Through the Threshold Tower (Tiberium/???)

September 30th, 2058
Crotone, Italy, Red Zone R-1

Beneath the skies perpetually overcast since the erection of the mysterious Threshold Tower eleven years ago, stood the remains of a bygone era. Blocks upon blocks of decades derelict high-rise offices born of the wave of urbanization that overtook Southern Italy following the arrival of the meteor that seeded Tiberium along the banks of its namesake river. Buildings that were both product and victim of the miracle commodity that – in ways few bothered to predict – came to grip the world.

"Motherfuck!" shouted Captain Dana Luna from within one of those buildings, as she was thrown through a half rotting wall by a cyborg. The RAID commando came out the other side, rolling ass over head. The cyborg made to follow, further tearing through the hole Luna had made before pushing its leg through it like some monster from a cheesy B movie sci-fi thriller.

Luna's helmet blared with warnings. Warnings from her Integrated Combat Suit about the bodily harm it had failed to protect her from. Warnings from her squad monitor telling her about the critical status of the rifleman she had been alongside, who that damned cyborg had assaulted first before moving onto her. Warnings from her rifle that it was out of railgun slugs.

"Fucking hell, I know!" the commando growled in equal parts pain and frustration. Luna glanced up from where she was splayed on the floor at the cyborg bearing down on her.

An endless stream of shit.

Teeth grit, Luna smacked the mode switch button on her GD-10 – harder than was strictly necessary – and pointed the rifle up at the cyborg in the midst of its transformation. Luna didn't bother shouldering the thing. At this range she didn't need the benefit of fine aim.

The cyborg must have still had some semblance of a self-preservation instinct from back when it was a thinking being, because on seeing that Luna had retained enough presence of mind to point a weapon at it the thing sped up. Honestly it should have shot her instead. With a final 'clack' Luna's GD-10 finished transforming and the commando pulled the trigger. The cyborg was an arm's length away from her when the concentrated beam of blue charged particles shooting out of her rifle struck, blowing away the top half of the bio-mechanical menace.

Rolling over on her side to avoid the smoking remains of the cyborg from falling on top of her, Luna let out another 'fuck!' Today just was not the GDI officer's day. Though she supposed what with aliens invading that was a sentiment that rang true for for everyone. As Luna stumbled to her feet she tapped the side of her helmet. The technological cover, pre-programmed to respond to the gesture began broadcasting the officer's voice to her troops.

"I need a medic up here for Corporal Henson. She got chokeslammed by a cyborg and her vitals are reading red," Luna said, following the Corporal's location beacon back through the wall. She didn't have to go much further to sight the wounded rifleman, lying on her right in a gently growing pool of her own blood. Luna snapped into her embedded radio, "Double time it!"

Dropping to her knees the officer reached over and gingerly rolled the Corporal off of her side. Luna hissed. The trooper's right arm was a mess of fabric and meat. The cyborg must have stomped on it after slamming her onto the floor. For a mindless meat monster the thing sure had, had a nasty streak.

Stripping the Corporal's personal first aid kit off her thigh, Luna took the tourniquet stored within and used that to quickly sever off the Corporal's blood flow at the upper arm. It didn't take long for a medic to arrive – dressed in the same mark of RAID armor as the Corporal save with white highlights in place of gold and a Rod of Asclepius in place of the usual GDI roundel – and the Captain handed the casualty into their care.

"Make sure she gets better," said Luna, straightening up with a groan. "She tried to stick a knife in a cyborg's face and I despise handing out commendations to next of kin."

Accompanying the medic was a squad of rifleman and three heavy weapons specialists, the latter easily identifiable by their top heavy armors. They were the reinforcements she had called up right before being intercepted and being made to play the role of living ragdoll.

"The hell took you people so long?" Luna groused, as she went about quieting the blaring alarms in her helmet. She flicked her GD-10, switching the rifle back to its railgun configuration and slammed a fresh magazine into it. "We're on the final stretch here people. No more screw ups. We lose here and Earth loses its best chance at shutting down that fucking Threshold Tower. We clear?"

The RAID Captain was met with a chorus of affirmatives.

"Good." Luna stuck her index and middle fingers at a pair of riflemen. "You two, take point. The rest of you, on me. Let's move it!" Luna squared her shoulders while her chosen pointmen strode past her, then followed.

She did her best to ignore the myriad aches that now accompanied movement.

The force of RAID commandos swept their way deeper into the building, twice dropping into short engagements with Nod soldiers that the commandos came through casualty free, before arriving at a set of double doors that the nearby signage indicated to be the entrance to the 'Primary Lab.' With a motion of her hands, Luna's force split as evenly as they could and stacked up on both sides of the door. A breaching charge was placed on the door. Luna turned her GD-10 into a grenade launcher.

Taking up a spot on the left side stack, Luna held out her right hand. She had three digits extended out. Three.

Luna pulled in her thumb. Two.

She rolled up her middle finger. One.

The doors blew inwards. The pointmen tossed in a flashbang each before charging in. Ruby streams sprang out to meet them. Luckily they were poorly aimed, the ones directing them disoriented by the stun grenades. That did not hold true when it came to the machine gun fire and Luna watched the vitals of her pointmen flare on her heads-up-display as the report of laser rifles were drowned out of automatic gunfire.

"'Borgs!" one of the troopers breathlessly relayed over the radio. "Bloody hell, we got two of the suckers in here with us!"

Nuts. That was their momentum dead.

The laser fire started to tighten up. The flashbangs were wearing off. Around her, Luna's troops peeled their bodies off the walls and fired into the lab. Luna pulled up the telemetry captured by her pointmen's suits. There looked to be at least fifteen guys in there all stuffed behind cover. Probably more though. The cyborgs were easy to make out. The hulking things were also behind cover, though standing up as they were they weren't exactly making the most of it.

The thing that stood out most to Luna wasn't any of the defenders though, it was the purple energy field behind them. Luna squinted and craned her head forward inside her helmet. That looked like a Scrin energy shield.

How in the hell did they get one of those working?

Filing that question away for later, Luna dropped to her stomach. She tucked in her GD-10, took a deep breath, then rolled fully out into the middle of the open doorway. Now that she was seeing for herself Luna counted twenty-three bad guys. Twenty-five when including the cyborgs. The defending Nod troops were barely registering what the RAID Captain was doing when Luna stuck out her GD-10 and fired off a trio of grenades.

The first grenade arced up and over a long counter into a huddle of five Nod soldiers. The next landed behind a metal barricade occupied by six. The third fell down beside one of the cyborgs. They had four human defenders with them. The first grenade caught the enemy by surprise and blew away all five soldiers. Three of the defenders by the second proved to be faster on the uptake, though in their attempt to get clear, proceeded to be gunned down as they leapt out into the open. Of the four with the cyborg, one survived and they did so by tucking themselves in behind the cyborg's legs.

The cyborg itself was unphased and scorch marks aside it showed no signs of having been damaged. The thing turned to stare Luna down and brought its arm mounted machine gun to bear.

The deafening report of a missile being fired indoors filled the space. Exhaust smoke completely obscured Luna's vision. Then the missile launched by one of her heavies found its mark and exploded. The resultant shock wave blew aside the smoke, revealing the shattered form of the cyborg threatening Luna. The poor bastard using it for cover... they didn't fare much better.

A second roar shook the air. Once more smoke filled the room and once more it was cleared by an explosion. The other cyborg collapsed on its rear in a smoking heap.

Firing off the fourth and final grenade loaded in her GD-10, Luna leapt up from her prone position. The surviving defenders had scattered by this point and the munition arrived by just a couple of defenders. One threw their body on top of it. The blast tossed their mangled corpse directly upwards into the air.

Her GD-10 transforming once more in her hands, Luna dashed into the lab. "Go! Go!"

Snapping up her rifle, Luna fired into the room and slipped in behind a flipped over table occupied by one of her wounded pointmen. The rifleman wordlessly nodded at her, though from the initial wheeze he gave her, she suspected that wasn't by choice. The man had multiple holes in his chest. He'd been pegged in the center mass and while his armor hadn't held in the face of the high caliber rounds fired at him, they had slowed the bullets enough to prevent them from liquefying his insides.

Luna replied gave the trooper a comforting squeeze on the shoulder by the base of his neck and sent over the net, "Medics move up and standby to receive casualties."

Poking her head and rifle out from behind the flipped table, Luna laid down suppressive fire at the surviving Nod combatants. Joining her were three riflemen that had dashed into the lab with her. Under the withering barrage of fire the defenders dared not rise from behind cover and the rest of the RAID team moved into the laboratory unopposed.

Really, it was all over but the crying. Luna dropped back behind cover to reload, one of her riflemen picking up for the slack in fire. A fresh magazine inserted in her rifle, Luna bounded up, advancing on the closest suppressed Noddie. Along the way she tagged a defender in the upper body that had been a little too slow to retreat back into cover after firing. Luna flanked around her target's defenses and shot them.

Things carried on like that.

Suppress. Move. Shoot. Suppress. Move. Shoot.

Steadily, the RAID commandos cleared the room.

Watching everything unfold from the other side of the energy field were two men wearing white lab coats. One had a shaved head. The other had what could generously be called a 'mop' of white hair. The former seethed and bared his teeth. The latter, an older gentleman, smiled far too calmly. Behind them sat a spherical device with bulbous cylinders sticking out from it, arranged in such a way that Luna was reminded of a sea mine.

As the last of the defenders died, choosing death over surrender, the white haired scientist clapped.

"Impressive. Truly impressive," said the man with a thick Russian accent. "I haven't seen a display like that in nearly eighty years."

Picking up a piece of lab equipment, Luna casually flung it at the energy field. It bounced harmless off the field—rather, the shield. The fact the knickknack hadn't been disintegrated confirmed the thing wasn't a laser or a firestorm derived system. "You don't look it."

"Why thank you miss..."

"Captain Luna," the officer replied, emphasizing her rank.

The other scientist snarled and violently yanked the white haired scientist's lapel. "Levi, you dare talk pleasantries with a heathen?"

"Fanatics." The white haired doctor – Levi – performed a melodramatic sigh, complete with rolling eyes. He reached into his lab coat and withdrew a pistol that he used to shoot his compatriot in the head. The man brushed off the dead man's grip and peeked over at the RAID Captain, shrugging in a manner that seemed to ask whimsically, 'what can you do?'

Luna's eyes, hidden under her visorless helm, flickered between the dead scientist and his killer. In the privacy of her helmet she clenched her teeth together. Of course the she ended up dealing with one of the mad scientist types.

"Lower the shield and come out quietly, I assure you will not be harmed," said Luna, nowhere near as confident that would convince the man before her as she made herself sound.

The Doctor tsked. "That is hardly an enticing incentive Captain."

"Well..." Luna scanned the walls with her eyes, keeping her helmet pointed at the Doctor. She didn't spy anything that resembled emitters. "...I don't think we know each other well enough to be offering personalized gifts."

The Doctor smiled. The expression was hardly pleasant. "Is that so? But I believe I know what gift you would appreciate." He jerked his head backwards at the device sitting behind him.

"Are you offering?"

"As I said." The Doctor hastelessly walked over to an office chair and sat down in it. "You lack incentive Captain."

This was getting her nowhere. Luna bounced her trigger finger off the side of her GD-10. The ion cannon might be strong enough to bring down the shield, definintely not in one shot though. Explosives were out of the question. Luna didn't think the building could survive the tons needed to blast through the shield. Nod might have reinforced the structure but the thing was still a half century old office building that had been thought up and assembled by folks out to make a quick buck. Plus there was the complicating issue of overpenetration.

"Considering a break in, Captain?" the Doctor asked, leaning forward with his elbows perched on the chair's armrests.

"I was wondering where your power came from," Luna lied. She guessed it was probably somewhere on the other side of the shield. They hadn't picked up any power signatures coming from elsewhere in the building. In fact, that's how Luna had been able to make a beeline to the lab and not spent hours combing through the building. The Doctor didn't need to know what she knew though.

"An intelligent choice." The Russian partially swiveled the chair. He made a sweeping gesture at the forcefield separating him from Luna. "Unfortunately for you, power for this wonderful shield is power locally by a liquid Tiberium generator. Such a versatile material. A shame how GDI so fears it."

Liquid-T? Fuck. Yeah, blowing up the shield was definitely off the list.

Did the shield extend into the walls? Luna shut off her helmet's external speakers. "I want breaching teams assembled in the rooms immediately adjacent to, above, and below the primary laboratory." Turning them back on, she asked, "You sure that's enough? There's an alien invasion going on outside you know?"

"Trust me Captain, I am well apprised when it comes to current events," said the Doctor with a wave dismissive of his hand. He turned and kicked off the floor, sending his chair rolling. He brought it to a stop in front of a terminal, which sprang to life when the Doctor hit a key on the connected keyboard.

"What are you doing?" Luna demanded as the Doctor typed.

"Why, since you displayed such deep concern for my well being Captain, I am going to show you my contingency." The Doctor finished typing and held his finger over the enter key. "I assure you, you will find it most comforting."

"Wai—!"

The Doctor pressed the key.

The world twisted.

---

---

Branching point: 2047, end of Third Tiberium War
Historical document: An Examination of the Myths of Nod
Number of variations: 2

Nod as a monolith has been an idea that has been purported since the organization first presented itself to the world – by its proponents and critics alike – and it speaks to the enduring quality of the idea that it has persisted for so long in the public consciousness, despite the evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the myth is more Kane's than it is the Brotherhood's. The fractious politics of the Brotherhood of Nod were common knowledge even back during the myth's heyday, yet it existed alongside the notion that the Nod stood as one in the presence of Kane.

Well, whatever might be the case, the myth of singular Nod without a doubt fell to pieces in those events that followed the execution of Kilian Qatar, much the way the myth of monolithic communism unraveled amidst the breakout of the Sino-Soviet War and Germany's aligning with Britain and France in the run up to the Second World War.

One of the things that has become increasingly apparent in the years since the end of the Third Tiberium War is how little of Nod's at the time population were adherents to Kane's personal vision. For many within the rank and file of the Brotherhood of Nod, loyalty to the organization was driven less by a strict belief in the ideology laid forth by the nation's prophet, but by practical need.

Following the Global Defense Initiative's withdrawal from Rio de Janeiro in 2034, the Brotherhood of Nod laid claim to all Yellow Zone territories and renewed their policy of aid and retaliation. They enticed would be joiners with the promise of critical supplies be it food, medicines, and arms and harassed those that refused. By 2047 Nod propagandists could truthfully say that those that populated the Yellow Zones were of Nod, though their claims that it was due of the justness of their cause was hogwash.

Kilian Qatar was born in the 2010s at the height of corporate authority. She grew up in federated Russia, witnessing firsthand the country's disintegration and descent into warlordism. Qatar would ascend to the leadership of the Brotherhood of Nod in but her twenties, succeeding in that role Grand Confessor Marcion. She served as the public head of the Brotherhood for well over a decade until stepping aside for Kane when he resurfaced at the start of the Third Tiberium War.

A fervent believer in the message of Nod and in its role as provider for the downtrodden, Kilian Qatar focused her efforts on improving the day to day lives of Nod's citizens. A variety of social programs came into existence during Qatar's tenure and significant effort was expended rebuilding slums and civilian infrastructure. For her efforts Qatar earned a unique reputation for a Nod leader, that of being a skillful administrator. Though this reputation served as a black mark against her among Kane loyalists – they believed Qatar lacked the necessary martial qualities becoming of a leader of Nod – it is also what earned her legitimacy in the eyes of the population.

When word of Kilian Qatar's execution, ordered by Kane himself, spread the news resulted in a spike of discontent throughout the Brotherhood. Things may have held steady enough for Kane's followers to tap down on the unrest had the execution not come on the heels of Kane's rescinding of Qatar's standing orders.

First the self-proclaimed prophet had announced that the truce Qatar had negotiated with elements of the Global Defense Initiative to be invalid. Second, he revoked permission to fire upon the invading Scrin and stated that Nod troops were to defend them from GDI aggression, even if it meant acting as meat shields for the aliens. Meat shields that the aliens themselves did not hesitate to shoot at. These orders proved widely unpopular with lower ranking Nod soldiers.

A great many of them thought as Qatar did, that the Scrin were the greater danger, and few wished to expend their lives protecting beings that continued to display such hostility. Though a majority of formations did ultimately comply with the prophet's instructions due to their commanders being Kane loyalists, the rest contravened them to varying degrees.

Some Nod commanders seeking to avoid carrying out their new orders but not wanting to be seen as openly rebelling would quietly withdraw their troops from fronts that they knew GDI forces to be operating in. Others would openly broadcast their new ROEs on unencrypted channels, as well as the exact positions of their forces. Bolder still, some officers would broadcast details of Scrin forces, bookending their transmissions with loud justifications declaring them to be warnings meant for their brothers and sisters to use in avoiding contact with the aliens. Of course the most blatant defiers of Kane's will were those that continued to do battle the Scrin alongside GDI.

Of those units that refused to heed Kane's instructions, the majority were what would be termed second line units. Either defensive militias pulled away from their regular jobs of protecting their home cities or freshly raised combat units filled out with local conscripts, intended to be used as little more than cannon fodder during the Third Tiberium War.

These troops lacked the more advanced weaponry of – for lack of a better word – Nod regulars but so too lacked the ideological hardliners that the Brotherhood seeded throughout regular units. This combined with a stark awareness that turning on GDI forces was liable to result in their deaths, be it at the hands of better equipped GDI troops or finished off by Scrin forces, and that often times they and the nearby GDI troops were the only military forces that stood between the aliens and their homes, convinced these units to disobey Brotherhood leadership.

The death of Kilian Qatar would do little to improve matters, rather serving to convince more Nod commanders to abandoned the Inner Circle. Furthermore a spate of mutinies broke out in nearly all but the staunchest of Kane loyalist formations.

The responses to the rebellions were brutal, with loyalists enacting purges that saw upwards of ninety-nine percent of some units put to death and in spite of initial numerical superiority, the mutineers were by and large suppressed. The Inner Circle was not as successful on the home front however. Outside of a handful of fanatical enclaves, such as those belonging to the Black Hand, Kane's followers failed to maintain control over any of the major Nod population centers.

One reason for that was that Kilian Qatar, not Kane, was widely viewed by the Nod public to be the Brotherhood's rightful leader and it made sense. While Kane was the prophet of the Brotherhood's faith and by virtue of that worthy of respect, he hadn't earned the kind of trust that Qatar had engendered.

Where Kane had been an absentee prophet, omnipresent in the faith but omniabsent in the flesh, Qatar had been there. Qatar had stood alongside the people of Nod, helped them, worked with them to build their ideal world. She become a fixture in Nod society. Entire generations existed that grew up only knowing her leadership.

Moreover, while Qatar had done the unthinkable in seeking an alliance with GDI, she had done so in order to preserve Nod lives. Kane in his orders had shown no such consideration for his people's well being and his actions were in pursuit of an inscrutable objective. So it was that when Qatar died at Kane's behest, instead of her fate forever immortalizing her as a traitor to the Brotherhood, it was Kane that the people turned against.

The other reason why Kane loyalists lost control of the cities was because they lacked significant numbers there.

In the prelude to the Third Tiberium War, the Inner Circle stripped the cities of their traditional ideological enforcers, with the intention of assembling them into elite cadres and embedding them into green formations in order to stiffen them. Confessors, the religious and not-so-secret police of the Brotherhood, were reassigned to militia squads where they would act as political officers. The stormtroopers of the Black Hand were restasked from their internal security duties – read as, burning dissidents alive – and were deployed as frontline combatants.

In addition Kane's most ardent followers volunteered in droves to serve in his armies. Followers, that had they remained, could have formed basis for loyalist opposition in the cities. Altogether, this inadvertently resulted in Nod's cities being emptied out of Kane loyalists.

Unfortunately this focus on making ready for the war was to be a double edged sword. For all that it drew the loyalists out of the cities and made it possible for the inhabitants to rise up in revolt, so too did it draw out the men and women who would have defended them. Nod's burgeoning army had been hungry for bodies. It had taken everybody with the strength to fight, leaving behind only the weak, the sick, the young, and the infirm.

For that reason Kane did not react to the people's revolt as rapidly as he did the mutinies and focused instead his immediate attention on ensuring the completion of Threshold 19.

Global Defense Initative Central Command would first learn of the burgeoning civil war not from InOps, but from a GDI field commander. Upon witnessing the Nod force that had allied with them against the Scrin begin to hastily pack up, the field commander had jokingly asked their Nod counterpart the reason for their rush. The Nod commander harshly informed them that a punitive Nod force was on its way to capture their home city. The information was relayed immediately, as was a request for two squadrons of Ox transports and a pair of Aurochs capable of lifting MCVs.

In the Pentagon, Lieutenant General Jack Granger – the ranking GDI general following the Philadelphia disaster – ordered an emergency meeting of GDI officers. As InOps officers explained the situation, which they themselves had only moments prior managed to piece together, two possible courses of action were laid out.

GDI could take advantage of the Nod infighting to knock out Kane's most elite units, the idea being that while the greater bulk of Kane's forces were tied up in battle with rebels they would be out of position to support his elites. InOps estimated that a successful counter-offensive with this goal in mind had the potential to cripple the Brotherhood for years if not decades to come. Alternatively, GDI could commit to defending the rebelling cities. InOps were confident in saying that the cities held no chance of prevailing without outside support and they did not believe there existed enough rebel Nod units to successfully defend them.

Thoughts to carry out a mix of the two options were quickly dismissed. Nod forces were too numerous and surviving GDI assets too limited to undertake any meaningful combination of defend and attack. The ensuing debate was a lively one and in the end the decision was made to...

[ ] ...cripple the enemy.
[ ] ...preserve the innocent.

---

A.N.: Alright, here we go, another quest. I promise I am not ditching my other stuff. I'm actually doing this to get back into the writing groove because my muse went and got ripped right the hell out of me by the current heat wave. Here's to hoping it works.

Anyhow, you're not here to listen to my problems, you're here to lead the Global Defense Initiative, or at least a part of it as it gets sent someplace else. Where will that be? Who knows. I might drop you a few hints if you ask nicely—or bribe me with omakes.

For the time being though, you guys are assembling the GDI you want to lead. There's eleven years of history you have to get through before "the event" happens and things can and will change drastically depending on what choices you make.

1910s

1914	First World War begins
1917	Russian Civil War begins
1918	First World War ends

1920s

1920	League of Nations formed
	Persian Socialist Soviet Republic established
1921	Persian SSR disestablished
1922	Russian Civil War ends
	Union of Soviet Socialist Republics established	soviet flag circa the second world war
1924	Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic established
1927	Chinese Civil War begins

1930s

1934	Baltic Entente formed
1936	Chinese Civil War put on hold
1937	Second Sino-Japanese War begins
1938	Soviet Union invades Imperial State of Iran
1939	Persian SSR reestablished
	Winter War begins

1940s

1940	Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic established
	Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina handed over by Kingdom of Romania and integrated into Moldavian SSR
	Moldavian ASSR integrated in Moldavian SSR
	Winter War ends
	Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic established
	Franco-Japanese War
1941	Republic of Finland joins Baltic Entente
	Franco-Japanese War ends
	Pacific War begins
1942	India becomes a dominion
1945	Pacific War ends
	American occupation of Japan begins
	Democratic Republic of Vietnam established
	People's Republic of Korea established
	United Nations formed
	Kurdistan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic established
1946	Chinese Civil War resumes
	League of Nations dissolved
	Philippines becomes independent
	Indochina War begins
1947	Partition of India
	1914 Russian-Ottoman border restored between Soviet Union and Republic of Turkey
1949	Chinese Civil War ends
	People's Republic of China established

1950s

1950	India becomes independent
1951	Dominion of Pakistan couped by Communist Party of Pakistan
1953	Mongolia becomes a republic of the Soviet Union
	Kingdom of Cambodia established
	Kingdom of Laos becomes independent
1954	Indochina War ends
	France withdraws from Vietnam and Cambodia
1955	Armenian Soviet Republic annexes Western Armenia
1956	Karelo-Finnish SSR disestablished
	American occupation of Japan ends
1958	France, Britain, and Germany conclude the Berlin Pact

1960s

1960	Iraqi-Kurdish War begins
1961	Sino-Soviet War begins
1964	World Association of Nations formed	by ww2, wan member states would be better known as the allied powers
1969	Iraqi-Kurdish War ends
	Kurdish Soviet Socialist Republic established
	Kurdish ASSR integrated in Kurdish SSR
	Sino-Soviet War ends

1970s

1970	Baltic War begins
	World Association of Nations Security Council issues a condemnation of the Soviet invasion of the Baltics
1971	Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic established
	Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic established
	Democratic Republic of Sudan couped by Sudanese Communist Party
	Karelo-Finnish SSR reestablished
1972	Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic established
1973	Baltic War ends
1975	Second World War begins

Edit:
Huh, must have messed something up there. Results are available now.

Shortly following the Battle of Threshold 19
Washington State, Yellow Zone Y-6

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Branching point: 2047, Nod Civil War
Historical document: The History of GDI Interventionism: Volume II
Number of variations: 9

Chapter 5 - The Nod Civil War
The outbreak of the Nod Civil War was an event that no one in the Global Defense Initiative predicted. It was an oft hoped for dream of many an Intelligence Operations analyst, that the myriad internal divisions the Brotherhood of Nod suffered from would one day lead to a catastrophic schism, but few held confidence in a civil war actually occurring. In the eyes of many, Nod had proven time and again to be nigh immune to long term divisions and Kane and his followers to be deft hands at removing dissenters, be it through conversion or assassination.

So unlikely was such an event deemed that when word of popular uprisings reached the Pentagon, the reports were initially misunderstood to mean that there were Nod inspired uprisings occurring in GDI held Blue Zones.

Indeed, as the recently declassified Tacitus Files have revealed, GDI command had more reason to believe in the veracity of reports speaking of alien invaders prior to the Scrin arrival than they did a proper fracturing of the Brotherhood of Nod.

It would not take long though for Intelligence Operations to come to a more accurate understanding of the situation and for them to pass that information onto then Lieutenant General Jack Granger. The report they assembled would result in him calling for an emergency meeting at GDI Central Command and there for the decision to be made that the Initiative would intervene on behalf of the beleaguered Nod populations.

To accomplish that goal, GDI would conduct the single largest airlift of military forces up until that point in history, calling up their entire fleet of aerial transports to move divisions deployed deep in Red Zones directly to nearby Yellow Zone cities.

While this staggering feat of logistics was carried out, advance parties would be deployed to aid those cities already under siege by loyalists.

Firehawks equipped with the stratofighter upgrade package were launched from airbases and undertook half hour long burns through the stratosphere to intercept locations while GDI's orbital command stations were emptied of their remaining complements of zone troopers and zone raiders.

Even with the complete commitment of GDI's drop pod corps, many cities were allocated only a few dozen power armored infantry each because of a critical shortage of personnel left in orbit in the hours immediately following the final GDI actions against the Scrin. To compensate for that lack of numbers, GDI Strategic Orbital Command assigned each advance party a minimum of one cluster of orbital assets.

Infamously, one two man team was granted priority access to a total of seven orbiting ion cannons for the duration of their deployment. An approximate sixty-percent of GDI's orbiting weapons platforms would be decommissioned as a direct result of their use during the intervention.

The advance parties would be met on the ground by impromptu militias formed by inhabitants of the besieged cities, rebelling Nod regulars, and in some cases mercenaries who been hired on prior the uprisings. In more than a few instances GDI forces were fired upon by defenders, with the most belligerent parties tending to be rebel regulars.

Hostilities would fail to persist beyond initial engagements however and by and large GDI troops were folded into defending forces fairly quickly.

Meanwhile a large portion of Kane loyalist offensives ground to halt, as having expecting the cities to fold with minor resistance they had refused to establish bases and attempted to capture revolting cities with whatever supplies they were carrying with them at the time.

When the defenders refused to fold, these loyalist forces found themselves in dire need of ammunition and spare parts as they were drawn into wars of attrition. That stiffer than expected resistance proved critical to the successful defense of the cities, buying the time necessary for GDI reinforcements to arrive. Thanks to their spirited defense, not a single city fell to Kane's loyalists.


For much of the Initiative's history, GDI has been marred with the stigma that it is the rich man's initiative.

There is truth to this.

GDI did in fact place the majority of its permanent infrastructure in developed countries and have close ties to the militaries and government of developed nations, in particular to those of the United States, which up until its formal dissolution headquartered U.S. Central Command aboard GDI's Philadelphia space station.

Also in keeping with the Brotherhood's narrative of GDI abandoning lesser of nations, the Initiative did indeed refrain from operating in a number of countries that traditionally were classified as less developed.

What the Brotherhood invariably fails to mention to their audience is that those countries that GDI did not go to were ones that aligned themselves with the Brotherhood of Nod and explicitly barred the Initiative from entering their borders. When these countries dissolved, their territories proceeded to be claimed by the Brotherhood of Nod and they fervently responded to any violations of their perceived borders, even when the offending "incursions" were by humanitarian missions.

As more nations fell and the Brotherhood expanded their domain further, transitioning away from international terrorist group to nascent superstate, GDI became eminently more wary of getting dragged into open conflict with them.

By the '30s the Initiative had stopped sending aid to people living within Nod's borders and increasingly focused its attentions inwards. This unofficial policy of noninterference would culminate in GDI's near total withdrawal from the Yellow Zones in the years following the Rio Riots, during which the Brotherhood of Nod had declared the world's Yellow Zones as theirs.

That desertion would do little to improve the impression the populace of the Yellow Zone held of the Global Defense Initiative.

Due to that, when reinforcing GDI troops promised to provide assistance in rebuilding the Yellow Zone cities that they had helped to defend, they were met with suspicion. Another complication for reconstruction efforts was the discovery that Nod did not produce civil MCVs.

During the rule of the Kane's loyalists, the Brotherhood of Nod had exercised tight controls over the manufacture and distribution of MCVs.

Unlike in the Initiative, MCVs were treated not as public infrastructure but rather the personal property of local leaders, who in exchange for being granted the right to own one, swore fealty to the Inner Circle and Kane and promised to muster and lead an army in their name when called upon to do so. In this way Kane gained the loyalty of warlords, criminal organizations, and petty tyrants and it was also why they were not present to oppose their subjects when they rose up in protest.

Nod MCVs existed as symbols of prestige and support by the greater Brotherhood, on top of the already significant material power they granted an individual. It was not uncommon a sight for a leader to parade their MCV through the streets of their cities as part of a celebration or have it charge at disgruntled mobs to demoralize them.

Sparingly few individuals held permanent authority to produce additional MCVs, and fewer still had the ability to grant the right, temporarily or otherwise. The vast majority of battle commanders were only ever be granted temporary permission to produce additional MCVs and those had to be accounted for after the battle.

Evidently Kilian Qatar, who sought to renovate the Yellow Zone cities, saw no issue with these policies. From what is known about her, she appears to have shared the view held by many of her peers that MCVs were solely military equipment. Her public works programs were carried out using manual labor.

This presented a conundrum for GDI leadership.

They had begun their intervention with the assumption that once they defeated Kane's loyalists they would need only carry out security duties for a short period while the cities picked themselves back up and rebuilt.

As it turned out, if GDI forces packed up and left in accordance with their planned timeline that would entail leaving the Yellow Zone cities in ruins and defenseless, save for the handful supported by Nod rebels with stolen MCVs. Delaying the departure of GDI forces was feasible but indefinitely maintaining the intervention's scale of deployment was not.

In order to carry out the intervention, GDI had ended up spreading their forces precariously thin across the planet. Blue Zones were effectively without any garrisoning troops and there were next to no reserves left on standby.

To make matters worse nearly all on duty personnel were running on fumes, having gone straight from fighting the Scrin for days on end to fighting Kane loyalists for days on end.

One proposed plan for a draw down that would not leave the cities vulnerable to further attack from surviving loyalist forces was to supply them with military MCVs. With those, it was reasoned, the Yellow Zone cities would be able to establish defenses and produce weapons for their militias independent of any GDI presence. This would also resolve the question of how the cities would rebuild as GDI military MCVs were dual purpose vehicles that, unlike their Nod counterparts, were fully equipped to carry out civilian construction.

An element of that plan that underwent significant debate was whether GDI's entire arsenal would be shared or only the more basic elements. For some though, any sharing of GDI military data with the Yellow Zone cities was cause for concern and the possibilities of the gifted technologies being turned against the Initiative or being stolen from the cities by Kane loyalists were raised.

Civil MCVs by definition lacked sensitive military data, though they did contain blueprints for harmonic resonance devices which GDI had historically gone to great efforts to prevent Nod from acquiring.

Naturally, providing only civil MCVs would mean the cities would have to find other ways of procuring arms.

A compromise plan laid forth the idea of handing the cities military MCVs loaded up with Second Tiberium War schematics, with the argument being that the older technologies were less risky to share than modern hardware. Being from the 2030s however, much of that technology was insufficient for the modern battlefield. For example, no sensor from that era could penetrate modern cloaks.
After a period of debate, the leaders of the Global Defense Initiative decided to...

[ ] [MCV] ...provide military MCVs.
[ ] [MCV] ...provide military MCVs without higher tier technologies.
[ ] [MCV] ...provide military MCVs loaded with Second War technologies.
[ ] [MCV] ...provide civil MCVs.
[ ] [Sonic] ...share harmonic resonance technology.
[ ] [Sonic] ...withhold harmonic resonance technology.
[ ] ...leave in accordance with their original plans.

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A.N.: Plan vote guys, with one option from [MCV] and [Sonic] each!

Unless you pick the leave option. The leave option means GDI goes home and doesn't do anything else.

But yeah, damn this update kicked my ass. I rewrote it like half a dozen times and each time the thing morphed into something entirely different.