First Terra-Kepler War

The **First Terra-Kepler War**, also known as the **Defence of Earth** in Teegarde, and **Expansion 13** in Kepler, was a system-wide war of aggression lasting from 2027 to 2033. It was fought between virtually every nation on Earth, with the unified planet of Teegarde against the Keplian Empire, often called Kepler. Earth and Teegarde, often called the 'Coalition', were supported by the Lourieux Resistance Forces, and the comparatively primitive unified peoples of Proxima B, who became aware of the war through their own astronomical discoveries. Kepler was supported by Populus Teegarde, a dissident faction from Teegarde. Lasting 6 years, most of the war was spent in stalemate, with Earthly forces refusing to take part in large battles and instead pursuing guerrilla warfare after the disastrous Battle of Cyprus. The course of the was greatly changed after Teegarde officially joined in 2032, sustaining heavy losses but making sweeping victories over Kepler.

 Clockwise from top: * US troops engaging Keplian forces in Las Vegas
* Impact crater of British Airways Flight 205
* Destroyed Iranian AFVs near Tehran
* US President giving a speech in front of the United States Capitol
* Keplian tripods attacking fleeing civilians in Bavaria

 Location
 Result
* Keplian Forces expelled from Sol
* Beginning of the Wars of the Keplian Coalition
* Beginning of the Interstellar enlightenment
* 16% of Earth rendered uninhabitable
* Earthly population centres dramatically changed
* 40-year long worldwide austerity measures
* Rise of Global Facism
* End of the United States
* End of Sino-Russian expansionism
* Almost All Earthly wars ceased or dramatically scaled down
* Teegarde Revolution
* Venezuelan Revolution

 Territorialchanges
* Establishment of the African Union as a sovereign state
* Unification of Korea
* Unification of Ireland
* United Nations Annexation of the Moon

 Earth
 Teegarde (covertly from 2029, openly from 2032)
**Supported by:**
 Lourieux Resistance Forces
* Arbegnoch

Vengence Party
Proxima B (from 2028)
 Joe Biden
Xi Jinping
Dmitry Medvedev (from 2028)
Vladimir Putin † (2027-2028)
Marie Le Pen (2027-2030)
Emmanuel Macron (2027)
Ben Wallace (from 2031)
Kier Starmer † (2027-2031)
Fumio Kishida
Amit Shah
Frank Waterheiwer (from 2028)
Olaf Scholz † (2027-2028)
Laerte de Souza Santos (from 2029)
Jair Bolsonaro † (2027-2029)
If-Undakinor (*De Facto*)
Legionnaire Rufalkir †
Arch-Tercius Ugum
 **Earth:**
~170,000,000 (peak)
**Teegarde:**
2,607,459 (peak)
 **Earth:** ~140,000,000 military dead
~300,000,000 military wounded
~940,000,000 civilian dead
~1,000,000,000 civilian wounded
**Teegarde:**
78,306 military dead
194,426 military wounded
521 civilian dead
~100 civilian wounded
~4,300,000 military dead
~5,100,000 military wounded
7,119 civilian dead
~1000 civilian wounded
**Teegarde Popular Front:**
71 military dead

More than 700 million personnel were deployed throughout the war, with Earth making up about 680 million of this. It was by far the deadliest known conflict in Galactic history with more than 1.08 billion deaths, mostly from Earthly civilians. More than 60% of these deaths occurred in the first 3 months of the war, during the initial Keplian invasion phase. Both sides committed war crimes against civilians, although the Human Genocide committed by Kepler inflicted significantly more casualties than the human attacks on Keplian civilians.

Earthly radar systems had detected unusual objects enter Sol on 17 October 2027. Worldwide attention was gained when the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, travelling through the Asteroid Belt, took a blured photo of what was commonly agreed upon to be a man-made spacecraft. The war is generally said to have begun on 20 November 2027, when Keplian Forces turned hostile against the welcoming humans. Although some sources view it to have started the day before, when Keplian forces arrived at Earth.

## Background

### Keplian Empire

The Keplian Empire had been pursuing a genocidal campaign of interstellar colonisation for the past 5 decades. Through a series of several 'expansions', Kepler had annexed 12 entire star systems containing habitable worlds. The empire spanned about 500 light years, located in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Kepler had conquered Lourieux, the most technologically advanced civilisation within feasible travel distance, in 1986. Louriuex's close friend, Teegarde, also heavily advanced, was blockaded from leaving its home star system, and was involved a Cold War against Kepler since the conquest. These were the only two civilisations believed to be advanced enough to pose any real threat to Kepler, and as such, they were feeling pretty confident in galactic domination.

The reasons for Kepler to be such a barbaric society willing to throw all resources at wars that serve no actual benefit, can be rooted to the warlord culture of Kepler and the subsequent desire to continue conquering even after the planet was unified. Studies in the 2100s also show that the Puren brain may be more attracted to violence, and have a constant desire to rise above those around. Keplian politicians persuaded the public to the cause by speaking of great technological advancements the expansions would bring, and that they would be rich in resources that are scarce on Kepler.

Kepler accidentally sent the Wow! signal to Earth in 1977. Kepler first became aware that there was an intelligent species on Earth around the late 1980s, and drew up plans to survey the world for a future invasion very quickly. Designs were put forward for a small robotic spacecraft that would slip past all detection, land on Earth, and survey it covertly from the surface. Several of these first arrived on Earth in 1993, and they quickly made several basic and often flawed observations of human way of life, culture, military capacity and spaceflight capabilities. After they understood what a human looked like, several Purens were surgically modified to look like humans, and covertly sent the planet to understand its language and infiltrate its political systems. In 1995, a Keplian infiltrator was torn open in a train accident in Bamako, Mali. His internal organs were visible, and attracted the attention of several bystanders. Another infiltrator discovered her partners remains, and had to pick them up and run away before anyone with a camera appeared. Nobody believed the bystanders. Apart from this, humanity was never even remotely close to discovering the Keplian presence on Earth. The most succesful infiltrator by far was the internet entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg. The infiltrators continued their espionage well into the war, Earth was only made aware of the infiltrators presence when Teegarde infiltrators discovered them in 2030.

Because of the comparatively low temperatures of Kepler, most infiltrators were based relatively far from the equator, aside from a few that were trained to withstand the heat. Most infiltrators slept on the streets and did not try to communicate with humans, instead just travelling to wherever they were ordered to go and report back what they saw. Due to their poor understanding of human languages, most infiltrators would make confusing hand gestures and walk away when a human attempted to engage in conversation with them. A few could speak fluent Mandarin Chinese, Malay, and English. These were the infiltrators that brought back the most useful information, as they had an understanding of the internet, and could very easily use it to answer many questions.

No more infiltrators or Keplian spacecraft were sent to Earth (until the war) after 2011. In 2009, there were 184 infiltrators on Earth, in 61 different groups of varying size. The largest group operated in Kuala Lumpur, consisting of 7 purens, who managed to infiltrate local politics and military command. To be careful, Kepler avoided sending in any spacecraft larger than about 10 metres across, and they were designed to self-disintegrate shortly after landfall, aside for the few satellites that disguised themselves with space debris.

In 2010, the aging If-Ilakina was (de facto) deposed by his eldest son, If-Undakinor, as leader of Kepler. Undakinor had a volatile temper and bipolar disorder. He was also a much less competent military leader, and an infamous nepotist, who put friends and family in powerful positions that they had no experience in. This also lead to rare opposition in the Keplain elite, which was typically well unified. Undakinor wanted to rush the invasion process in order to gain popularity with the public.

Work began on the first fleet that was to be sent to Earth in 2023. It was equipped with over 700 ships, mostly huge troop carriers. The flagship, *Horuk,* measured over 7.12 kilometres in length. At least 7 million puren, and hundreds of thousands of critters, vermin, and velics were to be sent to Earth. The second fleet was scheduled to be dispatched a year after the first, if necessary.

#### Failures in Keplian Intelligence

Kepler consistently made several mistakes and misinterpretations during their observations of Earth, leading to several problems for them in the invasion. Many of these problems stemmed from If-Undakinor's poor management of the infiltration of Earth. He even sent many of his friends as infiltrators, after they told him it would be 'calm' and [*sic*] 'mums they wouldn't nothing bad.'

Kepler encountered significant trouble in identifying military installations from certain industrial complexes, and in some European cases, council estates, in their satellite imagery. Due to the low amount of infiltrators, it was difficult to have ground based observations on most suspected targets.

Undakinor also dismissed many claims by the language-speaking infiltrators that humanity was stronger than it showed on the surface and had the ability to greatly increase military hardware production in event of a war. The infiltrators frequently asked for more time to make better observations, only for Undakinor to push the dispatch date of the invasion fleet closer.

Without a doubt the instrumental intelligence failure was Kepler's inability to understand nuclear weapons. Mark Zuckerberg, being one of the few infiltrators with the ability to use an internet browser, had discovered them, but dismissed the threat, believing them to only have small a blast impact.

### Earth

Earth was an ununified planet, comprising of 184 separate sovereign states (countries), commonly plagued with bad international relations. Humans were the planets only intelligent species. Most countries at least in part identified as a part of the Eastern or Western Bloc, two loosely defined alliances of countries that were (usually) divided geographically on the east and west of Earth. They were heavily divided both culturally and politically, and rarely cooperated, occasionally engaging in proxy wars. The most powerful Eastern Bloc countries were China and Russia. The most powerful Western Bloc country was the United States of America, which was commonly considered the most powerful country in the world since the 1940s. They stockpiled thousands of advanced nuclear weapons and had detailed plans to launch them at major cities should the need ever come.

Earth was blissfully unaware of other intelligent life. There was public interest in searching for it, and interstellar radio signals had been sent to around 100 star systems, however, none of these targeted systems contained intelligent life. A few countries had haphazard and forgotten plans for an alien invasion, however it was never considered a genuine threat, as experts believed it would be too costly in energy and resources to pose any benefit to an alien power.

In 2027, the human population was estimated to be 8.3 billion, with at least 29 million military personnel.

## Prelude

### Discovery and initial Earthly response

On April 19, 2025, Undakinor got into a dispute with Legionnaire Rufalkir over the danger of humanity's suspected nuclear ordinance, and a private issue that has never been disclosed. This incident can be credited with giving Earth their only chance of defending themselves. Undakinor declared that the fleet would leave in 2 months, 2 years in front of schedule, and that, no matter the situation, no backup would be sent until either the war was won or the fleet was destroyed.

On October 17, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), travelling through the asteroid belt, was alerted to the potential presence of several kilometre-long objects headed towards the craft. The mission crew was summoned to the control room and several photos were taken in an attempt to capture what they were heading towards. 2 photographs showed 5 Keplian ships ships from a long distance, confusing the operators. The last photo, although blurry, clearly showed a Keplian Fiakolfi-class frigate. The international community was quick to assess this as an extra-terrestrial object of very intelligent life, and it was also learnt that they were heading to Earth.

The discovery of the craft was followed by the largest media frenzy that had ever occurred. Front pages were flooded with theories about the fate of the Earth, social media severs were overloaded and fake news caused looting and riots. The US national guard was deployed to quell riots in across the country. Other countries, such as those in Scandinavia reacted more calmly. All attempts to contact the craft or chase after with JUICE failed, furthering public worry about the fleet.

Telescopes pointed at the location of the fleet suggest there was more than 400 ships over 500 metres in length. They were observed to be likely all black in appearance and streamline in shape. No further assessments could be made.

The United Nations Investigation Committee for Extra-terrestrial Contact (UNICEC) was established for governments to figure out what they gotta do. Joe Biden took the tactic of controlling the conversion at the first online zoom meeting. He hardly let anyone speak and made up the entire approach for first contact. It went as follows;

* It was decided that we could not be at all sure that the Aliens had no intention of attacking Earth, especially with them staying quiet and the militaristic nature of the ships. So, the world was to very quickly militarise for a total war, and and launch conscription of all able-bodied citizens (male or female), aged between 18-45, with some exceptions. All nations were to initiate contingency plans they had. The US created plans for nations that did not have contingency war plans, and very heavily suggested that they should follow them.
* In the meantime, space agencies would continue to make contact with the 'ECs' (Extra-terrestrial Craft[s]) by any means possible, including the proposed mission of sending an unmanned space shuttle to park in front of a window on an EC, and displaying a zoom meeting with UNICEC leaders to interior of the craft.
* We are to call the aliens 'Extras'
* ahh aliens1!!1!