It is 2076. Decades after the blackout of 2027, the Stability Partnership holds much of the world. Independent forces still defend the last free lands.
FROM THE PROLOGUE · 2027–2076
The blackout. The promise of order. The shores that still hold. Follow the world that brings you to Operation Meridian.
Climate shocks, debt, damaged supply chains and ever more centralised emergency systems. In every crisis, every government reached for emergency command, and advisers were waiting with the paperwork.
For seventy-two hours the cables, satellites and clearing systems of the whole world failed together. Some infrastructure broke; some was switched off; frightened authorities signed away powers to get services back. Every power found proof that a rival did it.
The Stability Partnership presented itself as the emergency solution and spread through whatever was already broken. Its Directorate took military and industrial control; its Community took transport, grids and production. People expected a Forty Day War.
Independent designs, fabrication equipment and expertise are restricted. People call the dependency that follows the Stillness: factories build controlled patterns, workshops repair old hulls, and resistance engineers adapt what they can.
A war that could not end settled into a shape. The two wings of the Partnership ran the world and quietly prepared to run each other. The free blocs built an emergency network to coordinate after the next attack, and a generation grew up that had never seen peace.
Ordered to save her task force, Commander Maya Voss held the docks instead and brought the civilians out. It made her famous. It cost ships, and it cost her brother.
Incidents between Directorate and Community deepen the distrust between the two wings. Their partnership still holds, but it is brittle.
Southern Cross prepares an expedition to reconnect its isolated allies before the Atlantic falls. On 1 March the Partnership comes over the Timor Sea at Darwin, and the game begins.
Soldiers call it the Cross
The last intact power of the old alliance, and where Operation Meridian begins. Expeditionary logistics and amphibious reach, in ochre, charcoal and eucalyptus green; repaired naval and field equipment.
Soldiers call it the Network
The underground state, named after the art of mending pottery with gold. Organisers and engineers restoring independent design and manufacture under an occupation that has never found anything to capture.
Soldiers call it Many Fires
Regional commands and civic networks that began as engineers agreeing on a radio frequency. Distributed power and mutual aid, with no imposed state and no foreign bases.
Soldiers call it the Compass
Northern endurance and southern resistance connected by accountable command. Sweden the anvil, Spain the spark, and the promise that no European front negotiates alone.
Soldiers call it the Line
Fortress, rail and air defence under prolonged siege, from the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes and Canada’s northern corridor. Heavy, layered and tired.
Soldiers call it the Concord
Northern and southern commands that share political responsibility: territorial consent, rail logistics and sea routes. Neutral, consensual and armed.
Soldiers call it the Winter
Marshal Orlov commands the Partnership’s military wing: armour, massed troops and artillery in oxide red, black and winter grey.
Soldiers call it the Lattice
General Lin controls transport, production and machine networks. In jade, ivory and graphite, the Community captures the infrastructure that keeps cities running.
