Revolutionary Committee of Nachiketa

The Revolutionary Committee of Nachiketa is the primary Insurrectionist faction currently opposing the UNSC’s presence in the world of Nachiketa. Founded shortly after the UNSC recolonization of the world following the Human-Covenant War, the Committee is devoted to driving out the UNSC and any corporate assets through any means necessary. It has its origins in the student protest groups and political activism blocks known simply as the Committee of Nachiketa. The CN rejected the 2558 election of Ernesto Da Cunha as Chairman of the Nachiketa Planetary Plenum, who they considered a puppet for the UEG. Nachiketa was on the cusp of developing self sufficiency, and the CN espoused that this election was just one part of an effort to upend the social order of Nachiketa and forcibly return the world to the fold of the UNSC. The RCN had organized demonstrations and talks with the Da Cunha administration, that were making headway to some form of equitable arrangement between the UNSC and the world. 
But on July 4th, 2564; a protest had left UNSC Marine Corp Second Lieutenants Marisa Calgari and Dmitri Nkechi dead by gunshot wounds. The exact nature of these killings remains unclear even to this day, but the result of the violence was apparent. Da Cunha had clamped down hard on political opposition, jailing dozens if not hundreds of CN affiliated individuals, with and without trial. Naturally, this had the opposite effect on the CN, and they had taken a more radical tack against the Da Cunha administration. This series of back and forth escalations would result in a popular revolt in 2567, known colloquially as Two-Week Revolution, with the newly christened Revolutionary Committee of Nachiketa at the forefront of planning and organization of both combat and civil disobedience efforts. 
Da Cunha, against the orders of his UNSC advisors, had ordered a full mobilization of NPP forces against the RCN and the Nachiketa Civil War would be sparked. Caught in a variety of conflicts already, the UNSC had insisted that they would remain neutral during the war, but at the NPP’s urging and with the fight eventually turning against the government, hawkish UNSC commanders had deployed the 17th Marine Division and the 22nd Shock Troops Battalion to keep the peace on Nachiketa and ensure the continued survival of the NPP as a UNSC aligned body. These forces were supported by the Marathon-class Heavy Cruisers UNSC Of No Consequence and UNSC No Place Like Home. Quietly a SPARTAN-III team, Banyal, was also deployed to assist in covert operations against the RCN. 
Fully aware of the overwhelming forces arrayed against them, the RCN had fled to the coastal and rural areas of the colonized world, and proceeded to mount a protracted campaign of guerrilla war against the Marines and NPP troops stationed in the cities.
== Historical Context ==
A relatively late addition to the UNSC’s Outer Colonies, Nachiketa is a gaia world that was flagged for settlement in late 2487, with the first colonists establishing themselves by the start of the next century. Nachiketa’s remarkable for being entirely habitable by humans with negligible terraforming efforts. Additionally, Nachiketa had played host to a rich biosphere teeming with new flora and fauna that were of interest to the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries and had boasted a crust rich in a variety of valuable minerals, such as tantalum, niobium, and lithium. UEG administrators and corporate interest groups jumped on the chance to exploit these resources, and this was made the first priority of the colony. Decades after the establishment and stabilization of the Nachiketan colony, it was beginning to turn a profit for the UEG. 
Even through chaos of the Human-Covenant War, the Nachiketa had grown, even thrived as it opened its borders to refugees seeking work and homes from the destroyed Harvest, and later Reach. For reasons yet unknown, Nachiketa was passed over by the Covenant armada, perhaps it was deemed too unimportant a target on their inexorable march towards Reach, and other more strategically valuable planets. The UNSC had pulled the garrison from Nachiketa and directed them to aid in the defense of the fortress-world of Reach, ultimately leaving the planet out to dry as they consolidated their forces around the Inner Colonies. 
Left to its own devices and grimly certain of the fate of Earth and humanity, the Nachiketa Planetary Plenum had enacted protocols for self sufficiency, and built up its own industry and military might in the event that they were discovered. Infrastructure and agricultural efforts were the primary goals of the NPP at the time, and slowly but surely Nachiketa was able to support itself, NPP councils had even considering sending interstellar aid vessels to other colonies but these plans were shot down. 
However by 2552, corruption and nepotism had begun to run rampant in the NPP, taxpayer funds redirected to private accounts, public projects slowed thanks to favoritism, and infrastructure had begun to degrade due to neglect. In direct response, a grassroots movement called the Committee of Nachiketa had formed as a coalition of popular political opposition groups which had called for an end to the flagrant misuse of public funds and resources. 
With the UNSC’s return to Nachiketa in 2556, many had cheered for the survival of the human race. Many welcomed the newfound security and assurance the UNSC brought with them and Ernesto Da Cunha, the Chairman candidate tacitly supported by the UNSC had won the elections in a landslide and promised to clean up the Plenum through any means necessary.
What Da Cunha and the UNSC promised and what had occurred were very different things. Instead of ill-equipped Nachiketan concerns getting contracts for projects offworld ones were. The Committee of Nachiketa had turned their attentions not just to the Da Cunha administration, but to the UNSC at large as well.
== The Committee of Nachiketa ==
As the Da Cunha administration had promised more contracts to offworld industrial concerns, and the material condition on Nachiketa failed to improve, the Committee of Nachiketa had made their moves. They had held demonstrations demanding improvements to public transit, Chatter network infrastructure, and the reigning in of corporate interests both native and foreign to Nachiketa. For the most part, these were led by student activism groups and boasted a healthy membership among the rural and urban working class citizens of Nachiketa. Even the Nachiketan capital of Fansipan had a branch of the Committee in it. 
While some members of the Plenum had acquiesced to the demands, many others didn’t. Being backed by powerful corporate bodies like SinoViet and Jotun Heavy Manufacturing, several Plenum members had absolutely refused to budge on any number of the Committee’s desires. Da Cunha played a moderate role in these discussions in an attempt to placate both the people and the corporations. Ultimately after months of political stonewalling and few tangible changes, the demonstrations had gotten slowly but steadily more violent. The small UNSC security detachment had been activated to supplement the NPP’s police forces. DaCunha responded by clamping down on political freedoms, a prelude to the crackdowns to come.
== July 4th Riot ==
The peak of the demonstrations had come in the early Nachiketan afternoon. A protest march in Founder’s Plaza in Fansipan had become especially disorderly, and riot police were called in to contain the marchers, quickly subduing and arresting all present regardless of involvement in the march. Protestors had responded to police violence with Molotovs, and the UNSC Marine detachment was mobilized to support the NPP police forces there. Two hours after the mobilization, four gunshots rang out from a building behind the rioters and struck two Marine second lieutenants, both dying on the scene. Within minutes, the Marines and police had stormed into the rioters, firing nonlethal ammunition, gas grenades, and water cannons as they made arrests. Da Cunha, incensed at the violence in the city had called for a total dissolution of the Committee of Nachiketa, declaring them an Insurrectionist terrorist organization, a move the UNSC soon followed. Sweeping anti-demonstration laws were passed with unanimous support from the Plenum, and July 5th was marked by a near constant police raids on suspected and confirmed Committee members. 
== Birth of the Revolutionary Committee ==
What members of the Committee had survived the purges had come to an agreement that direct action must be taken. Diplomacy had only earned them more empty promises and as of July 4th, corpses. The goal of the Committee had become the violent overthrow of the Plenum in order to replace it with ‘citizen’s councils.’ At the heart of this effort was a young officer’s candidate student named Eduardo de São José. The young adult from the small coastal city of Corcovado had grown increasingly disillusioned with the military, where Nachiketa’s social divisions were especially apparent and upon witnessing the events of July 4th, had his previous radical beliefs reinforced. An outspoken and charismatic ideologue, de São José had made dozens of impassioned speeches about the need for the people of Nachiketa to rise up against the Plenum. Quietly, much of the working class population had thrown their lot in with the newly christened Revolutionary Committee of Nachiketa. 
Da Cunha, still infuriated over the challenge to his authority, had stepped up raids and insisted that the UNSC provide military assistance in these times. After much deliberation, the UNSC delegate had refused on grounds that all UNSC assets available were tasked in higher priority sectors. In the interim, the RCN was only growing stronger, and had even found their way into the NPP’s military. Confident in the organization’s capabilities, and buoyed by other intellectuals and professionals, Eduardo believed that there was only one step left before Nachiketa would rise up. 
An act of propaganda of the deed.
== The Two-Week Revolution ==
The inciting act of the Nachiketan Civil War would be the Two-Week Revolution, a general uprising that burned through the urban centers of the world over the span of two weeks. While the UNSC and NPP at this point, was fully mobilized throughout the population centers on Nachiketa, the scale of the revolt would be unprecedented. When combined with confusion on rules of engagement and the presence of civilians in many areas of operations in the zone, government forces would find themselves paralyzed and flatfooted when faced with the lightweight and agile irregular forces employed by the RCN. 
Unbeknownst to all but the most perceptive of NPP officers, the military forces of the NPP had been infiltrated by the RCN’s agents, where they sought to inflame class differences and radicalize what officers they could. They had spent weeks spreading propaganda, arranging for weapons and equipment smuggling from armories and motor pools, and planting explosives around critical sensor installations. While the RCN had expected difficulty in accomplishing their covert goals, they found the NPP’s military far more corrupt than expected and a few key bribes had gone a long way in preserving their cover. By the end of the months-long preparation phase, the RCN had determined that some type of dramatic action was necessary. Nachiketa was a powder keg, all that was needed was the spark. 
What exactly this spark would be was long debated by the members of the RCN’s nascent Central Committee, some argued for mass work stoppages or hunger strikes and extensive protest efforts, others had demanded violence. Ultimately, the ones advocating for a violent revolution would win out. 
On September 17th, the Two-Week Revolution began, starting with another protest of the Trinh administration’s abuses of power. Riot police and military units were deployed to quell the situation before violence had even been reported, and soon after dozens upon dozens of similar protests had cropped up across the world. The protests would eventually be dispersed by force on the part of the security forces, but as reports that these forces were entangled in riot suppression, the militants of the RCN would go to work. Across Fansipan, explosions rocked the central business district, including one in the lobby of the SinoViet headquarters. UNSC and security force troops were ambushed by RCN militants as they stormed into government buildings, looking to seize sensitive documents or destroy databanks. While the UNSC forces deployed in any of the cities would have been able to sweep away any of the assaults on their positions, the presence of civilians had prevented or severely delayed the deployment of armored vehicles or heavy weapons, oftentimes arriving too late to prevent RCN guerrillas from accomplishing their objectives. While the RCN was ultimately driven from many of the cities they fought in during the Two-Week Revolution, they had struck a blow to the NPP and the UNSC that would never heal, by casting severe doubt in either of the government’s capacities to protect the Nachiketan people. A handful of cities had thrown their lot in with the RCN and sheltered them as they retreated from UNSC aligned population centers.
== The War Years ==
Once the fires of the Two-Week Revolution had died down and the UNSC was left reeling by it, the Revolutionary Committee had made moves to consolidate its power and a manufacturing base to ensure its long term survival. The handful of smaller cities sympathetic to the Revolutionary Committee’s cause lacked any extensive heavy manufacturing capacity, let alone the ability to mass produce military equipment. Most of these cities, like Corcovado and Eixo were primarily focused on agriculture and exploitation of deep mineral veins. Luckily for the RCN, this would result in their enemies in the NPP needing to rely on the UNSC for much of the raw materials necessary to continue their war and to support their population. While this would be considered an acceptable situation by the NPP, this reliance would be exploited by the RCN as they ambushed spaceports and warehouses. While consolidating themselves in cities was opposed by many within the Central Committee, arguing that doing so would give the UNSC targets to bombard from the air or from orbit. Eduardo de São José had claimed the opposite, that wholesale bombardment of RCN controlled cities would result in a mass killing and humanitarian crisis that even the generals of the UNSC would be uncomfortable with. Ultimately, de São José would once again win out over his political opponents in the Central Committee, and the city of Eixo would be declared the capital of the Revolutionary Committee of Nachiketa, and soon after the legislation to reform the governments in their image would be passed among the twelve major cities they controlled. 
The early years of the war would be defined by guerrilla actions against the UNSC as they attempted to make moves into RCN held territory. The jungle proved to be far thicker than anticipated by the UNSC, and a majority of their armored fighting vehicles found themselves snagged in the brush and vines of the jungle. The unique electromagnetic properties of the world’s thunderstorms had also made airborne operations difficult to schedule on a regular basis. Forced into a low visibility environment the UNSC’s troops had little experience in, the RCN had seen much success in ambushes and feints, outmaneuvering them and encircling them as they attempted to retreat. This style of combat was developed by Lý Thành Bianh, a Nachiketan ex-ODST who had seen much action in the Insurrection and the Human-Covenant War. Bianh had adapted the asymmetrical warfare of the Insurrectionist to the heavily forested world, while also employing his knowledge of UNSC doctrine against them. As the first Defense Minister of the RCN, the possibility of airstrikes and bombardment had weighed heavily on his mind, and he had arranged for the smuggling of vast amounts of surface-to-air missiles from the United Rebel Front.
Despite the knowledge of the terrain and their ability to better navigate it, the advantages of the UNSC were still not completely negated by the environment of Nachiketa. The vast logistical capability of the UNSC resulted in the Marines being confident in their ability to settle in for a long war, the supply lines that kept the Marines in fighting shape were difficult, if not utterly impossible for the RCN to disrupt in a strategic sense. The RCN had no orbital capability, and the spaceports receiving supplies were among the most heavily defended installations in UNSC territory. Additionally, while it was difficult for the UNSC to leverage their tremendous firepower through the difficult terrain and airspace of Nachiketa, it wasn’t impossible and Scorpion tanks and Warthogs still played their roles in the battles especially around the urban centers of Nachiketa. Finally, while the RCN had a core of troops around defecting professional soldiers, a sizable portion of their military were militia and irregular troops, sent into combat with limited training and substandard weapons; typically, but not always, accompanied by their better trained and armed counterparts. 
A tactical problem the RCN would never be able to solve was the involvement of Team Banyal, the SPARTAN-III team responsible for search and destroy operations against the RCN. The best the RCN’s military could hope for was predicting the arrival of the Team and evacuating their targeted locations before the SPARTANs could arrive. Rarely was this ever perfectly effective, and the SPARTAN team inflicted disproportionate casualties on the RCN’s troops whenever they were encountered in battle. The only way the RCN could ever overpower the SPARTANs and drive them from a fight was through the usage of extensive, but inaccurate artillery bombardments. 
With these elements working for and against the RCN, the war on Nachiketa would later devolve into something of a slog, with the UNSC taking and holding strategic locations and refusing to leave their strongpoints, intending to choke out and demoralize the RCN into surrender. The RCN, while capable of ambushing the UNSC’s attempts to expand further or scout, was incapable of seizing much ground from the UNSC and holding it permanently. Both sides of the war would come to the realization that the war could only be won through decisive action, and that the first one of the powers to do so would be more likely to secure a killing blow against their enemies in the long run. 
The RCN had made preparations for a massive insurgent campaign across the remaining NPP held cities, hoping to shatter faith in the UNSC and the NPP’s ability to protect the Nachiketan people, all while striking at targets that have long since been out of reach of the RCN for years upon years. While such a daring attack would be an extraordinary risk, a successful completion of even half of the attack’s objectives would provide a massive leg up for the RCN’s war effort. The attack was then scheduled for the Foundation Day celebrations, and the arms and people were smuggled into the NPP cities.
== Places of Interest ==
Eixo is the capital city of the Revolutionary Committee, the first safe haven for them during the early days of their revolution. A city based around manufacturing and agriculture, Eixo was once the breadbasket and industrial heart of Nachiketa, receiving raw materials and sending out finished goods. With a large population of working class inhabitants, the people living in Eixo had quickly taken to the cause of the Revolutionary Committee. Many of the first members of the Committee of Nachiketa had come from Eixo, and for many years the population had been a thorn in the side of the Plenum for years. While the municipal government had made overtures to clamp down on anti-governmental thought, efforts were perpetually half hearted and token arrests were made to appease the Plenum in Fansipan. When the war on Nachiketa had turned hot, Eixo had declared its independence from the Plenum and announced its intent to shelter those who had also intended to break off from the planetary government. While the city lacked any fortifications with only a police force to defend itself, it seemed as though Eixo’s stint of rebellion would be short lived. However, the NPP security officers had consistently rejected proposals to bomb the city, as they were concerned over infrastructural damage and were confident in their ability to throw out the RCN while keeping the city’s valuable factories and food processing plants intact. This however, proved to be more difficult than expected, as the NPP’s troops were wholly unfamiliar with the deep jungle terrain. By the time the NPP’s troops had reached the outskirts of Eixo, the RCN’s remaining militants were already in defensive positions within Eixo. 
The fighting was short lived but intense, eventually the RCN’s troops had pushed the combined forces of the UNSC and NPP out of their city. Despite the NPP’s intentions on keeping the infrastructure of Eixo intact, the fighting had resulted in many industrial plants being destroyed or severely damaged. For much of the war Eixo’s population was occupied with rebuilding efforts, repairing what damage was inflicted during these battles. Many rebuilt factories were turned to arms manufacturing and the production of other military equipment, keeping the RCN and other militia groups’ well heeled with supplies. The UNSC and NPP had made several other attempts to retake the city, but they were stymied by bad weather, unfamiliar and heavily trapped terrain, and an increasingly potent air defense grid. 
During the cooler years of the war, and in Nachiketa’s post war years, Eixo was slowly but surely restored to a measure of its former glory. Thanks to its seaside position and temperate and comfortable environment, it had slowly grown a small but robust tourism industry, hosting people from across the RCN and even beyond the Nachiketa.
Oiapoque is one of the larger towns in the jungles of Nachiketa, a frequent battleground during the war between the UNSC and the RCN. Placed quite literally in the middle of the lines between the RCN and UNSC, it served as a base for RCN activities and a training camp for allied militias and other fighters. Little more than rudimentary structures made of corrugated metal and foliage, it had managed to avoid the attention of UNSC sensors and aerial patrols. Landmines and other booby traps were liberally seeded around the town.