Pangaean Generation

**Dev. Status** | Conceptual

*"I see trees of green, red roses too*

*I see them bloom for me and you*

*And I think to myself what a wonderful world."*

- "What a Wonderful World", by Louis Armstrong
The **Pangaean Generation** are a Quantum faction consisting of radical environmentalists. Wielding strange technology, they make use of the power of nature to provide their weapons, including beasts that have not walked, swam, or flown on the earth in millions of years. They are prepared to return the Earth to a more primal place where man is at peace with nature, and woe betide anyone who break the peace.

## At a Glance

 **Basic Look** | Radical militias mixed with shocking biological experiments

## Background

### Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

In a world burdened by industrialization needed to fuel war and consumerism, the first victim is nature. Forests that once stretched from France to Poland have been cut down, pristine rivers now barely survivable from decades or even centuries of pollution. Species are disappearing at rates so great as to be the beginning of a great mass extinction event. Plains are turned into farmlands, driving away endemic species while the ice caps are shrinking every year. Some like the Allies claim to strongly consider the environmental impact of their actions, but yet the destruction continues.

Something had to give. Someone had to stand up for the long-suffering earth, against systems that hurt both man and nature. Of course, we were all children of the earth, and we are abusing each other and our universal mother. It was clear that the various forms of government made by the extant states of the world weren't doing enough to fix the issue. Radical environmentalists, ranging from scientists to local politicians to grassroots activists and others frequently came together to speak about a new form of politics.

Green politics.

Politics for sustainable living in harmony with the planet. While there were efforts to co-opt green politics in virtually all political spheres save those given over to anarcho-capitalism (and even then, some have started to consider them as no money can be made off of a dead ecosystem) all had their faults.

The Soviets and Allies both ultimately would side with raising the standard of living over environmental causes, regarding the idea of giving up large swathes of developed land to allow natural reclamation to be pure and simple madness. Japan, while having a certain cultural reverence for nature, ultimately desired resources for the expansion of its economy by busily ravaging their colonies for precious raw materials.

The League, while rhetorically against the exploitation of their land, were less keen on denying Africa its own natural wealth, believing that the Earth's natural beauty was best kept in parks rather than allowed to run truly free. Then there were the deplorable records of the likes of sprawls, who gave virtually no regard for the natural world in their race for infinite growth on a finite planet. Even the Technocrats, who planted new forests and made new life, did so under the presumption that they could make the Gaia hypothesis *better*. Everywhere they looked, the greens saw people who compromised on the issue of nature for progress. Some were willing to work with standing governments through conventional politics and activism, forming all manner of green parties and movements.

Others would brook no compromise in the defense of the Earth and the salvation of humanity, led by a radical who called herself "Pangaea" after the ancient supercontinent of the Triassic and Permian era - a name that would mean the one Earth for all. The woman - Marie-Françoise Madelon, a scientist who moved to the Combine following the grant money, had worked on some revolutionary biology projects. She had come to believe that the current model of society with its focus on constant, unchecked growth was unsustainable and would leave humanity extinct sooner or later. With WWIII, Pangaea began to get followers from other radical greens.

### Audible Spring

The end of WWIII left many disenchanted with all forms of currently popular politics, where millions have perished for the third time in history for minor shifts on the map. A whole generation of people were angry, lost, and quite willing to listen to the message of the radical greens. A humane economy would be developed that would do away with the issues of capitalism, socialism, and other stagnant economic models by focusing on human happiness and sustainable growth. Despoilment of nature would be halted and radical new ideas for habitation would be put forward. Cities would be made to exist in harmony with nature rather than be depressing sprawling concrete jungles devoid of wildlife.

A participatory democracy was promised, so that the decisions of society would be made by involved activists rather than cloistered politicians with no idea of what was going on the ground. If anyone was going to fight over anything, it was going to be for causes people agreed on, not to fight for alliances made in secret pacts or for causes not their own. Technology would be directed to healing and sustaining Gaia and providing for a form of living that could be done peacefully and healthfully with her. The barriers of nations that had provided so much strife, grief and suffering over so many years, would be torn down in a manner far more dramatic than even the most internationalist of communists had dared to go.

All of these ideals would take root and create a powerful new movement all around the world. From Siberia to California, from Nunavut to Tasmania, people were turning to the new ideals of Marie and her followers. Populist rhetoric and promising biological research gave Marie the approval of her compatriots, and in the vastness of the Amazon she and like-minded figures were given reign to develop their 'tubular' ideas and 'gnarly' developments for a New Age. She would, in time, prove to be the founding planner of a new group, one that united the disparate green movements under a single banner - a single Generation under Mother Earth.

The arsenal of the Earth Mother would need to be something bold, something that sands out and makes clear that no more would the youth of the world stand by while the old generations squandered away their future. Even with SPAM technology and the Technate's innovations, there was only so much these Pangaeans, as they came to call themselves, could do to challenge the industrial-economic complexes that had taken root in the old empires. But what they lacked in self-sufficiency, they made up for in biological ingenuity. Marie was a contributing member to Project Lost World and its experiments with direct DNA splicing, having the fascination with animals that had been extinguished by the past with a head full of ideas on how to better prepare life for war.

The system known as the Tau Harmonizer was created to rapidly alter genetics and create new, impossible creatures. Numerous experiments finally resulted in the first creation of her device that satisfied all her needs: a *Tyrannosaurus rex* she would adopt for herself named Susan. It was a symbol of the viability of militant environmentalism, big and bold and vicious as only nature could be. While Susan was perhaps not an entirely natural T-rex, with a number of modifications to make her more battle worthy, she was enough to convince the brethren of the Generation that they could win this fight.

### Gaia's Indignation

The Pangaeans would first strike in May of 1969, having quickly amassed an army to make their debut on the world stage. After thoroughly checking to make sure no workers were on site, they launched an assault on a Syndicate-affiliated factory based near a Peruvian jungle. The Legion Security detail found its position being overrun by rapidly growing flora that began to choke everything it could reach, disrupting power lines and communication feeds while the forests began to stir with the PLO. From the trees came a mob of specially-modified animals, including vicious dinosaurs and a host of radicalized Peruvian youth who attacked the outnumbered and outmatched Legion detail from all sides. With the local encampment having absolutely no idea what to expect, they were massacred to the last in two hours and the factory was swallowed by the forest.

While it took the Syndicate a while to figure out what exactly had happened, the Generation was already on the move and mobilizing for a worldwide revolution against the forces that had brought so much suffering to the Earth and humanity. Already tied to the proto-Confederacy's own green movements and on great terms with much of the Network, the Generation revealed its support for the cause by helping to drive a joint Allied-Unionist fire base out of the Everglades by turning the swamp into a death trap. Reservists were plucked away by choking vines, GI's were picked off by camouflaged marksmen and semi-aquatic creatures, and Guardians were crawled into by poisonous insectoid hybrids who dealt with the crew messily. It was not a victory without losses, but it clearly sent a message.

Soon, they began to spread these acts farther and farther, though their plans for strikes against the Soviet Union were delayed by Siberian chapters refocusing their efforts against Atomic China. While some would accuse their uprising of being uncoordinated, they had the tremendous enthusiasm for a cause that only radicalized youth could bring. Despite their labels as terrorists, the clever mass appeal strategies of the Pangaeans kept on enticing people towards their cause, a fresh one that seemed to offer people a place where they could be themselves and a safe space to vent against their oppressors. The movement just kept on growing and growing, seemingly without end.

While the Pangaeans operate independently, there are those that sponsor them directly and indirectly. More ecologically radical factions such as their parent organization in the Technate, the new and rising Ascendancy, and smaller radicals like the Phoenix Front and Inkarri would throw their weight behind the cause, providing weaponry, legal protection, and shared projects to keep the Generation from faltering against reactionary reprisals. With representation on the larger geopolitical sphere mobilizing along their own troops, the popular civilian front could expand their operations further, setting up organisations that sold "fair trade and socially-responsible" products in small markets around the world as well as grassroots donations by sympathetic people.

Already the Generation have made their name in organizing insurgent operations around the world: their label as public enemy within the Allied member-states, Soviet states , and numerous Sprawls is worn as a badge of pride. Yet, the world is a far stranger place than even the active imaginations of the Pangaean members could dare to think, and it remains to be seen if they are ready to confront not just the enemies they see before their eyes, but the things that go bump in the night...

## Unique Faction Mechanics

### Tau Harmonizer

The Tau Harmonizer is a unique system that allows you to customize infantry and animal unit's stats to some degree, giving you a number of packages to choose from such as greater defense that slows down the produced unit, greater melee damage, heightened speed at the cost of greater frailty; or potentially even give them new abilities such as camouflage or electric bursts. However, you should choose wisely as a produced unit can only be so altered before it is created

### Terra Mater

The Pangaean Generation is capable of "reclaiming" land and turning it into natural terrain, such as forests, wetlands, tall grass and the like. Natural terrain give a number of bonuses to Pangaean units, in plains they move faster, while forests give them cover bonuses and wetlands reduce the visual range at which Pangaean units can be spotted, and Pangaean buildings can be built in any claimed forest; as can their traps.

### Gaeamachy

Enemy units passing through Pangaean claimed natural terrain suffer continual morale and hit point damage at a slow but constant rate as all the little creatures of nature continually harass the enemy at every turn.

### Come, Child of Earth

Animal units suffer continual morale damage the longer they remain in the line of sight of a Pangaean unit thanks to special technology that can change an animal's loyalty; once they hit zero morale, they change over to the Pangaean side. Enemy animal units are not affected by the hit point damage of Gaeamachy, but still suffer the morale damage on top of this effect. Pangaean animals are immune to mind control effects such as Unionist PHS or the Allied Pavlov Handler tank.

### Nature's Healing

All Pangaean units slowly regenerate lost health thanks to Tau Harmonizer modifications to their genome, and even incapacitated but not dead units can stand back up and return to the fray if left alone long enough.

### Totally Radical!

Most Pangaean infantry have some means of moving faster than their own two legs can bring them. Until the tau harmonizer is built, most will use skateboards, mopeds, and scooters.

## Pangaea Liberation Organization

***"YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD WHIP US INTO SHAPE"***

***"WE WHIP YOU TO THE 21ST CENTURY NOW"***

-  Poster sign from an unnamed Pangaean protester
### Buildings

***"GO GREEN OR BE SMITHEREENS"***
Unlike other factions, the structures of the Generation can be placed in forests without clearing out the trees, if this is done; Pangaean buildings can only be spotted by non-detectors at very close range.

### Defences

To protect the installations of the Generation, these structures can be erected

### Traps

Traps can be set in any forested or wetland terrain as long as you have them in line of sight

### Infantry

***"NUTHIN' TO LOSE BUT POLLUTARD SCALPS"***

### Vehicles

***"2, 4, 6, 8***

***MELTED FACES ARE YOUR FATE"***

### Watercraft

***"WASH YOUR MOUTHS WITH SEA DINO PISS"***

## Behind the Scenes

The Pangaean generation draws a great deal on 90s fiction, such as Jurassic Park, totally RADICALism, and the like, and is also inspired by the RTS games Impossible Creatures, Paraworld and a bit of Jurrasic Primitive Wars.