headquarters building and jam the Shouwei, not hold the building. The strike team's intelligence was brought next, a partially constructed Heise decryption key. This key was strong enough to partially see through the core systems and was suspected to allow for long distance communication but was never attempted. THe key was added to the Caliburn's mainframe and copies distributed to all ships of Jandar's battle group. Jandar was committed to uniting the Shouwei remnants and attempting to regain control of colonial space.

At the fifth year of the blackout, amidst the corpses and smoke, a group of Shouwei under the command of Admiral Ember Connelly had begun rescuing groups of survivors from the core worlds and moving them to a central location to be evacuated. In the Topia system, Connelly had begun to ready the populace she could rescue for a mass evacuation towards the The Interstellar Alliance and break out. At one point, Captain Jandar's battle group joined Admiral Connelly's and turned over what civilians they had before acting as their guard.

Eventually, contact was made between the Alliance as well as Tai Pan for evacuation and the plan was sprung. Those who Admiral Connelly had been able to rescue were either taken in by the Alliance or allowed back into Tai Pan. What was left of the combat-capable ships were taken into mothball to eventually be investigated and be disposed of.

While an incredible number of people were evacuated from the colonies, there are still people unaccounted for. The communications jamming still remains in affect for the remnant Shouwei and Heise that did not escape or break out. This has deterred scavengers from attempting to get closer to the primary systems of the former colonies. Multiple attempts have been made around the exterior colonies to investigate the blackout but results have remained inconclusive. Systems such as Ehrenzeller and the Tenth Fleet are still shrouded in mystery. Some of the secrets still remain dormant beneath the ashes of the Wangdiao Colonies and have yet to be uncovered or brought to light. So many questions are still left unanswered. What happened to the Prime Minister and Prince? Was the Prince working with outside empires? How many people are still left in the colonies? Answers lie somewhere among the dead and the survivors still left.

Some systems have been reclaimed by Tai Pan, such as Kowloon and Kotoku. Both of these systems have since become a part the self-governing Taianese suzerainty, the Solarity of Kowloon, as well as given the remainder of operational Shouwei vessels that Tai Pan held. Though without the Shouwei Fleet Yards nor the Anchorages the defense force of Kowloon, the Royal Order of the Shield, has had to galvanize the more run-down ships and construct all new construction facilities in order to maintain their ships.

The remaining worlds of the colonies still remained unclaimed, mostly due to the effort required to rebuild its shattered cities and infrastructure to be deemed livable again. The Ehrenzeller system, now back to its old nickname of E-11, was the location of which former Prime Minister Ayana Morita had been found in stasis and rescued by a group of mercenaries before being brought to the Kowloon System and Bhelith Arleigh.