Historically High - Gears of War: A History

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

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Class is back. I don't know why I'm talking right now because I will not be your teacher today. I will be sitting in as a student while Professor Chris gives us all a teaching lesson into gears of war. This is why you're talking right now because you got to get in a little bit of conversation before we started into this and then I just black out. I got to start putting up points now. Yeah, exactly. I love it because I get to have a captive host. for like a two and a half three hour period where I just get to nerd completely out.

And fictional histories are something that I love doing, especially if something has a lot of rich background and story that kind of transcends different versions of medium. So as I do the episode after, you know, the music kicks in and everything, I'm going to try to treat this like I try to do, like an actual history. We can kind of discuss the franchise before the episode and everything. just to kind of let people know where this story comes from. So Gears of War is a video game series that was developed. I want to say back like early 2000s, kind of maybe mid-2000s.

Currently it's gone through. I want to say six different, maybe seven different games in itself, most of them coming out on Xbox, but also compiles several comic book series. And then has a decent amount, maybe four to six actual like novels and like books that fill in. that aren't just covering the games. They actually fill in the gaps between the games,

and the games actually respect that so much that a little bit later in the series of games, they're banking on you having read this stuff because they will just be talking about things that if someone didn't read it, they're like, what's going on here? It also probably doesn't hurt the fact that they don't have to worry too much about a campaign

if there's already some stuff written in there to make it easier. Well, I mean, they blend them really well. So the story itself like kind of going through the history of it because I'm we're starting back at the beginning stuff that wasn't in the game stuff that has callbacks and just kind of builds a full narrative for for the you know the entire story itself. And the place where it takes place is a planet called Sarah, which ironically enough is Ares spelled backwards. And the entire planet for pretty much the length of its history has just. just been at war in one way or another with these kind of brief periods of like enlightenment or peace and I think a day it's very earthlike now they've been vague about the

actual geography of it because they like to have a little bit of flexibility in case they want to develop certain things but there's an establishment of countries political powers a single day on uh Sarah lasts for 26 hours a year is made up of 13 months with 30 days in each month and it totals 390 days in a year. Well, hold on. No, that can't be right. So it's made up of 13 months, but each month varies, has more days. So it's 390 days in a year. And that'll come back into play when we start talking about like the buildup of forces and stuff like that. Has two moons orbiting it. And then it consists of like five large continents. One of the major continents is called Tyrus. large ocean, various islands, things like that.

It's very earthlike. It's just kind of, again, vague on exactly where the continents and the countries are actually established. Is that kind of a master stroke of the fantasy world? Because we talked about it with Game of Thrones, how Westros and fucking Easteros. Westros and like Esos and stuff. Esos, yes. How they kind of had a little bit of a similar earth-like geography to them.

Same thing in the same thing. same sense of like, Lord of the Rings has, takes place on like one landmass. It's kind of easier to, if that's the case. So if you can keep it kind of tight, 26 hours to a day, you're going to have some storyline built into like, oh, shit, there's some extra hours here. 390 days a year. You're going to be able to figure that in and away. Fuck, I forgot the last thing you said.

But as far as all that stuff goes, if you can keep that as close to a reality as possible, like, oh, yeah, no, the one day has. a thousand hours or something like that. That's not really feasible in your brain, but if you can put it in an instance where it's like, well, shit, now it's nine o'clock and it's starting to get dark because it's 26 hours in a day. And so one of the biggest significant differences

between Earth and Sarah is that beneath the surface of Sarah, there's this just massive, like, sprawling network of underground tunnels and caves, and it's known as the hollow. So it's almost got its own kind of like ecosystem that exists like below the planet itself. So that kind of gives you guys a overview what we're going to be discussing today for the next. It's going to be a while. I'm Professor Chris. Professor Adam. And this is Gears of War. Oh yeah. Patreon.

Patreon.com slash historically hi. Do the reviews. You guys are doing awesome about it. Keep the feedback coming. Five star ratings. Also, quickly, If you're an Instagram guy or girl, gal, what have you, everybody in between, we're very close to, I think, 5,000, maybe 4,000, one of the two. I love round numbers. Go ahead and follow us on our socials. We'll hit you with it mid-roll, but just a little reminder. Thank you. You know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to do a little song like we forgot it. Then I'm going to do this part, and then I get to do the thing you told me I miss of. Let's get geared up. Okay, so... What did you mean like we forgot it? We forgot it. No. Not according to the magic of editing, we didn't.

Okay. Okay. So for most of its history, Sarah, again, has kind of been at war. So the ages, you know, we're not going to go insanely far back, but the ages, yes, sir. Before we get into this, I need to do a little backstory with you here. What was your entry into Gears of War? Was it a book? Was it a video game?

Oh, I love this. It was the game. So that was, Gears of War came out in 2006, Gears of War II, 2008, Gears of War III, 2011, 4, 2016, and Gears 5 was 2019. Did you hit the first iteration? Yes, I played everything the day it came out most of the time beating the campaign. And that's, you know, the day off work did what you had to do. Gears of War Judgment is in there somewhere. It's a little bit of a prequel.

Remaster, 2013. That was the renal. But there's a judgment that was for the 360 as well that has two of the secondary characters as the main characters. And I'll introduce them. But it's David. There's a word E-Day? That's going to be the new game coming out. That's also why I'm doing this topic because the new game coming out is going to be, it's going to be the lead-up to kind of what happens.

And then we're going to go after E-Day. But, yeah. What was your feeling when you found additional media? to the gears of war universe. It came out after the games, after the first or second game. The author is Karen Travis. I think there's,

I'm going to miss one of them, but it's, I think, coalitions end, Anvilgate, the slab, and then maybe like Jacinto's remnant, there might be one other one.

But it really feels, there's more story in the books than there are in the games themselves. So that's why I'm excited to do this, is because people that have played the game, You know, it's famous for the locust, which are the enemies, but also the chainsaw gun that's got the chainsaw on it. And for people that have just played the games that really like them, this is going to fill in some stuff. But also, this is just a cool story.

Like, you know how I feel about just, like, creative, like the process and everything? This in itself is just a cool story, whether it's a video game or whether it was just in novel form. Well, and I got to think, too, there's a little extra to it being that the gaming franchise hit first, yes? Yes. So it was being built off of the backs of something that you've already visually seen, played, and interacted with. What's cool, too, is Amazon has picked this up for a series. Oh. So you said 2006 is when the first one came out.

Yep. That means that it's been sitting for 20 years, just developing story. So they have a lot to choose from. Hmm. Okay. All right. Let's jump into Aries backwards. Sarah. Sarah.

Okay. So age of all. Ormageddon. Now this is like a really beautiful, sorry, not beautiful, like a thousand year period, a brutal thousand year period of just basically constant war between like tribes, kingdoms, empires. Think of this in the sense of this is, you know, your medieval time. This is your Greek. This is all of that stuff happening within these thousands of years. Technologies, gains, lost, you know, gained and lost and repeated. And basically this ends when humanity stops and realizes, hey, If we don't cut this shit out, we're going to go ahead and cause our own extinction. So they completely flip the script. It leads to the silver era where it's just a rejection of total war. Empires rise during this time. There is a progression in war where there's this weird kind of gentlemanly like sword and sandals chariot-based combat and everything.

There's a famous fortress that comes into play a few times during the series called Anvilgate. and this is when it's constructed in this big ravine that separates two countries, you know, a pass that, for defense. After the silver area comes the age of silence, and this provides like a golden age of peace, art, scientific growth, and that comes to a crashing halt when humans discover this fuel or this material underneath the surface of Sarah called emulsion. And it's kind of this viscous, almost a neon yellowish, like glowing material. And this comes at a time, too, when there are fossil fuels.

There is oil, there is coal, things like that. But for most of the history of Sarah, just like on our planet right now, there's not enough fossil fuels to support, you know, a global society without a ton of work, a ton of environmental impact. and this all changes when this woman named Dr. Helen Cooper creates this thing called the light mass process. And this allows humanity to refine all of this emulsion, which there are insane reserves of this under certain countries, to convert that into like a really powerful, cheap and clean energy source. So Saudi Arabia-ish a little bit? Correct. But think of it in the sense of if,

Current countries right now had supplies of oil like they do right now. They're very rich. They're very powerful. Now, imagine we found a different energy source and different countries had huge reserves of that. Think of the power dynamic that would flip overnight if all of a sudden they figured out how to convert that into usable energy. And now all of a sudden, those countries that were sitting on oil, it's obsolete. those other countries that are now sitting on these huge energy reserves of emulsion are now going to be the major players. So you have like empires that are kind of like toppled just from an economical standpoint and smaller countries that happen to be sitting on this previously useless stuff rising to the forefront.

A little bit like lithium now. Kind of. Lithium mining. Yeah, exactly. So it creates this massive political problem. It's not spread out evenly across the planet. Some nations become incredibly wealthy. some there were previous established left with nothing,

and the economic divide just kind of tears the planet apart. There's going to be fighting between countries at this point, trying to go ahead and gain emulsion reserves, or to go ahead and take over territory. Because this is also something that's brand new, what do we always do as humanity when something new is discovered? We don't always have the best safety practices. No, we plug it into the military, too.

We see what the propensity is to kill, with this new technology. It powers stuff that does kill. No, no, you're right, too, because it's going to be used here in just a minute. So prolonged exposure to this raw mulition that everybody is now trying to, you know, suck out of the ground causes this fatal,

highly contagious respiratory sickness known as rust lung. And they called that because people who suffered from it would cough up this thick, rust-colored like phlegm. That's nasty. Yeah. And so people that have this rustling, lung, obviously you can't have all of your workers getting sick because people are going to be like, hey, this job isn't safe and we're not going to mind this shit anymore. So one of the governments of an area that wasn't previously very wealthier established until emulsion refining happened called the Coalition of Ordered Governments or the acronym of that is cog, they became rich off the emulsion.

See what you're doing there. Mm-hmm. So basically the fear of a huge public panic and this economic ruin, if people found out that the fuel itself was toxic, they pretty much just buried the health risk. And to secretly handle the outbreak, what the Cog Department of Health established was this place called New Hope. It was the New Hope Research Facility, and they put it, you know, kind of back remotely up in the mountains. This was where they were going to send all the people suffering from Rust Lung to do. research on it, figure out if they could find a way to actually cure this. And publicly, that's what it was. It was meant to house, isolate, and treat the affected minors and then also the infected children of the minors because they were finding that this was being spread generationally, like for kids being born and everything. Wow. Privately, it was a lot worse because there was this guy named Dr. Nile Samson who was like a genius geneticist, but was also kind of bat shit crazy. And he's in charge of this place.

So instead of kind of searching for like a standard medical cure for Rust Lung, he basically uses the kids as lab rats to try to design like an immunity to it, but to also make like a heartier or like sturdier human that would be able to do that. and he experiments with the emulsions like it has this kind of mutating property to it if you handle it right to try to make humans immune to the toxicity of it so inside the hollow that i was telling you about that kind of cuts through the crust of the planet and everything there's an entire network of like flora and fauna down there so there's animals that have been used to living down there around the emulsion that haven't developed illnesses to it or anything like that

So, Trinople type animals. Correct, but they've been down there and just naturally developed through just evolution, not do the radiation, just naturally, you know around this kind of stuff. As far as like radiation affecting the people, or the animals in Chernobyl, they're getting the same thing from. Correct. So he's basically now like wool, if I splice in the DNA of these creatures who can, with standard don't seem to have any type of effects around emulsion,

I can then create someone who's immune to it, these creatures. So he's splicing that DNA with the cells of like the sick kids. And eventually they mutate into these like gray-skinned genetically altered. It looks like a kind of an amalgamation of stuff. And I was going to have you start kind of looking up stuff as we're talking about this. Oh, buddy. I'm already. You guys following. These are figured out. These are the sires. Okay. So if you look up just gears of war sires, you can see what that looks like. And I'll also do the thing. So positive you guys are listening as long as you're not driving. and look it up and you can kind of see what I'm referring to.

I'm also going to guess that the Gears of War logo comes from the governmental organization of COG. So the COG, are you looking at the Crimson Omen that has the, so just the cog is their logo. The Gears of War logo is the cog, but then has a locus skull in the middle of it. So the sires are like incredibly strong, but they're basically like mindless, they're feral and they can't reproduce. They're completely sterile. they do find an anomaly because among like all the patients there's a young girl named Mira and the dates how they keep the dates in the in on Sarah during this time frame is it's either

before emergence so BE or after emergence A.E. So Mira is born about 55 BE before emergency day and she was discovered to have this rare natural genetic immunity to the emulsion. So instead of mutating into one of the sires where she couldn't think or anything like that, her cells like perfectly adapt to this. One of the, because of her cells being to do this, one of the, I guess, side effects or beneficial side effects is she ages, as she reaches adulthood, she ages slowly. Now, eventually, because there's guards and nude hope, there's other scientists, there's supply people that have to bring. stuff in everything, even though it's isolated, all of these ethical violations start to eventually leak out. They can't cover them up. And so once the public finds out about this, they officially

shut down the facility, seal away all of the sires that are in there and put them like in stasis. And then according to the release to the public, they basically like throw Samson in prison or do something like that. So we put them in stasis, not because we want to get rid of them, but because we're to do something dark with them later on as in continue to experiment something like that. Because if you're getting rid of it, you can't continue to work on it. Oh, buddy, that's a valuable, costly, you know, resource. Besides, we can just watch it age and kind of see what happens. Maybe it cures itself.

Who knows? This is why we froze Austin Powers. Yeah, this guy's a psychopath. So as they lock this away, there's actually a fringe political group within the cog that is secretly, funding Samson to keep going. They're looking at this and saying, okay, it's not going well right now, but those sires, if they're strong and everything like that,

that could potentially be like a bio weapon if we ever needed to use that against our enemies. So he takes Mira, the kid who has the immunity or has the ability to kind of like adapt to the cells, a bunch of the loyal scientists, and then a bunch of the remaining test subjects and takes them deeper into this area called Mount Kadar. And a secret facility, you know, money funneled from the government and everything,

creates this like completely hidden off the book secret facility, huge facility where he's able to continue this work. So by crossing her immune stem cells from the emulsion, and then he takes the DNA from the sires, he creates this brand new, breedable, like also to be bred, intelligent hybrid species, and this is where you get the creation of the locust.

So the locus is kind of in description. There's a whole bunch of different types of them, but they kind of, they're probably close to like seven feet tall. The drones themselves, which are the most prominent type, are probably a solid like 300 pounds. They're just,

they're huge things. they kind of have a pebbled like reptilian skin, kind of a reptilian facial look, but not like facial features. So they're humanoid. Thick hide. And as he's seeing these things, him being able to create these things,

he's like, we could have like an infinite army. Like we could just send these to fight in any other wars that we have. We don't have to use the Cog citizens to do this. So he's trying to find a way to mass produce these things. Again, no one knows this is going on. and he takes a female test subject and basically just like heavily mutates her with emulsion and then also stem cells from some of these like hollow creatures and creates this thing called the matriarch.

Oh no, are we getting an ant like queen? That's how they do end up operating. So the matriarch is there's a sexual dimorphicism within the locust in which the females are huge. They're called... So what the names that I refer to these as are the ones that the cog calls the locust. I'm not sure what they use within their language or whatever, but they call

them berserkers. And the female locust are huge. They're blind. They can hear. They can smell. But they're insanely aggressive. So, and as much as it like is kind of gross to say,

but the ways they have to breed them are they basically have to strap the berserkers down on racks and then the males have to breed with them and they are able to, they have almost like litters and there's an accelerated because this guy was able to just

like fine tune the genetics of this. He was able to do like an accelerated type like growth. So as he creates this matriarch, this is the very first berserker. The matriarch acts as this weird like biological anchor for what's going to

be like a hive mind mentality, just like you were saying with kind of, I know ants don't have a hive mind, but you think that that's how they operate. But this basically allows this collective consciousness of this species to truly form. And what's going to happen is Mira, even though she appears completely human,

because it was her DNA that was used to make this matriarch who then starts to breed these locust, she's going to have basically control over the locusts as like their queen and deity because of that DNA. all of them are kind of pretty much coming from her. Mira looks like a nice lady. Huh? She, I mean, mirror definitely looks like a badass.

She was an adorable child. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, she looks, and that's one of the huge reveals is that, like, she just, like, looks like a human. Yeah. But while she's in there, she's not the one that's breeding these things. They're using the matriarch. They're using the other female locust to do this

to kind of build up this collection of, like, drones and different creatures that they're making. And while Mir is there, she's, you know, in her 20s, I think, at this point. And she ends up, or one of the scientists there, Dr. Torres, ends up, they develop a relationship. She gets pregnant, and Mirr gives birth to a daughter named Raina. And Raina has the same type of traits and everything. She's immune to that kind of stuff. But Nile Samson, the lead doctor, turns right around as like, fantastic.

I got, I have something else to start experimenting on, to start experimenting on. start using and dr torres is like well fuck that and he smuggles her out of the facility he escapes as well to stop her from being experimented on niles ends up lying to mirror and tells her that the baby had died so mira's fucking pissed and as she has this mental link she basically uses that to get all the locusts on the same page and then rebel against her them. And this leads to during this actual like rebel or rebelling the locust end up taking over the whole lab. They kill pretty much everyone there. And she ends up getting Mira and a really big group of the locust end up punching a hole like through the wall and entering into the hollow

and getting into the cave system. But a bunch are left to basically get frozen and like this fail safe that basically cryogenically freezes everything in the lab. I have questions, but I don't know if it would give things away. I'll tell you if it will. Go ahead and ask if they're fresh on your mind, yeah. So in theory, if matriarch was made from the DNA, does that mean that Raina and the matriarch are sisters? I mean, in a sense that they shared the DNA of Mira, yes,

but not in the sense of Mira gave birth to the parents. matriarch. But genetically they share... Correct. They have a genetic and so Raina there's also a possibility that if there's any genetic, you know, it hasn't been established yet if there's any link. They got her out of there before any of that could be established. And for all Mira

knows she's dead. Correct. Well, yeah, from what she knew, that's why, you know, all this happened. Nile Samson is killed during the revolt. And so Mira and the majority of her locust children at this point escaped down into the caverns of the hollow

and as they're able to take things from there was stuff left over close by from like the mining operation that had actually like dug the facility and everything like that they were able to scavenge tons of stuff or a bunch of stuff and using Mirrah's knowledge some of the locust had gotten older while they were there there were some that were smarter than others and they end up establishing what will become their capital city down there.

It's called Nexus by just kind of like raiding like settlements and stuff. Old abandoned like mines and things like that, they would get tools. They would repurpose them and they would use that to essentially start building up their technology. So at that point, that's what's going on in that area. And then humanity is none the wiser that any of that has happened. that all happens in this isolated incident on the down low. But they knew about the original testing on the rust lung, correct? Correct.

But as far as anyone else is concerned, that stopped. That was the end of it as soon as they put an into it. As soon as New Hope was shut down, that was supposed to be the end of it. And meanwhile, underground, Raina has just led. Mira has just led. I thought you said Raina led a coup to kill. Raina was the daughter that was snuck out by the dad. Dr. Torres, Mira, her mother, is the one that led the coup after they told her that Rana had died.

Okay. Yep. All right. So switching over to the human side of it, one of the results of the discovery of the emulsion was what's called the Pendulum Wars. And it takes place from 79 to 0B.E. So at the end of the pendulum warns lies very closely with Mergin's Day. And this is a 79-year global conflict against the Coalition of Order Governments, the COG. and the Union of Independent Republics or the UIR.

And this is all over the supply of emulsion. So the cog was an authoritarian faction founded on this thing called the Octus Cannon. And the cog are not the good guys. They're the main guys in the story. But the control of the cog, it's full on in authoritarianism. It's fascism. It's everything like that. Yeah.

So. Kong created the beasts. So it was called the Octus Canon. It was a set of eight strict virtues. Now, it's going to sound like authoritarianism as soon as I start listening to this off. Order, diligence, purity, labor, honor, loyalty, faith, and humility. And because this, they came to power and the way they established themselves, they were built around like total wartime survival.

And so the cog culture and governance is, like, deeply, like, militaristic. I was founded by a guy named Alexei Dispitch, who created the group. And he basically believed that humans were. too selfish and he argued that the only way for society to survive was for citizens to completely give up their personal freedom and serve the government. But when you get into a situation, you're going to find out where it's all about just war and fighting. When you go to war and there is a, what am I trying to say? You switch on to war footing. The country is kind of all turning toward government control because that's what it's, they do that because they know at the end of it,

it's all going to be reverted back. If they lose, it's not going to be good. Yeah, you're not going to have to worry about that anyway. And so for a long time, the rest of the planet kind of ignored the cog, kind of looking at them like they were this weird, like overly strict fanatical movement. Kind of the same way that it happened over and germinate a certain point. But because the cog was already built around, again, absolute obedience and hard work, they adapted to that total warfare a lot faster than their rivals,

growing from this minor political group into basically a massive military superfaction during the pendulum wars. So as they started growing in power, they started to actually like absorb nations. So it was more like a protection racket. So it's like, hey, we see you're smaller. You're on the border of us in the Union of Independent Republics. Why don't you go ahead and come in? We'll go ahead and make sure you guys stay safe. but then you have to completely surrender your independence and follow our law.

So it was almost like, hey, we're going to come protecting. They're like, we don't really need predictions. Like, no, we're going to come protect you. And the best way we can protect you is you doing everything the way we do it. Sound a little like Vietnam, I think. Yeah. And I mean, as, you know, this 79 year war is going on, it gets to the point where there becomes certain duties that if you're not actively fighting,

you can be doing things like going into birthing centers, to actually try to help create the next generation of citizens and everything. So you get these weird population control laws that also come into play as well. Don't like that. No, I mean, this is, yeah, there's a lot of, like, yeah, total control, basically. It's also very cold. It's cold, calculated. Burthing center doesn't sound like what a birthing center is on Earth.

No. it's because of the term what do they call it in hospitals it's the mother's sweet maternity ward yeah something like yeah I should know this I have a child

maternity ward probably has less straps in it than a birthing center does though right yes okay you're one you it's a short term stay the other one might be a little bit more of a long term stay so during the time of the pendulum wars in these countries it a lot of it develops into trench warfare just trying to like secure the borders of these neutral countries that might have

emulsion things like that but during this time frame some of the major players they're going to talk about during uh this episode are born so in 60 b e a guy named victor hoffman is born this dude is your standard no nonsense military leaser uh he rise to become rise to become a colonel and chief of staff during not at this time in their history but he's building his way up the ranks

once shit hits the fan he's kind of going to be the lone high up military guy and he was the hero during the pendulum wars of this place called Anvil Gate

I think I mentioned it a little earlier was one of the books it was also one of the books but it's also a place it's at this in this country I believe it's called

I want to say Vaskar and it was protecting this pass and Vassar Ascar had these really, like, a lot of emulsion reserves. So it was very important for them to be able to protect this country. And so he had this garrison with him. And he was the second in command of this fort. And through a series of events, the fort was attacked.

They were cut off. They were starved out. There was this siege. And the commander was killed. He was the second guy up. He took over. They had sent him some reinforcements of these guys named the Pisseng. They kind of remind me of.

of probably the way they described them, they might be kind of like inspiration would be like South Islanders. Okay. And so these guys were like expert trackers and like snipers and stuff. And so they sent him like seven of these guys and they end up like changing the tide of this

because they're going out and around the fort and like cleaning up guys that are trying to like bomb them or mortar them and everything. They end up starving them basically almost to the point where they have to surrender. finally they do accept a surrender and he's like get the civilians out of the fort if you let the civilians out

I'll surrender the fort to you guys and as they get all the civilians out after that all of the enemy guys come into the fort to accept the surrender and he locks the gates and basically just like kills everyone. Just a battle royale at that yeah but at that point like he wins so like and of course because the cog

end up winning the pendulum war spoiler alert it's not like he's looked upon as it was a war crime had they lost the war that's definitely a war crime, surrendering and then trapping the guys. Turns out it's super hard to pin war crimes on winners of wars. On the winners, but this is something he

carries as a dishonor for his whole life just personally, but he was doing it for the survival of his people. Yeah, I mean, things that happen in war rarely are people proud of. Yeah, he's kind of like full metal jacket, not quite such a fucking douchebag, like

the Lee Emory type, like, what are you talking about? Like that kind of guy. In 59B.E., a guy named Adam Phoenix is born. He goes on to become basically the COGS chief, like lead scientist. He's a decorated former COG major and leaves the army to start working in the scientific field to help design weapons to like end wars. 47B.E.

A woman named Bernadette Madagai is born in the island nation of. It's called Galangie. She's one of the COGS most lethal snipers. She has a Kiwi accent. She's pretty badass. Hell of you. Um, in 22 B.E. That's when Marcus Phoenix is born to Adam and Elaine Phoenix. Elaine is a like genius, uh, biologist. I want to say like evolutionary biologist. 22 B.E. guy named Carlos Santiago is born. This is the other main character, Dominic, Santiago's older brother and Marcus is, uh, best friend during childhood. And then they joined the military together. And then 21 B.E. When you're younger than them is Dom Santiago. This is Marcus's like right-hand guy throughout the entire series.

This guy goes through just shit the entire time, unfortunately. We'll get to that a little bit later. 21B is also the birth of a woman named Anya Stroud. She's the daughter of this famous Pendulum Wars hero named Helena Stroud. And she kind of serves as kind of the, you know the term guy in the chair. Yeah. So like, yeah, so superheroes, she's kind of back at command. leading them through everything, trying to help them with support.

A bit of a Professor X type figure. Kind of. 14B.E. Guy named Damon Baird is born. He's a mechanical genius. He's also kind of an asshole. But he's like, he's a stifler. He's your asshole.

So you love him. And then 12B.E. Guy named Augustus Cole. And before anything having to do with the locust, he was like a mega star celebrity. This planet's version of football called Threat. Crashball. Oh, okay.

All right. So going down through the dates, pendulum war is still going on while these people are being born, country fighting against country. No one knows the locust even exists. But because these countries are going at each other, the locust are kidnapping people.

And what they're doing is it was 55, I think, when Mirr was born. So, and touching back on this being a game and something created, there is some suspension of belief for breeding and stuff like that for numbers of the locust. That's weird to talk about, but you kind of have to explain it because there's going to be a huge population of them. Because the years are longer, the way the locusts were genetically created, they mature in just a couple years. Gestation period is probably very quick. And you just constantly have these berserkerers because every time you have a

female locust born, that's a berserker. And you're using that because they mature in a couple years, you're using them to create more litters, which then mature. So there's this massive buildup in the hollow, but they also find out as these locusts are being born, you're kind of in the same way that if, you know, we have certain geniuses that just get born, your brains are wired a certain way because they're doing this so quickly, they're kind of speeding up that process of like, oh, we're getting all of these like a really large locus. and we're able to breed like a large version of them. This one's really smart.

So you get like geneticists. You have a priest class that kind of separates itself. You have like the military leadership. And you're having kind of, I guess, like the leaders kind of emerge. So you have a guy that's going to be named Oukon that's like their lead geneticist that starts while they're down there. He finds a way to take. people and submit them to like this emulsion mutation to turn them into more locust. So they're quietly in these places around smaller places where they're going unnoticed because

the world is at war. They're taking resources. They're taking people. They're turning them into more locust. They're also taking creatures down in the hollow and they're mutating them and they're turning into like biological weapons. So this is why they travel in hordes? They call it a horde just because when they end up, like coming to the surface, it's this flood of creatures that they're like, like when a horde or like when locusts actually come in. Yeah. Yeah, they have no idea how many of them and how there are so many of them that were just living

under their feet. It's creepy. Very weird to think about that there's just, I mean, I guess we kind of have it with certain insects, but insects aren't going to come on take over the world. And I mean, as they're down there, because you have locust scientists, they're, they're, They're capturing vehicles. They're capturing weapons. They're creating foundries to where they're melting down stuff to create weapons to find out how, you know, things work.

They're developing technology just by capturing stuff in reverse engineering it. So they have guns. They have vehicles. But a lot of their stuff is also then using the biological resources of the hollow as well. 9B.E. Elaine Phoenix disappears when Marcus is 13. years old. She had been doing some research into species

that lived in the hollow and had noticed that these like shrews or like little creatures were starting to mutate and she's like, oh, that's really interesting. So she goes on a research expedition into the hollow and has never heard from again. As far as Marcus knows about it, she just

simply kind of left. And as far as the hollow goes in the locust down there, have they figured out how to refine emulsion? I believe so, and I believe that's what they're using for like sources of power. They're also using like geothermal stuff because they're underground, but they also have been stealing technology. They've also been bringing people down before they convert them and are like, how do computers work? Show us how this stuff works.

Build this for us. Now to scientists, it's going to be a little bit better for the hollow. And because again, the world is at war. They're chalking people up to civilian casualties and disappearance that people go missing during war. all the time. Oh, yeah. So they're using this as a smokesqueen. Smokesqueen? It works. A smokescreen. So the COG and the UIR are in a race instead of a nuclear-powered race, it's about an orbital weapons platform. So the UIR has this secret orbital weapon that was built. And the Cog are looking at this being like, there's no way for us to stop this if they get it operational. They can hit anywhere.

And they find out about it through a COG intelligence officer named Luis Sateel. And for decades, they had been developing this at a place called Aspho Point. And they had it disguised as this very unassuming, like, research facility. It was in this really swampy wetland of this place called the Austria Republic. And to anyone who wasn't in the know, this basically worked on like airplane and helicopter electronics. So they discovered, though, that the UIR had secretly moved all of its routine work to other labs, and they had turned this into like a heavily guarded top secret lab that was dedicated to building this functional satellite weapon. And as they were pretty advanced, they were predicted to have this thing working in like less than a year.

So the cog is also trying to have Adam build this as well, but it's still kind of in a theoretical. heretical phase because he hasn't cracked certain milestones to be able to do this. He's got maybe 33% of the puzzle. The UIR has the other 66%. So on with that information, they realize that they can't just bomb the base from far because if they do, they'll transfer the information or they're able to get the backups. It's also a bunker, so it's kind of hard to do. Have they figured out space travel yet or no?

They have figured out satellites to launch stuff up. for communications, things like that. A weapon. I don't know necessarily if they had been to like the moon or anything, but I think they were so busy fighting with each other that space travel by the time they developed that. It was still about like, well, can we put stuff into space to kill people is what it was. Yeah, less of an emphasis on being the first one up there to find one of the moons.

Correct. As opposed to killing the other people. So you'll be the only people. Less Star Trek from the exploration perspective. Less like, how do we just kill people from higher up? So if they needed to get this research is basically what they needed to do, to be able to beat them to it. And it leads to this thing called the Operation Leveler. Now, during this time leading up to the operation, Carlos and Marcus have both joined up into the gears.

And Adam had tried to persuade Marcus not to do it, but because their relationship was kind of strained anyway due to the fact that Mark. Lucas felt that Adam wasn't being honest about the disappearance of his mom. And then also the fact that Adam is being a single parent, but completely obsessed with his work, doesn't pay a lot of attention to Marcus. So Marcus's family kind of becomes the Santiago's who are more of like a traditional family. Like he's over there for dinner all the time. He basically becomes an honorary Santiago. That's where he prefers to be. And he ends up joining the cog, the military with Carlos. they go into the infantry and then

because Dom isn't old enough instead of joining the military Dom falls in love with and knocks up the neighbor girl and ends up then having they get married so her name's Maria and the next year at when he's old enough he's able to then

to join the military So starts a family and then goes off into the military to war correct because that's kind of it's one of those things where this isn't authoritarian thing military services kind of required compulsory kind of.

Yeah, pretty much. So instead of just going into like infantry, he goes into actual commando training. So they have different levels within. There's infantrymen, there's special ops. Oh, yeah. I mean, they do use planes, but predominantly rarely enough,

they use helicopters just because they're more functional and they can travel a little bit faster than modern helicopters that we have here. So like their aircraft carriers are almost designed to like operate as like helicopter landing platform. but so they have helicopter pilots they do have some like aircraft like planes and stuff

I think they call them like petrels or something but they also have like armored vehicles things like that I love doing these because when we can get to kind of talk about like when you're laying this stuff out I'm sitting here trying to connect it

to real world things and see where it can all kind of fit in and so far we have these different eras where you have helicopters you have have potential satellite launching, space exploration, kind of lightweight stuff. You have a gun called a sawgun. Not yet.

The Lancer hasn't been developed. But we're getting into that. So you're talking about all of these future advancements and all this shit that we don't even see here yet. While they're still in a World War I-esque trench warfare. Yeah. Very interesting. Because it's, we talk about leaps and technologically. for our wars, but this is almost like a,

they've geared up so heavy on the R&D side. Yeah. That in practical use, they're like, well, shit, if we just dig trenches and fired each other for now, this should be good. We just have to hold the line until this satellite thing gets online from one of our countries to try to end this stalemate, yeah. So Operation Leveler is also known as the Battle of Asfo Point.

Now, during this operation, basically there's two phases where there's going to be a force that sets up around the outside. The lab itself is kind of at the end of like a peninsula, and then the ocean kind of surrounds it, and then it's swamp land and everything. So there's two main forces. One is the commando force,

and that's going to include Victor Hoffman, who's a major, I believe, at the time. Dom is actually going to be part of that, and that's the rating party to get inside the facility, capture a bunch of the scientists, clear the hard drives after they've downloaded all the information, and then set the facility up to explode. The other group is going to involve Marcus and Carlos, Anya's mom, Helen Estraud,

and then a bunch of other gears that are going to basically be like the holding force. That way, if something happens, an alarm goes off, and they start marching troops out there, there's a holding force to keep the line pushed back. So the strike team being led by Hoffman, their goal is they're going to run in on Zodiacs and get up to the beach, storm the beach, get into the facility. What is O'DX? The inflatable.

It's their version of like the inflatable rafts. I think they're called, you know, like the Marines run into like the inflatable rafts that have like the steering wheel and everything like that, but they're inflatable just around the outside, like a version of a hard and softboat, kind of like that. So they're going to get in there, download the technology, capture a bunch of the scientists, and then bail. Now, as they're coming. down and getting in there, one of the guys within the lab after they kind of cut the communications off to where everything is silent starts communicating out a window with like Morse code.

One of the enemy guys does. Oh. And so another force is able to go ahead and see that. They put it on high alert. Everyone's aware now of what's going on, but the mission is still a go. So as they're going through here, they breach the research facility. The security there is putting up a fight. Dom distinguishes himself during this time

and ends up securing like the data and a bunch of scientists and everything. Out like in the fields, out in this like Marsland and everything. Basically Marcus, Carlos, Helena, I think her name's Bernad. I told you, but they call her Bernie. The holding force.

Yeah, they're out there and they're just like heavily outnumbered because they weren't expecting any notification. So they're just trying to buy them time for them to get back on the raft. get back out to sea and then a the helicopters are called Ravens the King Ravens is going to land kind of like in the waterhouse some do and they're going to drive the boat right up into it and then get out of there and then get back to the naval ships and out on the naval ships off the coast you have the command in control that's like running everything during the operation one of the people in there running it is Anya so she's like in her early 20s but she's got the headset on and she's listening to everything that's going on during the operation. This feels like a very young setting, almost, as far as these main players so far. Like there's not an old crafty Eisenhower type veteran. That's kind of Hoffman at this point a little bit.

And then during this time, there's also a chairman. I think his name is Dahliel of the cog. Okay. So as they're outnumbered, they're starting to be overrun. Helen Estraud, there's this tank that the UIR had. called an asp and it basically has like cannons machine guns and it might have rocket launchers on it and so they are running out of like stroller mounted rockets they don't know how they're going to be able to defend this thing so she does this kind of like suicidal anti-armor she grabs a bunch

like a bandolier grenades she sneaks up on it climbs on it drops the grenades in the hatch and while she goes to jump away her armor gets snagged on a piece of the tank and she goes to jump and it like knocks her off kilter and she's just hanging there. And as she's hanging there, she just makes eye contact with like Marcus and them. And it explodes and kills her. And her daughter is on the mic the entire time. So she's listening to this happen. So as they're reporting and saying like, you know, Commander Stroud is KIA,

she's hearing this stuff and has to try to compose herself to keep going through it. So as they're getting pushed back, there's a bridge there. There's some explosives on it that they need to detonate. and I think Carlos runs out there to do it. He ends up getting cut down by some machine gun fire. He's on the bridge. Marcus is trying to get out to him. Carlos realizes that if Marcus comes out, he's going to get killed too.

And so I want to say that he pulls the pin on a grenade and kills himself to keep Marcus from going out there. Marcus is pissed off. He goes and he commandeers one of those tank things and is basically able to start holding off the like advancing U.I. Army, but then out on the water, they've gotten a bunch of scientists into the zodiacs. They're making a run for where this King Raven is supposed to come in, but

one of the enemy, I think, remember those Russian attack, like a hind? They always had him in like a Rambo movie. It was the Russian helicopter that had like the bubble things and it had a bunch of cannons and stuff on it. That's kind of the version. They were called, oh God, what were they called?

I can't remember what the UIR called him. But that thing basically comes out and is like strafing these zodiacs and it's destroying them guys are going in the water they're losing scientists the guys that were with him on this commander raid were the same guys that were with hopman back at anvil gate those like um south islander guys because they were so good at being sneaky and one of the guys that had been with hoppin for a long time him and dom are sitting in the water and there's not enough room for them on a boat on the boat and he shoves dom in the boat and he goes get your ass in the boat he's like you got kids to worry about and then

And as they are getting strafed, getting ready to get strapped again, that guy ends up getting shot and killed. But then Marcus ends up destroying the helicopter with one of the rockets from the Asp to save them. Chimera? Yes, it was a chimera. So as this happens, like Dom gets on the controls for the boat and ends up like running the boat right up into the back of the Sea Raven with all this information, the scientist and they end up getting escaping. So we have some loss. We have some main characters that have gone down. Yes.

But ultimately the mission is successful. The mission is very successful. So the aftermath of that is there's a ceremony for what would be like our Medal of Honor, you know, Purple Hearts, all that kind of stuff. And it's called the Embry Star. So the Embry Star is presented to Helena. So Anya's there to go ahead and get it for her, her daughter. Marcus gets one.

I don't know. I want to say Carlos also gets one. Dom gets one. And Marcus ends up taking his and just bearing it with Carlos. He's like, I don't deserve this. It's a piece of metal. As are all like at dinner that night, it's Adam Phoenix, Marcus, Dom, the rest of Santiago's, Maria, and Anya, they're all having this dinner. I want to say that afterward, Marcus walks on you home.

And because they'd been kind of attracted to each other and everything, but like grief, they'd been drinking. They end up spending the night together the first time, but also kind of establishing this secret relationship because she's technically an officer. And he's kind of an unlisted guy, so they're not supposed to be doing that. And then carrying on, like, having a relationship

throughout this whole series, early on, he never stays the night with him. and she gets kind of upset about it and Dom has to explain it's like he doesn't want you to see him while he's sleeping because he has like war nightmares and he's like he thinks it's going to scare the shit out of you so she had to listen to her mother get exploded right

she had to listen to her mother get exploded right she's probably got a few of them too yeah she probably doesn't want to wake up to someone screaming yeah so Adam Phoenix spends the next two to three years after the Battle of Aspho Fields using all the stolen data to basically refine his hammered-on weapon system. They set the UIR back far enough

to where they end up beating them to the development of this weapon system. You said Adam had 33% and the UIR had about 66%. So this has just pulled the cog side into the lead. Correct. The IR lost so much that they couldn't make up

for how quickly the cog was going to get there. So the satellites are launched, the network's established, and basically they're powered by like crystallized emulsion. And how these things work is once you get them centered on a target, it fires down four beams that are smaller. They converge on a point when they converge. The power basically creates like a, almost like a mini nuclear detonation.

But you can also do it at a smaller, like a lesser beam that can just be like pinpoint action. your seat to take out enemies and things like that, as long as you have a targeting laser with it. So that's like a spotter for an air strike. Yeah, so imagine it. Like a red laser on somebody. You could have four of them launching it,

and then they all converge their beams together, or one of them together can just do kind of like spot shot cleanup. Okay. So Marcus and Dom are promoted based upon ASFO fields and continue fighting in it. Dom has his family, his wife Maria. He has got his son, uh,

or Benedicto and then also or Benedito. And then he has a daughter now named Sylvia. Marcus and Anya kind of see each other secretly. And this is just kind of waiting for Adam to finish this up. They're still going on missions because it's still the pendulum wars. But they're basically just waiting for Adam to kind of finish this so they can end the war. So the hammer of Don's first deployment was in zero. So zero before emergence.

and it was done on a UIR naval fleet that was off the coast of this place I want to call Bonborg or something and as these four massive battleships are sitting out there you see this kind of glow in the sky and this beam come down. Is it four? Yep, so there four beams come down

and they all go to converge on the middle beam and it just completely like obliterates these four battleships. And so as they see that, they're like, that could be a city, there's no defense against this, thing, they have it operational. They end up surrendering unconditionally, I believe.

All except one country called Garasnia, but this brings an end to the 79 year pendulum war. And this is why it's zero because you said it was the emulsion?

Before emergence. Emergence. Emergence. So this leads to this new golden era, the country of Tyrus that is ruled by the cog and other cog nations basically explode into these massive parties um there's parades it return of world war two soldiers coming back to new york all that kind of stuff restaurants and bars are packed every night all the gears are coming home the world is finally quite after 79 years there's a lot of celebrating to catch up on um at that point the cog is now the sole global global superpower

and life looks like it's going to go ahead and be good at this point going forward. And they're the bad guys still. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a very like, I believe like it's very like horrors like grim dark kind of like Warhammer like ask but not that dark. But yeah, you just have to create if you have a bad guy, you just have to create someone even more mindless and ruthless to make them seem like the good guys. And in a lot of situations, the bad guys like the cog and everything, You're being like, they're a bunch of fucking fascists.

And they're like, yeah, but you guys are serving. It's like, we don't have a choice. This is only game in town. All right. Well, shit's about to hit the fan. And before it does, let's take a bathroom break. Okay. Well, hello.

Listen, while we head to the restroom and get ourselves something to drink, why don't you do something nice for yourselves? Head on over to patreon.com slash historically high and get signed up for a little bonus content. I mean, come on, you deserve it. If you want to keep up with this, Our main source of social media is going to be our Instagram, which is Historically High Pod, P-O-D. You can also head over to its Twitter, it's X, it's Twitter, come on, at historically high, and that's high, H-I-like, high.

If you have any recommendations, you want to get to us, just want to reach out and say hello. You can hit us up on our email at Historically High Podcast, H-I-G-H-H-H-G-H-Podcast, at Gmail, All right. And with that said, let's get back to the good stuff. Okay. Everything's happy for six weeks. Oh, good. Yeah. They get a month and a half out of it.

They get six weeks. Was it still 30 days in a month? Um, I mean, because there were no, because there was 390 a year. Let's just say, I don't know, six, it's still not a lot, whatever their weeks were. It wasn't very much. Um, so after the end of the pendulum wars, that's when, the locust decide to breach the plan of service

service in a day that will be known as emergence day. And basically, the goal for them is simple. It's the total extermination of the human race and the population of the surface. And it's going to be very hard to hit

a satellite weapon underground. And the emergence coming from underground has also been slowly stealing technology from the surface. So we're not talking about like a proto species trying to fight with their fists.

This is a species that, so they've been planning this for a while and they've sent scouts up to the surface to watch battles that humanity of us have to have their fighting during the pendulum wars, what the effectiveness of their weapons

are, where their weaknesses are. And so you've had the establishment of a military hierarchy down with the Locust. One of the first guys that's kind of in command, there's almost two guys that share like total overall command. One of them is General Rom,

and the other is General Carn. And they're both Locust. And they're both Locust, but they're in different areas when Emergency Day happens because this is planet wide. It's not just like we're attacking the cog. They build up to this to where they get

and you can start looking up these creatures. So when they attack, they attack with not only just the drones, but they have these creatures called corpses. And corpses are basically like a, it's like a spider, but their legs are almost kind of like facing toward more toward the front of them. They're six to eight of them. And they just dig through rock.

And so they use them to make these tunnels going up and get right below the surface. And so you basically have all these locusts that are hanging out 10 feet underneath the street behind these things. And they're stationed all over the world in a giant coordinated effort. And they attack all at once, all across every major population center on the planet at the same moment. And these corpses blow a hole in the ground from below a bunch of like these reaver creatures, which can fly. We'll go ahead and come out and take to the air so they can start, you know, taking down any air defenses.

then as soon as the corpses are done, they'll go back in the ground and they'll allow the drones to basically pour out and they just are indiscriminately killing everything. So you have people just at streetside cafes. I think they waited for a Sunday to actually do it when everyone was just nice and relaxed. And most places were like there wouldn't be the military on duty or anything like that. Within 24 hours, this is literally millions upon millions upon millions of locusts coming out of the ground. That's how quickly they were breeding. I don't know. Call me crazy.

I just took a look at this corpse. It looks like it's an eight-legged first, like front-facing creature. And then behind it, it has like a small body of a centipede. Now, I understand that these locusts look scary as shit. Those things are really, really bad. It does follow these corpse or things. I'm almost less scared because these corpse are things are terrifying. Correct.

but the corpses don't have guns. So they pop out, scare the shit everyone, and they pop back down. And all of a sudden, these guys coming out, just shooting everything, or coming out of this whole. Soldiers are showing up. And they're also coming out

with these things called wretches that are almost like, it looks kind of like a small monkey, probably about up to your waist, and they just have claws on them, and they'll just run kind of at a four-legged or like quadrupedal run, and they'll just slash and kill people.

They attack in groups. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I am like three for three unnailing these names without spelling them incorrectly. I love it. Look up a broomock. Let me get to the wretch first. Okay. Ooh, that is a monkey-like thing, yeah.

Except for it has the face of, oh shit, what was that movie back in the day? He had the mask with the black mask with the white stripes going up. Venom? No. he had a movie in like the mid-90s black and white suit had like a stomp on his foot a stump on his foot like a large metal casting around his foot i have no idea who you're talking about okay that's going to come to me in 15 minutes it'll just randomly shout out of him i hope so so what's this next thing uh brew mock brew mock yeah so you waited until i I was talking shit about being able to spend.

Within the first day after the emergence, 25% of the entire human population was dead. Whoa. Do you think everybody in the URI that just got taken over was having second thoughts about how they might have been better off just letting them be killed by the cog? I don't know because, yeah, like you were saying, like it was such chaos when this happened

that when all the reports were coming out, that, you know, places were being under attack. They thought it was a UIR attack. They thought they were violating the peace treaty. And so as these guys are coming out into the streets, they're seeing these things come out of these holes that are just slaughtering people. It's going to add no help.

Yeah. Spawn. Oh, yes. Kind of. Except with like jagged tea. Yes. Because Spons was a smooth. Yes.

I got what you mean. With John Leguizamo. Uh-huh. Yeah. I should have said that. I should have thrown John in there. I would have known exactly what you were talking about. Day one.

25% of the human population dead next and I'm assuming that day two day three the horde is still pouring out of the world they're establishing positions on the surface they've taken over and taken supplies and things like that

I mean they're they know what like to do they know where to hit them too they're being directed by ROM to seek out like leadership and officers because they know what happens and they scramble and like they don't know what to do if they don't have their leadership they're enacting a very intelligent very well put together war that's why it takes humanity self-guard is it's like these things look like mindless creatures but they're extremely well coordinated and it's because they have that kind of hive mind type mentality so the first

day that that occurs on e day marcus and dom are in the city of colona and dom's wife maria had sent their kids and I believe Dom was living there at the time but Dom's wife had sent their kids to her parents while they had had a day together it might have been the day before this but the area of south the city's called Afira so the area of South Afira that was hit really really hard that's where her parents apartment was and it collapsed with all of them inside it so on emergency day Maria lost her parents and her kids Dom lost his kids where are we out with the satellite weapon at this point? Is it trying to pick off these hordes or is it just too much?

So think of it this way too. It's so well coordinated. Certain countries are getting taken offline in a day because the attacks that are happening because they're able to launch attacks by air with those revers and they have rocket launchers on them. They're like, go after communications. They know where to hit them to completely cut off anyone talking, any countries talking to other countries.

So as people are trying to report in there, like, what's happening? They're like, we don't know. We only know what's happening within like a mile of what's going on where we are. So there's no target really to hit because everywhere is the target. And they're hitting in such like, imagine it in the sense of like they're not grouping together as a giant invasion force. They're popping up on Main Street on a busy intersection and then just spreading out. So if you tried to hit them, you'd be hitting every civilian around them in the heart of a city. So, of course, after this, Maria gets severely depressed.

Dom is just trying to kind of fight to keep going and everything. So Maria is brought to the Phoenix estate so they can keep an eye on her. Because, again, everything's so crazy that Dom has no choice but to be out actually fighting for the survival of the human species. About six weeks after Mergence Day, Dom and Marcus are sent to this place called Halvo Bay to help. now halvo bay is like a kind of a major like coastal resort town in tyrus but it also houses the halvo bay military academy for what are called the onyx guard onyx guard are kind of like the cream of the crop for gears they get like black armor um they're usually like protection detail or like special operations things like that it's also a really really like uh resort town in the sense of a lot of rich people have like their houses there and everything like

that there's a military museum it's a very like old established people in with the government have like their vacation homes and it's very prestigious high value properties pretty much and probably soft properties would you say weaker properties maybe what do you mean just because they're kind of like sprawling estates where there's probably not going to be a whole lot of action in the sense like uh what's that island down of san diego not catalina uh it is catalina is it's hot off l a laa the one that's down in San Diego where the Navy base is. Oh, um,

fuck, I can't remember its name. Alameda or? No, that'll probably come like spawn did. But down there, there's, like it's,

it's only really defensible because the base is sitting there. Yes. Whereas other than that, it's just a very easy target. It's one of those places where, like think of it like West Point, the people that would have houses close to West Point.

Yeah. or an old established like military place. Because it's got like the Museum of Military Glory. It's a very old like original Cog settlement. Okay. So down there during this time, you get Lieutenant, Lieutenant Damon Baird, Augustus Cole, who's in his squad, Sophia Hendricks, who is a like onyx guard cadet and this guy named Garin Paddock.

And again, this is six weeks after emergency. Now, Garan was a member of this thing called, fuck, I can't remember with the exact name of it, sorry. It was where UIR soldiers, once their country was out of it, they could come and still continue to fight and try to beat these things back. So, Garan is a former union of independent republic soldier. So the cog aren't really crazy about him, but they just need bodies. So he's part of this squad as well. what's going on with Tyrus? What was the

the country that you said that didn't capitulate? That was Garosnia. Garosnia. Garosnia gets attacked on Ede by General Karn. And Karn writes this thing called the thing's called the Shivaleth, but it's basically it was this creature that existed in the hall of the genetically engineered, that it's basically a giant spider, but he was missing a leg. So they designed it like a robotic leg.

And then he tamed it. And he has kind of like a leg. same leg too, but he's a genius. So him, he's always on this creature. But he was able to design the attack on Garosny in such a way where he cut off their communications, I think within the first five minutes and then just systematically knew exactly where to hit them. And so now he's moving on now that he's, he's basically just going around hitting like the satellite areas before they start to try to pinch in.

And now he's working on the cog territory. So he gets sent to Halvo Bay and he's doing the attack on Halvobay. Okay. So Garosnia, wiped off the board, not going to probably play any sort of a factor. Not yet, not for a while. Okay. Not for a while. So they come up with this plan as this squad is there.

Everyone is scrambling to try to defend this area because, again, there's the naval base there. It's a prestigious area. And Garin knows about Karn because he was there when Karn had attacked Garosnia. So he's telling the guy that's in charge, his name is like Loomis, he's telling him, hey, you need to do everything you can

to try to take out this guy. And he's like, you need to shut your mouth because you're like a filthy indie. That's what they call them. And you're lucky that you're here fighting with us. Don't tell me how to do my job. And so Barrett is actually kind of listening to him

being like, he's fought this guy before. I'm kind of thinking we need to try to take this guy out. He seems to be in charge of all these guys. So they basically break command, or break the structure or what am I trying to say go outside of orders and sophia knows about this um rocket that's being worked on out on one of the islands called the light mass missile and she knows about it because she was sleeping with one of the professors that was working on it at the academy and so they're

like if we take this missile we can target karn and take him out and it'll you know cut the head off the snake and then we can try to take the city back so they're able to make their way like up to the professor's house like up in like seahorse estates they have to fight their way up there they have to break into his lab get the launch codes they have to get out to the island they're fighting against the locust the entire time and they get out there they get the rocket or the missile all set up to launch and as that's happening loomis is calling them being like where are you guys you guys are supposed to be at the museum guarding the museum and he's like we're at the rocket site where and they're, he's like, I can't, oh, sorry, you're cutting out. And they end up

getting back to the mainland and they hear on the radio, you hear Marcus on the radio. They don't know each other or anything like that, but he's part of another squad. He's like, hey, we're pinned down by the museum. It looks like there's this giant locust on this, you know, writing this thing. They're going to overrun us. And they're like, so they launched the missile. It lands near the museum. It saves Marcus and Dom, which are just going to. on in the background. And then they end up, as they're staring over the crater of this thing, Loomis shows up in a couple helicopters and takes them back to like the, I guess what it would be,

like the legislative chamber in handcuffs while the city is still under attack and pulls them in for like a military tribunal with just himself to judge them for stealing this missile. But they burned the missile that they had intended for corn. It wasn't intended for him. told them the missile was meant for something much larger, much more important than what they were suggesting to use it for. But weren't they trying to go hijack the missile to try to they were trying to hijack the missile to take, yes, to take out the leadership.

But they had to choose to defend the library with it? No, no, he was there. That's how they were able to zoom in on. It's like they knew he was there because of that. And I'm assuming that this is a mission in one of the games, right? This one is. Yeah, because it sounds like Taylor, Taylor, Taylor made.

When you gave me the You're gonna be able to tell what's novel probably and what's game related. Either way, I love it though. Because they're both fun. They're fun in different ways.

So as he and the, so as they're having this trial, the locusts like overrun this courtroom and break in and end up like, they have to end up fighting their way out. Corin ends up surviving this and attacks them.

They end up killing the his spider thing they end up killing him but baird is basically demoted instead of being arrested and like shot and he's like you're not going to be an officer anymore and then they end up um getting called out somewhere else halve obey ends up kind of being lost they fight over it for a little bit longer but they have to end up pulling back and when they pull back baird and cole stay together but um um garen paddock the uir guy and then the girl end up like going off and doing their own thing but hello hallow island uh or halvo bay hello bay kind of like the red coats coming and taking boston a little bit a an old money a symbolism yeah okay you've you've taken a city of great

military prestige. Again, and that's done because that's also where they're training like the elite guards and things like that. So during this time frame, too, the weapons that they're using against the locust, they're starting to figure out that they're not as effective. So they have traditional bayonets. And they're finding that when they go to try to bayonet or even stab these things to try to save their lives, their hides are so thick that they can't get through them. and during a fight I believe Marcus is like pinned down in a grocery store and one of these things like has him

and this other gear his name is Ty Coliso starts a chainsaw and chainsaws the thing like from the neck down to kill it and so Marcus goes to his dad and he's like the band nuts aren't working I just saw Ty chainsaw one of these can you design something and he's like I got you back so he ends up building this rifle

that's like a machine gun but at the bottom of it It has a chainsaw. I saw a picture. You already saw the pictures? Okay. You say chainsaw gun, the first thing that gets Googled after that, it's going to be chainsaw. Yeah, fantastic. So that ends up becoming like the new thing.

It's the Mark 2 Lancer is what is the most widely used weapon during the Locust War. Probably the most notable weapon of the series. 100%. It's in the same way that, you know, the energy sword for Halo or the portal gun for, I think, the portal game and everything. Yeah, it's definitely that game. The Fortification Act nationalizes all supply chains under the Coalition of Order governments. Every able-bodied male is conscripted for service, and women are assigned to military rules or forced into birthing farms.

So they are in extreme survival mode at this point. Call me a crazy thinker here. What are the birthing centers going to do in the short term? I feel like it would be better to try to arm these ladies and see what they can do as opposed to having to wait because ultimately if it takes nine months, six months, whatever it is on Sarah to have a child as a human or a humanoid, I guess, you might not be around by the time birth happens.

Yeah, but you have to plan for the long term at this point because they don't know how long this is going to last. So you've got to at least look like, I guess you're maybe preparing for the future. What better thing to do than have forced births? Yeah, okay. At this point, too, the COG chairman, Thomas Dahliel, ends up dying of a heart attack about 10 months to a year after E-Day. Horrific timing.

Yep. And then the Department or Deputy Chairman Richard Prescott ends up being elected chairman. Now, this guy is a grade A piece of shit. And, yeah, throughout the story is going to be kind of a, that's going to be the kind of common theme for him. Are they able to hold them off eventually? Like, are they able to kind of stalemate with the locust? So, geologists discovered that there are certain areas that aren't being attacked,

and they come to the determination that this thing called the Jacinto Plateau, which is about the size comparison would be, have you ever heard of the Colorado Plateau? It reaches into, like, four states. It goes like Colorado and New Mexico, but it's a, position, I'm trying to think of how big it is. It's roughly, it's a solid in on Sarah, the Jacinto plateau. It's a massive solid granite shelf, about 130,000 square miles. And they notice that none of the places in this area are being attacked from up. If the locusts are trying to attack this area,

they have to come on the surface. And so that's when they determine that there's this granite shelf. It's too thick and dense for the locust to dig through. So this becomes like, the last bastion and this is in tyrus this is coalition of ordered government you know territory and everything so about a year after e day all the places that are outside of the shelf have been taken over overrun there's still people everywhere they haven't like all 100% migrated to this shelf they're still trying to defend other countries are trying to defend their countries there's remnants of their population still there just pockets basically Yep, but it's determined that something, this is a battle that they're going to keep continuing to lose and bleed out unless, like, drastic action is taken.

So Prescott and his top military advisors conclude that humanity is completely losing the ground war and that eventually something was going to happen with Jacinto or there wasn't going to be enough of humanity to, like, sustain themselves. and they order every surviving human on the planet to immediately abandon their homes and flee to the plateau. Basically, he announces this to the planet. He says you have 72 hours to reach Jacinto Plateau regardless of where you are. And after that, we're going to in mass deploy the hammer of dawn across the entire planet to try to kill the locusts hoard. and for like a massive asset denial scorched earth way of trying to stop them. And now you have a mad scramble for everybody outside this 130,000 square mile area that has 72 hours, whatever's left of them, to try to get there for safety or be burned to death by this weapon. And ain't that big.

the plateau compared to Sarah probably I mean that size of a plateau compared to Earth not that big 72 hours is going to be pretty tough for most of the remaining surviving humans to get there right? It's it was very tough

because this is also an area that also backs up to the coast as well so it's against one side so if you're coming all and again this is like a year after everything's been destroyed like you'd be lucky to find a vehicle to try to do this. You're trying to get there on foot across hostile territory

where you're probably getting attacked as well. Yeah, not a lot of people. You're killing a lot of humans with this scorched earth plan too, but I guess, I mean, it's better for some of you to survive than nobody to survive. That's kind of the thought process. So, I mean, anyone who couldn't or wouldn't reach just into within those three days was intentionally left behind,

the weapon scorched 90% of the surface. It destroys all of the cities, the factories, everything, billions of innocent civilians die in the strike. Where, when this announcement happens, and again, I don't know if you know this, because it'd be bad shit crazy if you know this. Where is Marcus and the gang

right around the time this announcement is happening? Are they close enough to Jacinto that they're going to be able to make it up there? Yes, they have ensured that before this announcement was made, weeks in advance, that they had started pulling back all resources that the military could bring back. helicopters, weapons, they have been constantly, at the time that this war started, they have been

constantly moving manufacturing onto the plateau. They've been turning things. That's where the birthing centers are. That's where like the operations to like mass grow like food and things like that have all been relocated. So once that's been complete, then it's like, now you have three days to try to get people back here. So now we have an actual population that can try to sustain us. And we're going to Soviet Union this shit and move all of our factories up to the Euro Mountains because we can't be touched up there. Yes. Yep. So once this happens, it kills off on the planet.

About 90 to 95% of the population at this point has been killed off after these strikes. Human? Is that just getting human population? Yes, the human population. Because they also determine if you're like, hey, and we're announcing this to every, you think that like the locusts aren't going to have access to stolen radios and be like oh they're giving us 72 hours to get in there before everything happens we'll just make sure we push our remaining forces underground yeah they did get quite a few of them that were left on the

surface but they were able to basically just be like hey back to where we live what happens to the survivors though of humanity there's smaller groups they basically create this third you know group of players called the stranded who not only hate the locust but now also hate the cog. Logical. For basically just completely fucking them over. I can see why. Yes.

For sure. That's an interesting little thread to be able to do that because now you've given us somebody we can't cheer for other than the fascist or the locust. Yes. Now we have a true hero amongst the villains in the story. So there's a guy name, and this takes place hours after the hammer dawn strikes. There's a guy named Gabe Dee. is who's a veteran gear but because of some like shit he didn't agree with he basically has himself

demoted to just like handling like the motor pool and everything and so right is like the hammer of dawn strikes incinerate um this city he actually contacts this guy with basically a mission and he's ordered to assassinate this locust name uhcon and he's like how do you guys even know who this is like don't worry about it we know this guy is responsible basically for like the corpses and the broomox and all of these biological weapons that are basically just slaughtering all of our people. He gets paired up with this guy named Sid and Sid kind of seems to be the one. He's like an old like older gear, but he seems to be the one that has the information on this Yukon guy. So with the cog military basically in shambles by like the hammer strikes,

they're told, hey, you need to kind of just like take this Sid guy and go see if you can scramble up a bunch of other gears that you can find out in the waste or whatever and just try to finish this secret mission. He ends up going and finding a group of stranded that he's like, yeah, I know we're assholes. Like I didn't want to fucking nuke the entire plan or anything, but we got to try to kill this guy because he's going to try to kill all of us and the stranded are like, fuck you guys. But yeah, I guess we have to kind of work together. So it turns out that as they're trying to hunt this guy down, they find out that

he has this like mutation through the emulsion that they can't kill him through like conventional means. Like he heals really rapidly. And they're trying to figure out how they can do this. And Sid starts coming out with all this information. And he's like, how do you know this shit?

He's like, I used to be a guard at the New Hope research facility. O'Con was one of the locust that was there that they knew. had a gift for this kind of stuff. And when they did experiments on him, because he kept healing from things, they were trying to figure out how that worked for like soldier development. They developed this type of gas that if he's exposed to, he can then be killed because it suppresses that. So.

So these locusts don't survive on a like an age type deal. Like locusts don't die of old age? No, no. This is just this one guy. But he's been around since the new hope facility. He was one of the ones that was developed, I believe, at like New Hope and then moved over to, because they kept having little successes when they were trying to make the Sires, but not like massive successes. But New Hope was before the war, right? Between the URI and Cog? New Hope was after emulsion had been discovered, so it was at the same time as well.

Okay. So during this time frame as well, Gabe Diaz meets this woman named Raina. And Raina ends up meeting him because UConn has taken over this lab where her father, Dr. Torres, had been working, and UCon had broken in and killed him. And so Gabe ends up meeting Rana. They end up being able to kill UCon. And at that point, Gabe is like,

I'm not going back to the cog. None of them end up going back. They're like, we're just going to go ahead and hang out with the stranded. For everybody else that hasn't played or seen gears of war, Raina, shade side of the head, tattoo on the arm. Kind of hot. Hot, hot video. Gabe's a handsome man, too.

He's got like the silver little thing in the front of his hair. He's got like a silver streak. And all these guys are like, this is a world in which everyone is just jacked. There's not a fat among them. Correct. And these guys, there's an explanation for that too. So gears get four times the rations that normal people get. because they have to have the strength enough

to chainsaw a locust. Makes sense. So around this time, Jacinto is under a siege of just basically ground forces happening, because again, because of its granite bottom, it can't like be,

it's granite bottom. It doesn't allow to be penetrated. But they're basically just having like a trench warfare. It's developed back to that pendulum war era trench warfare where the locusts are just throwing resources, but they seem to always just keep coming. Maria Santiago disappears during this time.

She used to take a walk around like the Phoenix Estates because they had like gardens and all that kind of stuff. On the plateau. Yes. The Phoenix Estate as I think in like Jacinto City. Okay. So she still like just because of the grief and everything like that, she still has this belief because they never recovered the children's bodies that the kids are still alive.

And she goes out searching for them. She's going to end up spending the next 10 years living actually around the stranded. And once Dom figures this out, Dom's going to basically just have, as if he doesn't have enough to worry about, he now has to be trying to look for his wife this entire time. So he's going to be trying to search for her this entire time. That's too many plates in the air. You got a lot to worry about. It gets the shaft during, yeah, during this series. So we come to five after emergence and come to find out just a little bit more backstory is there's this type of locust that they'll spot every so often and it'll be almost like glowing.

And come to find out that when the locusts were down there, the native creatures weren't like mutating in the sense of like turning like glowing or anything like that when the locust went down there the emulsion started to actually like infect them and everything almost like a version of locust rustling except it would take them over and almost pilot them

like sentient beings correct what am I trying to think the game that they just turned into a really good HBO show the Last of Us. Yeah. How the mushrooms. How the mushrooms turn it into, all of a sudden you now have this group of locust that they're calling the lambent because they glow

that seem to be controlled or infected by the emulsion that are now fighting against the normal locust. And that's actually what forced them to the surface. Huh. So it's discovered that the locusts had been down there for a while, but there's also this third faction. now. And so the locusts are fighting them on one front and fighting humanity on the other front. And the matriarch is still down there, just pumping them out. So the matriarch is still, they kept her in the lab under Mount Kadar. When they escaped, they didn't take her.

Okay. I think it's because she would have been too hard to control because they could then, once they were established, find the females when they were younger and try to control them at that. I'm not sure. Okay. About 10 years. after the um what's called the fall of afira the um sorry not 10 years after so in 10 ae so 10 after emergence this leads so what's called the fall of afira so afira i think is the capital of tyrus at this point it's on the plateau and the locust finally had found like some natural faults and cracks in the granite plateau that allowed them to like bypass the city's walls and come directly out of the ground. Now, this isn't to say every place on the plateau was exposed, but they had been specifically

trying to target this city. And as they appear out of the ground in the middle of downtown, this throws all of the soldiers and all of their positions, you know, out of whack. And during the battle, Marcus gets this radio call from his dad who's trapped at the estate where his lab was. And he's like, the locusts are starting to overrun the estate. This is the last time I'm going to talk to you. I need to tell you something. And so Marcus had been overlooking a bridge and watching it because the bridge may need to be destroyed to stop them from flooding into the city. And he had one of the handheld hammer of Don targeting laser. So he could target the bridge. It could destroy it. And it had a, like a little spotter scope or targeting scope on it that it needed. And he's like, well,

this part always gets damaged. I'm going to put it inside my pocket. When it's time to launch it, I'll pull it out, attach, and we'll do it. When he gets this message, I think Hoffman is on the radio and he's like, I got to go home my dad. He's like, you're not fucking going to help your dad. He's like, I'm going to help my dad. He's like, he's also an asset for this and everything. He's like, you're watching the bridge.

And he's like, no. So he ends up, like, commandeering like a fucking helicopter or forcing the pilot to take him. He leaves the targeting laser, but forgets to leave the scope. Oh, he still has the, oh shit. And so as he gets there, the estate,

is like completely under siege. His dad ends up getting out of the house. And as they're like holding off some forces, the Raven comes in to try to pick him up. And it ends up getting shot and crashing into the house and causing a collapse that basically buries his dad and kills his dad. And then after that happens,

another chopper shows up and gets him out of there but basically arrests him at the same time for like dereliction of duty. Another mission. Huh? Another mission in the game. No, no, this, it's kind of a combination. Okay.

That that happens. So, Colonel Hoffman at this point, they send Marcus, he wants Marcus to be killed to set an example that no one is about. He needs to have complete control over the army and everything and have no one being able to desert their post. He can't let a previous war hero get away with it because that's the example. So Anya and Dom basically testify on his behalf. Prescott steps in also on his behalf to commute his sentence to like 50 years in like the maximum security penitentiary

which the average survival time frame is two years at this place it's the only prison left so imagine all the prisoners and the only prisoners you keep locked up are the absolute worst because you've pardoned everybody else to put a rifle in their hands to try to fight the locust so that's where Marcus is going in So as Marcus is sent away to, you know, the prison, everybody else just basically has to keep fighting.

Now, one of the reasons that Prescott steps in on his behalf is that Prescott actually had people there at that house and staged part of it to be able to kidnap at him. At Marcus's dad's house? Yes. Okay. Yep. while this was all happening. So Prescott secretly kidnaps Adam and you're not sure what happens at that point. You just know Marcus has been sent to prison. So because of this, the bridge is still intact and thousands of locusts end up flooding into the city. They end up losing most of the city and the capital has to be relocated to what's called Jacinto City after Afira ends up falling.

So that's huge too because again, that's a ton of resources, a ton of resources, a ton of of gears, you know, got killed during that civilians and everything. So, I mean, that was on markets at that point. And he lost his dad still. Mm-hmm. And his dad gets taken. So he broke rank and... Well, at that point, after they told him, hey, you had that thing in your pocket and, like, the bridge and a whole bunch of...

He then knew at that point, he was like, I fucked up. He basically tells Dom and he's like, don't even think about me. He's like, I'm dead. I will be killed in this place. don't think about me. Maybe at some point I can stay alive long enough that if the war gets so bad and there needs to be a suicide mission

to go try to like an impossible mission to take out a target, they'll come to me and say, we'll let you out, you're going to die anyway. That's all he was thinking. Anya's like, well, I'm not giving up on you because you're kind of the only thing I have to have at this point.

Dom's like, my entire family's dead and you're like the only family I have left so I'm not giving up on you. So they were constantly writing with him and all that kind of stuff. He, the warden kind of gave him all right treatment because he knew he was a war hero. But the other people, because they had had kids that died in Afira because Marcus took off and everything, he got abused pretty badly while he was in prison. Yeah, probably not a great place.

But at the same time, was able to survive because he's a big fucking dude and knows how to fight. So he was able to kind of establish himself as well. Now, Marcus is in there for four years. And toward the tail end of that, the circle around the area that the cog control, the locusts were still just constantly pushing that line back. And it gets to the point where the prison is starting to be overrun or the area around the prison. And in the prison, you have all of these guys, you have the guards still there that get cut off as well. And they start getting like instances of from what Marcus had experienced fighting the locust. he's like, well, there's water.

He's like, why is water backing up in the toilet? And he'll hear someone come out and say that. He's like, that happens usually when they're fucking around with the pipes because they like to travel in through the pipes because they're already established stuff. So he's actually telling these prisoners, we need to set up defenses. And it gets to the point where locusts are starting to actually breach into the prison prison. And they're having to kind of like fight as a unit to keep these things off of them. And the prison's not in Jacinto City where they just relocated the capital, right? It's outside of justin city.

but like on the outskirts. But they're closing in on a second capital. Exactly. And so kind of toward the tail end, there's a situation where the prison is getting overrun. A guy that Marcus has been in there with named Reeve, he was like a mercenary or like a bounty hunter,

basically takes Marcus and throws him into a solitary cell and shuts the gate on him. Not in a way of like you're going to be trapped in here. More of like stay in here. you're important. I'm sure people are coming to get you. And then he tries to draw a way, a bunch of the locust and like drops,

dives down like an elevator shaft and ends up getting killed. But he buys enough time for Dom, who when the prison was getting overrun, he heard about that, grabbed a duffel bag full of armor and another weapon and told Hoffman he was going to get Marcus. He takes this experimental like, it's kind of like a robot except it floats.

Its name is Jack. And they use. it for communication with like command and control. They use it on like commando missions when they need to try to like break in or like it has a plasma torch that it can cut through doors. It can cloak and like get behind

an enemy line and like do some shit and everything. It sounds very handy. Yeah. So he sends that and lets Dom take that and he's like you might as well grab an extra suit of armor on your way out. So Dom sneaks into the prison while all this is going on and ends up finding Marcus in this cell

getting him out and getting him out and getting him like he's like we got to get the fuck out of here on the locus side of this are they targeting people like marcus do they have the the ability to i guess no like major players on the cog side not in the sense in that way like going up after adam were they just headed towards that manner because the manner was there or did they know he was the guy in that situation, they knew he was a guy. Okay. But as far as his son being in prison,

they're not overrunning the prison to try to get to Marcus. It's just on the way that they're already moving into the city. So big names, big wigs, big heads, the Phoenix, Adam Phoenix, definitely on their list. Marcus Phoenix, not so much. Yep. So as the prisons getting overrun, they end up escaping and Marcus gets folded back into the military

to go on this mission. that they're already in the middle of, and there is a squad that has this thing called the resonator. And it's basically a, like a echo location type device. And what the whole point of it is, they need to get it down into the hollow.

They're going to set it off and through that echolocation, it's going to map the tunnels. And then they have a bomb that they're going to drop down there that's basically like a, you know those little cluster bombs that they always have in movies

that like a bunch of bombs break off of it? It's like that. And it will use the map data to send these down all of these different tunnels to basically wipe out the locust. But they need the information from the resonation device. So Marcus is sent with these three other guys to dombing one of them. Another one, the leader of the group, his name is Kim. And they're sent out to find this other squad that actually has this,

but that hasn't been heard from. So they find the other squad. Some of the guys get killed. And as they're meeting up with, the squad that has the resonator, it turns out that it's Baird and Cole. And Cole is called the Cole train

because that's what he was called when he was playing thrashball and everything like that. He's always enthusiastic. He's voiced by the same guy that remember the office linebacker, Terry Tate. The Reebok commercials, Terry Tate office linebacker. Oh, yeah. That's who voices Cole trained. So they actually

are the ones that have the resonator. And as they are kind of all meeting up, the Locust launch a surprise attack while a Raven is coming in to pick them up and get them out of there. And General Ram or Rom leads the attack personally. And as they get separated, you have Kim who's on one side of the street. He has Rom walking up behind him. Rom basically Kim goes to hit him with the chainsaw and Rom blocks it with his hand and then takes out a blade and guts him and then lifts him up off the ground. And then just like kills him in front of Marcus.

so they end up having to escape. They run into a berserker that they have to end up killing. Where's the resonator? It's on Cole's back. Okay. So Kim's being a part with the resonator. Okay. Correct.

Yeah. Baird and Cole had it. They were part of Alpha Squad that had that. So now all it consists of is Marcus, Dom, Baird, and Cole. So they're Delta. Delta Squad is their designation. So they end up getting to safety. And as they get the resonator, they're talking to Anya, who's like on their, you know, in their ear.

And she's like, you need to get it underground. We're going to send you to an old emulsion drilling plant. You can take their lifts down and everything. There's still some power possibly. And then you can set it off down there. And then we'll have the mapping data and we can launch the missile. That's the whole point of the mission. So they end up working their way.

through like some of the stranded camps and everything. Dom is asking some of the stranded, hey, you know, have you seen this woman? He shows pictures every time. On his free time during like the Locust War, he would go to stranded camps outside like the wire with his wife's picture. I mean like, have you guys seen my wife, her name's Maria?

She made her way through her or anything like that. He's been constantly on the lookout for her. And so he has experienced with a stranded to where he did a few favors for one of the guys and tells him he's like, I need to use your vehicle. Like it's an old strip down armored personnel carrier. He's like, I need it because we need to get to this emulsion refining place. So they end up using that. They get there.

They're able to take them the lifts down. And as they go to set this thing off or get ready to Baird sees like this thing sitting on the ground and just grabs it on his way out of the cave as they're running. And they get topside. The resonator goes off. it maps a whole bunch of the caves, but as they're sitting there, they get information back from, like, command,

and they're like, it didn't really map enough. Like, we need, like, a hundred of these things to get an idea of how big, like, think of it in the sense of, like, the size of the earth, but then a series of tunnels, you'd have to have a ton of those things mapping it out. And as Barrett is kind of messing around

with this thing, he grabbed up, he's like, why don't we just use this? And they're like, what is that? He's like, well, it's a geobot, and basically what they do is they used to use them for surveys. and they would, they hover, and they literally just slowly and quietly work their way down these tunnels

and they gather data and that way when people wanted to go mine for emulsion, they knew what areas were secure, like cavens and things like that. And they're like, well, this doesn't have all the data, but it's got a lot more than we got. Where did it come from? And they're like, it came from the Phoenix estate.

That's where it was originally sent out from. Oh, this wasn't the thing you found on the ground? It was. Okay. But what had happened is it's not like that had all the information they needed. It had been sent out at one point, ran out of power, dropped down. And when they got it, it had the data that it had just originally mapped. But when basically these things needed to be returned, if someone could determine it was from Adam, they could return it back and be like, here's the data, compile it with your information.

So they end up going back to the estate and in the basement find like Adam's secret lab and discover he's got just a shit ton of information on the hollow. Like more than somebody should have and not know what was in the hollow. So the targeted attack makes a bit more sense now. And also the abduction probably makes some sense too. Maybe. Okay. So they get the information from the computer and they end up like getting away from the estate and everything. They end up meeting up because they're not taking it to command.

They have to take it to the where the bomb actually is and the bomb's on a train. So what they're going to do is the bomb itself is on the front of a train. The train itself, they know the track is out. But where the track is out is this very large like canyon where there's like a large, I don't want to say lake, but it has access to basically a river of emulsion, and it leads way in. So there's a lot of areas that it can branch off and the little bombs can get into the hollow. So as the train is going, they're trying to meet it at this station where it's going to start. The train gets hijacked by the locust, of course. So Marcus and Dom have to basically jump onto a moving train. Baird and Cole end up

getting left behind. And as Marcus and Dom fight their way through the train, they end up meeting Rom at the end and have to end up fighting against him. They persevere, they overcome, they am defeating him. And as the train is nearing the ravine, helicopter shows up with Baird and Cole

because that's how they end up catching up to him. Yeah. And as Marcus inputs the information in, he goes, you know, jumps on, grabs Dom's hand that's already waiting in the helicopter. And as the train goes out from underneath him, yep, down into the thing, it launches everything. He's swinging there. Hoffman is in the helicopter and just gives him a look and then reaches down, grabs his other hand and ends up pulling him up.

But Lightmas ends up traveling down through the hollow. It destroys a huge portion of it and everything. Enough so to where there were these creatures that would come out at night called krill. Think of them like Sky Piranha. and so you couldn't be out at night without any light source or these things would shred you right where you stood and the light mass was able to actually like get to the nesting grounds and end up wiping all of them out now it takes out a bunch of locusts a ton of them but it's still only because the bomb is smaller it doesn't have enough umph to get them all yeah and it basically if there's an inner and outer hollow

it gets all the ones in the outer hollow. But while it does kill millions of locust, it has this side effect of vaporizing a shit ton of these underground deposits of emulsion. So what you're basically doing is that Lambent thing, that's kind of that third party that's fighting, you've now put all of that stuff that's infecting them and just spread it.

So now there will be more drones is that... More of the Lambent that are a firefighting affecting the locust that are then fighting everybody, not just the locust. So everyone is still, you know, trying to perform rescues. They're still cleanup for the locust that they think are surviving. So Delta sent to rescue some civilian survivors in this city called Vanek. And during this mission, Dom and Marcus meet this young kid named Jace, who basically, like his whole family was killed.

They bring him back. he ends up going in and starts training as a gear and he ends up coming back into play kind of later in the story. And he was one of the stranded? Yeah, he was a kid living there and that they had like found that was one of the survivors of this attack.

Okay. Oh, the attack, not the... Not the, well, I mean, the hammer kill a lot of people, but yeah, of the attack of like the locusts and everything. He was on the plateau. Somewhere, I think, yeah. So it doesn't take long for them to basically realize that this victory was kind of an illusion.

and Mira and basically aside from Rom, the rest of the Locus, military and like hierarchy, and also like their priest group or whatever, survive the bomb. They end up retreating deeper into the inner hollow where they weren't going to be able to reach them like with another bomb or anything like that. And during the six months that there's kind of this quieter lull period, the locus completely restructure their army under. basically like the lead priest and his name is Scourge. And then after the explosion,

they were trying to figure out there's been research and Adam had looked into it and Marx's mom had looked into it. Like how did the hollow even get made? Like this is a massive and these are all tunnels. So like something has to make these tunnels. They don't form circular and all that kind of stuff unless something's making them. So they figured out that there used to be these creatures on Syracomel.

called the riftworms. And these things were like miles long, like five to seven miles long. And they basically just went under the surface of Saren, created these insane networks. And that's the reason a lot of stuff grows in the hollow, because when these things were eating all of the minerals, it's shitting out all of this stuff

and creating basically like this fertile environment for things to grow and survive. The explosion from the light mass missile actually awoke one of these things up that had gone into like hibernation for like thousands of years. And so the locusts were able to figure out how to kind of like aim or control these things. Oh, that's bad. I was hoping they were going to eat the locusts.

But no, locus have control, huh? Nope. So locusts have control of it. And they start to notice, the cog starts to notice major cities on like the outer edges of the plateau. There's a place called Tolan and a place called Montevato. suddenly vanish overnight. Like it's there. And then like all of a sudden,

in one of the circumstances, they are flying and they're trying to get to, I think, Toland. It might have been the other place, but they're looking and they're looking down. They're like, there's a fucking lake down there. There's nothing down there.

And they're starting to kind of, and he's like, get closer. And as they start getting closer over the lake, they start noticing ship floating and everything. They're like, the town sunk. And so they have no idea. All they know is that, like the plateau, the outer areas are starting to kind of crumble, and they have no idea how

they're sinking entire cities. So at this point, the Cogger, like, we have to basically do something. So it's back to like desperation point, and they developed this thing called Operation Hollow Storm. They are going to basically send gears down into the inner hollow for like an all-out, one last attempt assault to try to basically hit the locus like where they're living and like where they're breeding. So we have gears up on the plateau. The outer hollow has been cleared, which will have to be penetrated before they can get to the inner hollow for this.

Are there still swarms of locusts, hordes of locusts on the surface? Yeah. So they're still fighting on the surface. and this is just like a home run, we're going to throw them into the outer hollow. Yeah. This is the last ditch effort. We might give up a bunch of shit on land,

but if we can kill, if we can cut that out the snake. Yep. So it's this desperation thing where it's like humans on the surface, locust on the surface, locust on the outer hollow, locust on the inner hollow, lambent in the inner hollow.

The locusts are trying to move themselves from the inner to the outer and up to the surface. the outer gets destroyed, not totally destroyed, but cleared out. Yeah. But then they can just, they have to get pushed back up into that

because the lambin are still down there in the inner hollow. So during this, basically what they're going to do is they have these things called grind lifts and their pods that can hold two gears. They've launched them, they drill underground and drop them into the inner hollow

to make sure they're bypassing that. Straight shot. Straight down. Did they know about the lambets, right? they don't have a strong understanding of it yet they just know that they glow they know that there have been a couple of them but they just assume they maybe drink some emulsion or some show

it hasn't been so prevalent yet that they're like we don't know we know these things exist we don't know what relation is occurring between the regular locusts and these glowing ones where's dr phoenix is he obviously he's still disappeared he's gonna come back into this at some point right

You'll find out. Okay. And the stranded? Stranded? Are they out of the story? No, there's still a lot of stranded out there. Okay, so we're getting a hero arc from them eventually too? Yes. And the abandoned country, still abandoned?

Or the... Still hasn't been heard from. Okay. Yep. So as they set up to get, you know, down into the hollow and everything, they, one of the guys that they had known for a while and his name was Ty. He's the chainsaw guy that killed the Locas first with a chainsaw. he ends up having to kind of help stall the locust

while Marcus and Dom go down in the grind lift and they don't know what happens to him. So they end up getting down into the hollow. They find out that this giant rift worm is the thing that's sinking cities. There's this scene where all of a sudden they're just standing there and all of a sudden you see the wall start to move and then it keeps going and Marcus has like a gruff voice.

He's like, Anya, it's a worm. It's a giant worm. they find themselves on at one point commandeering a prisoner barge that the locust have been taking like cog soldiers that they've been capturing and putting on this. What's a prisoner barge? It's like a boat full of prisoners?

So it is attached to this creature that crawls on the ceiling of the cave. What the fuck? And then the thing is suspended underneath it. So they have weaponized all these creatures to be able to just control them. So they have like things like electrodes it'll hook into him to where like they can be like shock this leg and it makes it go here and everything.

It's very just like dark shit. So as they're looking through this prisoner barge, they open one of the cells and they find Ty there. And he's like kind of catatonic. And Marcus is like, thank God. Like we found you and everything like that. He tosses him a shotgun and he's still kind of catatonic. And he's like, Ty, we got to get out of here. And like as you see a pan around behind him, his back is just completely shredded.

And he's got hooks. put into his back, like he's been tortured, and Ty ends up taking the shock and killing himself right in front of everyone just because he's been so fucked up. Probably good call. Just those hours. And so as they're trying to escape here

out of this sunken city that they've kind of gone into because of the, um, where they went down, that's the city that sunk. So now they're like level with the city. Uh, helicopter comes in to pick them up, but at the same time the riftworm comes in

and grabs the chopper with just grabbing it, not going after the chopper. because it's so large, though, just in the sense of going after everything, it gets the chopper. They wake up inside it and are able to work their way through this thing.

Work the way through the worm. Work their way through the worm. Avoiding all like the acid pits and digestive stuff that's inside of it. Again, dude, it's based on a game. Come on. I know, but we've, I feel like we've crossed over. This might be a little jumpy the shark. Yeah.

This might be Fonzie. in the sharks just a little bit. But anyway, they are able to locate this thing's like three hearts. And they end up using, of course, the chainsaws to cut through like the aortic arteries and everything like that and end up killing this thing. And that was the one worm they got woken up. So they only had one of these. And as they kill it, it like jumps like out of the ground and then like collapses.

So when they finally cut themselves out of it like this flood of blood come and they're just fucking soaked. So after this, they're like, hey, we just killed the worm. we get a ride back to base, like we're soaked and he's like, no can do. We just got information that Prescott has declassified. You guys need to head to a place called New Hope.

So they end up going to New Hope and finding all of this information about the locust origins, the Sires. There's a... The facility. The facility that the first... The one that got shut down. And there's like a computer program

of Nile Samson, but it's going to a little bit more crazy than the actual Nile. So like it tries to kill them at a certain point. They find the information about the locust. They found that there was a exodus of the scientists and these patients to Mount Kedar. And so they're like, we're going to keep following. We're going to keep pulling the thread and figuring this thing out. So as they actually take it up into the mountains,

they find an entrance into the tunnel system. And as they're going through here, they come across like areas where they've been moving prisoners, like bringing in people for processing, and there's a computer system there, and they have Jack with them, and they're like, Jack, see if you get in here, and if they have, like, a photograph system or something that they've been taking of prisoners for cataloging, and he's, like, look for Maria, and they actually find a picture of Maria that shows up, and then a symbol, and he's like, holy shit, she, like, might be down here. So as they're looking through here, they find another group of Stranded that are like, she does.

look familiar. We think she was with another group that got captured like a few months ago. So Marcus is like, Baird, Cole, take these survivors, get them back up to the surface, get him safe. When we get into a position where we've infiltrated enough into like the Locust Stronghold, we'll set off a beacon, go tell everybody to center on that location and send down the grind lifts for all the reinforcements. And then we can attack the stronghold and enforce. So as Marcus and Dom are working their way Along what they consider like the locust highway It's where they've been traveling the most

Toward what they've been told is a city called Nexus It's where all the locusts come from One of the Stranded tells them about it Is they're pulling the string? Essentially they're just walking in the front door Kind of It's a door that the locust used originally Because that was how they

So basically This door is the locust's way that they first came in. But no one has ever found it to this point. So this isn't their... They don't keep this very heavily guarded. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's why the stranded were also able to be in there

without the locust, knowing they were kind of a little ways inside. They're like, there's not very many to hang out here because this isn't a priority for them to protect because no one knows about it. So as we're working the way through some of these work camps, all of a sudden they come across a work camp that has this symbol that they saw on Maria's profile or whatever. And they find, Jack finds which pod is assigned to her.

And he's like, holy shit, Marcus, we like found her. So Jack opens it. And as it opens, Dom is sitting there and he sees her step out, how he remembered her and everything like that. He goes up to her. He's like, oh, my God. He's like, it's you. And he's hugging her and holding her. And he kind of like lowers her down to the ground.

And then Marcus is just kind of watching this with the look on his face. And as he comes up, he's like, Dom. And it pulls back. And it's Maria. but she all her hair is almost shaved there's scars all over her face her eyes are glazed over like white like she's blind you can tell she's been like partially lobotomized and she's emaciated and everything like that and he sees this and he's just like no and he's going through like a complete emotional breakdown he's looking at marcus being like i i don't mark i don't know what to do like what do

he's like i'm so and he's telling her i'm so sorry i looked for you like i've been looking for you all the time and she he's like it's me dominic and she's not responding or she's completely gone and so marcus is like hey it's it's okay and he starts walking away and everything and then dom ends up pulling out his pistol and after like and then you see a shot of marcus walking away and you hear a shot and then marcus keeps like walking away and then he just waits for dom to catch up with him he's like i'm sorry he's like she's in a better place i found out a way we can sneak in if you or if you're in or if you're arrested, but if you want to go in, just fucking these guys up, I'm completely with you.

He's like, I want to kill all of them. He old Yeller at his own wife? Yeah, to put her out of her misery. Wow. So they... What a wild roller coaster. What a, what a day. Yeah, he's been through a lot of shit. So, yeah, 10 years

and then that's how it ends for you. A matter of maybe 48 hours from finding her in the computer to going down. No, no less, dude. From the time he found her in the computer, it was maybe a couple hours. Oh, wow. That's a, yeah, that's a tough shift.

Yeah. And then being so, like, delusional after the searching to see her in a certain way, but that's how games break your heart. They end up getting close enough into the area and to Nexus that they kind of see everything start to converge. And as they come upon it,

it is this giant, like hive-looking thing that's built out of a giant stalactite in the ceiling and then hovers over like a lake of emulsion and then it's got cable cars that connect it to like the surf or to like the sides and everything. So you see like Revers flying all over it. It's this insanely like cool looking. If you look it up and put like Nexus. There's a lot of these things that as you describe them like they almost feel similar to different things.

Yeah. In like different video games. But at the same time it feels like a lot of them came out afterwards. So I wonder if this is where they took references from. It all gets a little inspiration both to and from. I guess. Yeah, it's just very cool the sharing of kind of like, hey, how would you make this look menacing? Yeah. Put it over a lake. So what was the city? Nexus.

So as they break in, they find a spot where they feel like they can call in the cavalry. They set off the beacon. They end up hooking back up with Baird and Cole. Other squads of gears are dropping down to try to go ahead and attack this place to keep the locusts occupied. and this is where they start to kind of see the locust and the lambent directly fighting against each other. And they're like, oh, shit. Like this is starting to make sense why they're pushing so hard for the surface. And as they end up getting into Nexus, they break into like a control room or something like that. And they're looking through the files. And all of a sudden they come across to file and they start hearing Adam Phoenix talking.

And he's talking about the emulsion, about all this kind of stuff. And he's talking about Queen Mira, like he kind of knows her, like he's familiar with her a little bit. And he's talking about how one of the plans that they have is Mira's having to be forced to the surface. She gave Adam a chance to try to fix the Lambent problem before she had to. And now the plan is to kill the Lambent. Is they're going to sink Jacinto, litting in the ocean, and then flooding the land. entire hollow, but they're going to get all the locust out of it first. And then at that point, all the locals will be on and be able to overrun all of the humans.

Where's the water coming from? So because Jacinto City is right on the coast, literally overlooks the ocean. With the plateau. Correct. But it goes cliffside into the ocean. And so if they were to go ahead and be able to open a sinkhole that goes into the hollow or a tunnel that goes through the granite and then collapse part of the city, the sea level line, it's not like them opening a crackling that is going to make the water recede from

the ocean because there's so much of it. Think of it like if you had a, they're just going to try to collapse one section of the cliff side of the city and open that up to allow all the seawater to rush in and flood into the hollow. Okay. Because it's all connected. Maybe I'm overthinking this. Maybe blowing up the portion where it's at ground level,

right at sea level, would make more sense. That's what they're going to try to do. So it's on a plateau, but again, it's not like the city is thousands of feet above the ocean cliff sides. The plateau or the granite can sit

lower under the ground than even the water level. And then the area above that could still be somewhat granite, but it could be very thick as well. But if they're able to get it below the water level, that's the whole point is that they can sink the city low enough that it'll be below the water level, all the

the water will flood in and just pretty much drown out the lamb in. So now they're like, well, oh shit. Like what is everyone's like, Marcus, what's your dad doing in the locust system? And so they end up working the way to the throne room. They meet Queen Mirr there. And as they're looking at her, she turns around and it looks like a human. And they're like, kind of like, what the fuck? And she's like, so you're the first people to desecrate this place with your presence.

You're going to be the last. And she's like, but before that, happens, is it true you're Adam Phoenix's son? She's like, he spoke very highly of you. It's a shame that you couldn't take the same path as him or something. She's very vague about it, but she also makes it very known that she knows Adam or new Adam. Marcus took up liberties with Mirr's daughter? No.

Who was that? That would have been... Mir's daughter that she thought died. Dr. Torres. That, okay. Torres. So Dr. Torres is the one that her and him and Mira had Raina. Yeah.

Raina and Nate Diaz. Nate Diaz. From, yeah. Okay. Yep. All right. Exactly. So Marcus.

Marcus and Nanya. Okay. Marcus. Okay. So they end up meeting her and she's like, well, just like, I know you guys know my plan, but, and I know you guys are trying to accelerate my plan because you're going to try to sink the city while we're not prepared and it drowns all of us as well. But you're not getting out of here.

So she ends up leaving the throne room and Scourge is right with her. She's like Scourge, take care of them. They leave and basically have to defeat him and fight him before they're able to chase after her. He ends up getting away also on like this thing called a Hydra. That's basically a beefed up version of like their flying creatures. And they have to get on two of the smaller reavers that they'd never ridden before. or like locusts ride these things and basically like escape while this thing chases them. They fly these things back to Jacinto with this thing right on their ass and end up killing

scourge in this thing by basically like firing the machine guns off the back of them. After they get back to Jacinto, they're ready going back and they're like start evacuating the city. We have to sink the city. We have to flood it to get rid of all the locust and all the lambent before they get out here. So the plan once they return is, okay, we can't get a bomb down there because there's no sinkhole. So someone needs to get under the city, open up a sinkhole so we can get the choppers down there, plant the bomb that will then sink the city and flood this. So Marcus and Dom are like, we'll go down and do it. And as they're kind of going toward the outskirts of the city, sinkholes are already starting to appear, but not where they need them.

But they're able to get to the underground. and they find a broomack that they're able to kill the driver and they're like, what if we use this thing to clear a path? So they hide, that's the thing with the two fucking guns. The big ape looking things. Yep. So they use this thing to basically march it under the city, taking out any of the locusts that are around them.

And as it's marching under the city, there's like a lake of emulsion that it starts walking through. And as it gets in there, they're able to open up a sinkhole. The chopper comes down. but this thing starts to mutate and like freak out and it smacks the chopper and destroys the bomb. And so they're like, what the fuck are we supposed to do now? They're like, well, don't those things explode to the glowy things?

If you kill them, they fucking detonate. So they're able to use the hammer of dawn to actually detonate the giant explosive brumac inside there. And it opens up a big enough cavity to where all the seawater starts rushing in and flooding it out. So you've had to evacuate the entire remaining, almost the entire remaining populace, which I think was a little over 200,000 people from Jacinto City. They evacuate them by as many vehicles that they can get, as many of the Ravens, and they have a bunch of leftover like naval vessels that they basically just like crammed to the gills, any merchant or civilian vessels.

They cram people on them. And they send everybody to this place called Port Farrell. They used to be like a naval base. where they can all kind of try to regroup. Isn't the sea being sucked down into the sinkhole? I think there was enough water in the ocean that it probably didn't drop too much.

Well, we don't know how the tide works. We're not ocean scientists, man. No, no. Oceanography probably might not have been a thing in Sarah. So they end up going to Port Farrell, but because this is kind of a last minute thing about them sink in the city and getting the fuck out of Dodge,

this place is not equipped to handle refugees or else they would have been there anyway. They're having to deal with this in the middle of winter. They're losing people daily to cold. There's no infrastructure. Locusts that were on the surface didn't get flooded or ones that were driven to the surface. So they're still dealing with locust attacks like incursions coming in. And basically realizing that that place is going to see everyone either starve or freeze. Prescott has this goes through all the old like cog records and files and it's like is there any of our sites or anything like that that we haven't explored that we could possibly send people to where we would have a shot and so he sends a few different squads out

in different helicopters to review another couple cities inland there's an island called vectis that he sends delta squad out to look at as they get there they land at an old cog military base called uh vectis naval base and then after flying over the island they see there's a village on the island and they land and as they're talking to these people they realize that these people have been living here without knowledge of the outside world or the locust invasion or locust war because the day that it happened communication was cut and this place was just simply there to exist to support this almost decommissioned naval base and this place was called toxin town because during the pendulum wars this is the naval base that was used to create chemical weapons.

So they find an established island that already has Cog citizens that are still totally loyal And as they get there they're like so what's been going on they're like you guys have no clue We've been fighting they're like nope and nothing has made it across here Like we've just been supporting this town and kind of live in our lives So are they fucked up from any of the chemical weapons that have been developed there place was shut down Oh there was an accident a long time ago got shut down These are just completely happy oblivious people to

what's been happening the last like 20 years. So they mass locate through several different like trips of these ships and things like that, the people, the survivors, and form what they're going to call like New Jacinto. And geographically, like Vectis is perfect. It's like a 5,000 square kilometer island. It's surrounded by this abyssal marine trench so the locust can't go underneath it to get to them. come up on the island and they're basically locked out so like this is excellent they move all of the military into the naval base they set up like a town and everything um because the uh town itself was still

a loyal like flying the cog flag they were basically like yeah we recognize your command they're not super happy that 200 000 plus people just showed up and they have to try to support them but with bad news too And here's the thing, though, the people that have been surviving have been surviving on the bare minimum. So just being here, it's not like they're going to take a lot. They're basically just looking for somewhere safe. And they're also able to bring all of these ways of getting maximum, like, use out of the land or getting maximum utilization of food and things like that. So the town is there to try to help them. There's a little bit of a, you know, it's a little raw for a little bit, but they kind of start to assimilate.

And there's also a, like, a pirate stranded camp on the complete opposite side of the island that will sometimes come in and raid the town for supplies. And at that point, the cog come in, they're like, yeah, that's going to stop. So as they're dealing with this pirate stranded camp, there's a, they're meeting out at sea to discuss terms. And like the guy that runs the pirate side of it, he's talking to him and all of a sudden his ship just fucking explodes. And they're like, what the fuck was that? And all of a sudden, like, out in the water, you see a submarine surface. And all of a sudden it opens up and it turns out that that submarine was the remnants of Gerasnia. Yes.

Yeah. So the guy that was leading them is the son of the dude that was leading it like during the pendulum wars. I can't remember what the older guy's name is, but the newer guy, his name is Mirren Trescu. And so he ends up coming in and being like, hey, we knew which one was your boat. We knew that those guys were pirates. You guys weren't doing it. So we'll go ahead and be the bad guys. Pirates you're dealt with.

Here's the deal. We got 4,000 Garasnians who need a place to live. We can't go back to the mainland. We've been trying to survive on this makeshift fleet. Sorry, Coddmouse. Sorry about the swallowing noises also, by the way, I know we do that sometimes. It's going to be a long night of... Yeah, exactly.

So these Garosni acts have been. living basically like a water world type existence with this submarine fleet because they they couldn't go back on the mainland so correct but they've been they have one submarine the rest of them are surface vessels okay and then yeah but they've also been going along like their coast ducking in for supplies or things like that but they've just been on the move basically so they're like listen here's what we bring to the table we got a submarine and baird loves fucking like building shit and he looks and he's like that alone is enough let him come

let him come over he's like we've also got access to an emulsion drilling platform so we can still fuel all of our ships we can fuel it because they're still using that they haven't been able to get off that and they're like okay uh you guys are going to have to kind of just

live the cogway and everything he's like if that's what I if that's what I have to do to keep my people alive he's like I'm not going to let old grudges dictate the last the survival of last 4,000 of my people. I'm not going to be the one that they go extinct on my watch. So he ends up coming in. Him and Hoffman actually get along pretty well. There's a naval commander. His name is Michelson. So basically, the pecking order now goes Prescott. And then it goes a three way of Trescue kind of in charge of his people. Hoffman in charge of the military, Michelson in charge of

the Navy. And with this alliance, the They start to station gears at like the emulsion platform. They start bringing back loads of fuel. They're able to use that to run machines on the island to farm additional land and do that. And they're starting to get some shit going. Like there's a period of time where it looks like it's all working. They build this place called Polano Camp where they're housing a bunch of the citizens and like the UIR. People are like living amongst them.

They start farming. There's a general feeling of like sanctuary at this place. they haven't had any experience with any regular locust or lambin or anything like that until some weird shit starts happening and it turns out that the massive influx of sea water combined with that earlier detonation of the light mess bomb forced like a mutation within the emulsion itself and now that all that seawater has rushed in there there's a transmission vector i guess you would say toward that emulsion now has access to a much wider swath very of not just the underground areas.

It's able to concentrate in the waters. It's able to travel through the waters now. And once it does that, because the emulsion is a living organ, it's a living fluid organism. They find out the thing is actually kind of like a parasite. And because of that, it begins growing these massive, like, root-like structures that will grow out of the seabed and up through the island's interior. and then the stocks themselves act as like a biological elevator for basically any of these mutated creatures

that will then like bust out of the stock and can then like spread themselves. So they'll have things like, they call them polyps. The polyps are basically these little four-legged creature things that their legs are kind of dagger-like and everything and they just run out. You can't even tell if they have eyes

or anything like that and they'll get close and try to kind of like explode next to you. There's no such thing as a good polyp. No. You have these. things called drudges that are basically lambent locust that it has mutated and like

kind of co-opted and then you have other creatures that it can affect I believe like I think a bull on the island actually gets infected by it or something like that during this time Prescott's not kind of not really giving he's still hoarding information

somehow like Hoffman's asking the questions about like are there any other places you didn't tell us about Vectas until we were desperate. Like, we're literally sitting on in Jacinto, under attack this entire time, and then in your records happen to be this island. Okay, go through your records and find out what else there is if we have supplies somewhere, if there's other locations. And Prescott is just like, there's nothing else.

There's nothing else. And he has like this data disc that Press or Hoffman steals from him and gives to Baird and he's like, you know electronic shit. Break into this thing. I want to know what Prescott's fucking. up to. I don't trust this guy anymore. And as that's happening, all of a sudden, other creatures are starting to kind of emerge. There's the disappearance of some fishing boats, which comes to find out that there's this,

like, giant lambent, almost looks like, what are those fish, the scariest shit ones that live like under Pierce and stuff like that, a grouper? The giant mouth. Yes. And it just sucks in stuff. So it's basically a lambent version of that that's got like tentacles and shit and starts like taking out fishing vessels and they're like the water's not even safe and we're on an island we have to be able to fish. So they're able to use like a partially functional hammer of dawn to kill this thing. Baird's able to like lock onto it partially and ends up destroying like part of the base as well without really having a choice because he's just trying to spot fire this thing.

and as Prescott starts to see kind of the writing on the wall of stuff starting to go downhill, they're going to have to evacuate the island. He's like, you know what? I'm not doing a very good job leading. I'm going to go ahead and take a step back. I feel like Hoffman, Michael Sin and Trescue, you guys can all do a better job. Everyone has lost faith in me. So he kind of steps back but doesn't really go anywhere.

He's just still kind of hanging out without his power. And then one day he gets on board a like fishing boat. with two of his guards and just drives away. Suspicious. Very, very suspicious. And they're like, what the fuck is going on? And so Trescu's like, send the fucking, he's like, get the sub going. Like, send the sub after him.

And by the time they catch up to him, they see the boats like on autopilot. By the time they catch up, no one's on the boat when they catch up. So he somehow got off the boat and went somewhere during the time that they had eyes on him. I met another boat. So ends up coming back reporting that Hoffman, Michelson, and Truscue were like, here's the deal. It's not sustainable here. And Truscke's like, I guess if this is a last stand or anything,

we're going to go make our last stand at home. So we're taking the Garosnians. We're heading back to Garosnia. Hoffman and Michaelson are like, we're not going to need all the naval vessels. We're going to give you guys this one. We're going to hook you guys up. They part as like allies.

And so I think Triskew and their leave. leaving tells Hoffman he's like we don't forget who slights us but we don't forget who helps us either so they end up taking the 4,000 rest of them and they go their way at a certain point the drilling platform is actually destroyed by stocks so then they don't even have the fuel anymore is the advantage of being there um Hoffman is like I think what I'm going to do is anybody that doesn't want to try to live at sea because that's kind of what it seems like the option is at this point, I don't want to, I'm old. I don't want to live the rest of my life at sea. He's like, I'm going to take a group of people that want to go with me. We're going to go to Anvilgate.

I know that place I've protected it. It's in an area that doesn't have a ton of emulsion reserves like underground. It was never, you know, like famous for that. And maybe that'll have something to do about keeping the lamb in away. If it can't travel through, it's an arid area, things like that. We're not going to have much of a fuel source, but at the same time, that could be a net benefit for our safety. Correct. We'll figure out other alternatives, whatever. So him and Bernie, who's kind of around his same age, they are kind of old people together at this point. And they end up taking a bunch of civilians and gears to Anvil game. The core gears like Marcus, Dom, Anya, there's a newer one named Samantha Byrne. And then like people that they picked up along the way,

they all kind of remain on the Raven carrier. It's called the sovereign and they're basically going to be like a response force that while we're traveling up and down the coast, picking supplies, we're going to try to help like stranded settlements and go trade with them so that way we can try to help in what ways we can to try to protect and prolong humanity.

So as they're doing that, they were only on Vectis for a little less than like two years. Not long. Before they had to just pick up and not only just leave the people that came there, the 3,000 people that were there, then had to

also leave. Oh. And a lot of them went to Anvilgate because they're like, we don't want to live on the fucking ocean. But that has to suck. You're living in this idyllic, 3,000 person town. Yeah. Life is going good. You've survived this way for a while.

And then all of a sudden, all this shows up and then within a few, you know, a year after that you're dealing with this shit and then you have to abandon your island it all shows up at your doorstep you didn't do anything to make this happen yep you weren't a part of any of this you weren't a willing participant so they're underneath the cog officially splits up at this point there really is no there's just groups of people the ones at sea are under the command of michelson who's was in charge of the navy they elected him um and one day is they're going along the coast Baird and Cole and a couple other people are making a supply run into Cole's old hometown

where he was like the thrashball superstar. He was a hometown boy that grew up there that then played for the professional team and people just like loved him. He was in supermarkets, cardboard cutouts, all this kind of stuff. They're on land trying to bargain with any of the stranded there for supplies. And as they're there, they get a radio message or the ship does that it's from Prescott and he's asking for permission to land. So he comes in and lands

just as there is an attack and all of a sudden these stocks start coming up all around like the aircraft carrier. When Prescott radios in to land, nobody's like, you know, where were you? Oh, no. When he ends up getting there, he shows up and he's like,

I need to speak with Hoffman. And they're like, he's not here. And he's like, oh, he's dead. And they're like, no, he fucking went to someplace else. He's like, well, we need to get. in contact with him, I have something to show him. And you don't know why he shows back up, but he's like, there's some information on this disc, you need to see it. And right before the

attack, they're able to see a little bit of the information. And as Marcus plugs in this disc, because he tells me, he's like, you'll want to see this, Marcus, all of a sudden, it's a video of Marcus's dad, it's an Adam. And he's talking, he's like, Marcus, if you see this, he's like, I hope you're doing well. He starts talking about like, Mira and he starts talking about like the lambent and everything like that. And as they're watching this, Marcus is noticing 100% of that his dad looks older. And then Dom mentions and he's like, he just mentioned the lambent and he looks older. He's like, yeah, I know.

He's like, this isn't from before he died. And so all of a sudden this attack happens and Marcus looks at Prescott. He's like, don't fucking move me and you were having a nice long chat after this. So he goes out trying to defend the ship. There is a locust attack on the ship. Prescott ends up I think getting wounded but not like fatally or anything like that

but during the attack another one of those Leviathan fish type group or thing shows up and attacks the ship they have to end up to kill it it detonates and destroys the ship and as they all try to work the way back onto shore they're having to swim in fucking armor equipment

people are drowning they're trying to pull salvage and everything they come under attack from surface locus fight them off. Prescott gets dinged in the heart. And as he's sitting there dying, he's like, where did you get this?

He's like your father. And he's like, where the fuck is my dad? He's like, Azura. And he's like, what's Azura? He's like,

it was taken by Mira three days ago. Taken by Mira. Yes. Oh. That's why Prescott had to bounce. And so he's like, where is it? And he's like,

he says something about, he's like, that old bastard. he'll be furious talking about Hoffman because Hoffman fucking didn't like Prescott. And so he dies. And now they're left with this disc. And Baird's like, we got to get this to Hoffman. He has the other side, whatever can decrypted.

I guess he would have that era technology at that fort that we could then use for that. So they were back at Anvilles Gate. Yes. Oh, my. So they go to find Hoffman, who they had lost contact with about a year before. just based on the fact is they couldn't maintain, the fact that they couldn't maintain the communication network. That stuff like all the infrastructure had started to collapse and everything.

So Dom, Marcus, and a couple other people end up leaving, or Cole and Baird, end up going to try to find Hoffman, while Anya and a bunch of other people try to, like, help survivors, get stuff off the ship, try to, like, not start back at scratch, and then come and catch up with them when they can. So on the way there, they're actually spotted by Mira and they spot her. And so she's like, that's him. And he's like, oh, I got your number, bitch.

And she's like, get every station between here and Azura on alert. So she basically is just like, we know he's coming, get everyone on high alert. And as they're still trying to get to Anvilgate, they run into like a depot. And they meet a guy named Dizzy who had been someone that they knew, before back in the Locust War. He was like a truck driver and he like cowboy hat. He's like, yeah, I like that kind of dude. He was on a supply run and got pinned down by some locust.

They ended up rescuing him and he went to Anvilgate with Hoffman. He's like, yeah, I know the way back. He's like, I come in here and get supplies sometimes, so I'll take you back. So as they reach him, they're talking to Hoffman and he's like, we need to find out what's on this data disc. The fort comes under attack. They have to fight off a lambin attack. it's the first time they have to fight a lambent berserker

so like everything at this point is getting infected and it feels like because there's so many dead drowned locusts in the tunnels there's just this endless supply of bodies that they can mutate because the okay because it can move through the water correct so it's just down there reviving these locusts and the lambs sending them up through these stocks coming up through the surface so all the good that they had done by flooding the tunnels just basically is now allowing the lamb it to reanimate those bodies.

Correct. Yeah. Wow. So after they kind of fend this off, they are, they're able to download what's on the infar or on the disc. And it tells them about the island. And they're like, well, how do we, you know, get there? And they're like, well, it's got this like, and this is like nefarious James Bond type shit. But it has this, they developed this thing called a Maelstrom barrier.

And it basically creates an artificial storm around the island to where you. You can't, like, penetrate through surface ship, helicopter, or anything. You'd have to be able to turn it off, fly the helicopter in or out, and then turn it back on. So they're trying to figure out, and they're like, we would have to go under it. And Hoffman knew about all the different military bases during the Pendulum Wars. And he's like, there was a sub-base out at this place called Endeavor Endeavor Naval Shipyard. He's like, but you guys would have to make sure it runs. You'd have to be able to fuel it.

and then someone to pilot it. And he's like, I was in the merchant navy. He's like, I can fix the shit if you find and I can pilot it. If you can find a way to refuel this thing, we can do that. So they decide that they're going to go to this place called, they could either go to Mercy or Char. Both of them were the names of different towns. Mercy was where Dom's wife, Maria, was from.

And then Char was going to be their second option if there wasn't any emulsion in Mercy because there was an emulsion refinery there. So they all end up going there and driving like a tanker truck and the locusts have roadblocks set up. They're able to work the way through it. And as they get to the town, they find a gas station. They're like, it looks like it's just the pump is shut off or the pipe, you know, feeding the emulsion and shut off. So they track it back.

And as they're doing that, they start to notice a few people there, but it's mostly abandoned. And Dizzy was like, I was here like two months ago and this place was pretty thriving as far as like, you know, small. scale would go. He's like, this is really weird. And as they're working the way through, like there's some people that are acting a little bit crazy and they're like, it's infecting everyone. They're like, what the fuck are you talking about? And they find out that

the emulsion has jumped the species gap. And now it's starting to affect people. And so now it's crossed that species barrier, so now they have to worry about humanity being infected by this thing. I was 30 seconds into

a thought of, well, if the emulsion is moving through the water and it's infecting all of these locusts at what point in time if they're still pumping emulsion to put it into cruisers and things like that? Now's the time when it starts affecting humans. So now is the time, the species jump.

Correct. So the whole entire time that they were using emulsion has never happened, but now there's been some form of... It's because the emulsion also had mutated. as well. Oh, because of the bomb. Yep. There it was. Just a cocktail of crazy

side shit. Yeah, I forgot about the bomb. Okay. All right. So as they're in mercy, all of a sudden they come under attack by a combination of like the Lambet Locus hybrid things and then also a bunch of these like human ones and they make their way back

to the gas station and they're up on the roof of it above the gas pumps and they're just like they've been able to refill the tanker and there are just stocks coming up everywhere around them and they're just pouring in from all sides and they're trying to hold them off and it's

before they left on this mission Dom and or sorry not Dom Barrett and Cole had split up to find reinforcements to bring them to Azura because they weren't going to be able to you know take the island that the Lokeskis had taken with like six people. So he's like you guys need to try

to find someone to help us so they left and who went with them it was Marcus Dom Anya and Sam. So, and I want to say Dizzy. And Jace, maybe. Is Sam put himself together at all? Since

he found out about his wife, since he killed his wife? Oh, Dom. Was it Dom? He had to kill his wife? Yes, it was Dom. He's just pretty much retreated and not giving a fuck about himself. He grew this big, huge depression beard. He tends to, like, a lot of crops

and everything like that. He's just kind of going through the paces. Okay. He's basically like one of the things he says is when they're in mercy, before they find out about these Lambet humans, this is where Maria's family was from. So I'm glad you asked me that because it misses a key detail. He goes up to their family like mausoleum, I guess you would say. They have a statue.

And he hangs his cog tags. So for instead of dog tags, they're tags that look like a gear. And he's talking to her and he's like, I miss you guys so much. He's like, but Marcus is off trying to save the world again. So I got to be there for him. And then he walks away. He hung his cog tags on that and everything. And then while Marcus is trying to get a fuel,

there's some little foreboding or foreshadowing things that happen. Marcus is trying to flip a switch and it's like jam shut. So Dom being a commando, you're presented with a commando knife when you go through, graduate from your training. So we always had that. That was like a difference between his and Marcus's armor. Is one seemed a little bit more, I guess, movement friendly.

And he had a commando knife. So Dom pulls his command. And a knife gives it to Marcus. He uses it to the switch. And then Dom is already walking away by the time Marcus turns to hand it to him. Marcus puts it in his pocket with the thought, I'll get it back to him in a second. So as they're now under attack on all sides, Dom gets separated because three of them jump across to the other, like a five-foot gap to the other roof. And Dom is still holding them off on one side.

This is in Azura? This is in Mercy. Oh, okay. So as they're doing this, Dom looks down. and sees that part of the gas station has collapsed onto the tanker part of it, not the semi part of it. So he jumps down and disconnects the semi from the tanker. And as Marcus is watching, he's like, what the fuck are you doing?

He jumps, he looks at Marcus. He's like, get out of there. jumps in the semi, starts it up, jams it into gear. And he takes off, there's a tunnel that goes probably like a quarter mile stretch down. And he just takes off going, he's like, Don, where the fuck are you? you're going, he's talking to him on the radio, and Dom goes down the tunnel and flips a Ui. And he's like, Dom, like, say something. He's like, I'm pulling the plug on and Marcus, get the fuck out of there, and slams it into the gear and starts accelerating down the tunnel.

And as he's accelerating down the tunnel, he's pulling on the horn. You go back to Marcus and Anya and Sam, who are up on the top of the other side, still firing all around him, trying to get out of here. And you hear the mur, mur, and Marcus is looking through the tunnel. and Dom is talking to himself. He's like, I didn't think it would end like this. Did you think it was going to in like this, Maria? And he goes back down the tunnel and rams into the fuel tank. And as he's doing this, Sam and Anya already knew what we have already jumped off the top of it.

There's Lambent chasing them, but they're able to get a little bit of a head start. And as this happens, Marcus is like, Dom, no. And as he goes to jump, the explosion happens, it takes out all of the Lambent, never. everything. Marcus gets down behind something, is able to shield himself. But like, as soon as he recovers, he's falling down. Anya has to go grab him. And he's like, get off me. I got to get him out of there. And he looks up and the semis on fire. There's, you know. No way to save him. And so he's just looking at this like Dom. Like he's a very, it's a very emotional. I'm not going to lie. Yeah. There was, there was some, some wetness in the eyes when I first played that part.

It doesn't help to. Did you ever see the, the, uh, trailer for this game when it first came out and hear that song Mad World? No. For some reason, there's a massive blank spot for Gears of War. I was originally thinking it was a demo game that I played on PlayStation. It was never on PlayStation. So that's the reason, probably. Yes.

Is because any Xbox commercial I tuned out because it just wasn't ever going to be an option. Yeah. So they end up having, you know, Dom's dead at this point. and to still have a chance of getting the fuel. I mean, they still have to save humanity, so they go to this place called char. And char was hit by the hammer strikes, and it has this weird Hiroshima Nagasaki vibe to it

because as you are walking through, there are still ash statues. So char was charred? Yes. But the tower that's still standing is from like the Griffin Emulsion Company or something like that. now Griffin still lives there

he still runs and like refines emulsion he has stranded that he takes care of and everything but he runs his own little empire now Griffin is voiced by ice ice tea ice yeah so as they're there he's

you know talk to him and he's like well if it isn't the fucking cog and everything come to save us all he's like we just need some we just need some gas and then we'll get the fuck out of here and he's like well coincidentally enough my you know refinery has stopped reporting back. If you guys want to go over there and figure out what's going on,

I might let you keep some. He's like, oh, yeah, and I've also kidnapped your boy that was out waiting in your trucks, so you're going to do it anyway, whether you want to or not. So they go over there. They're able to go ahead and find out that obviously it's been taken over. The emulsion has jumped over to humans. Mira finds out that they're there, but attacks the other tower instead while Dizzy is still up there, so they have to fight their way back.

They end up rescuing him. and making their way to the endeavor naval shipyard. And while Dizzy is refueling and kind of repairing a portion of the submarine, they're having to hold off like locusts that are just coming in waves to try to stop them from being able to do this. They end up fixing the sub and are able to sail under the storm and end up getting to Azura. Okay.

So as they're like rising up through it and everything, The sub does have like windows or portholes. They've killed all the people in Azura and just thrown them into like the bay where the submarine is surfacing. So they're like rising up through like red water. And seeing bodies floating by the portal. 100%. It's like like sliding off of like the glass. So as they're on the mission to get the gas, all this shit happens with Dom.

They fix the sub. Baird and Cole actually went back to Halvo Bay. because they were looking to see if there were any stranded there, if they could get access to any ships there to get out to the island. And that was the place they knew was like a naval shipyard. So as they get there and they're looking around, Paddock is still there and has been helping and leading like a group of stranded. He's the dude that was the UIR soldier that fought with them the first time

and helped them kill Karn. At the library or after the library? Yep. Okay, at the library. Yeah, or at the museum or whatever it was. So he's there And Sophia The onyx guard cadet

Had also been helping that stranded group And they had been leading them Well what turns out What had happened is During a patrol And Paddock is like real hostile toward him Like much more than he should be Concerning how they left

And he's explained to them like I don't fucking like the cog You guys are only alive because of our history But what ended up happening He's like Sophia do you want to know what happened to her She was kidnapped He's like, I watched it happen through my scope while she was out on patrol. He's like, I only could kill one of them before they end up getting away with her.

He's like, but when I went and found his body, he had a fucking cog tag on him. And so he's like, but I will help you for old time. He tells them this at the end of their stay, basically. He helps them and he's like, and again, this is jumping shark territory a little bit. But he's like, there is a usable vessel and everything that I can actually get you guys set up with. It's actually on top of that building. what had happened is when hammer strikes happened off the coast it created kind of like a tsunami a little bit

and it raised it and dropped it on top of like a hotel that also had a seafood restaurant on the top so you have to open all of the gas lines in the seafood restaurant and then toss a grenade in to blow the building up to allow the boat to get down back to the water it's quite enjoyable it's so funny to go through this whole entire thing we're talking about locusts

and underground hollows and this magical liquid and then you still get to Rube Goldberg machines in which you have to get a boat down by blown up a shrimp and fish house yeah and that's the whole thing is like that's normal in this story but then you've reached these points

like you're saying jumping the shark where it's like okay this feels like we've gone a bridge the seafood restaurant in this world is what is like oh I'm out of it now the realest parts of this feel just so wrong so they end up taking this ship and they're able to get in contact with the Garasne and they're like, hey, we need help for this last assault. So back on Azura, they end up finding Adam. He's like up

in the top floor of, and let me explain what Azura was. So Azura is a doomsday bunker for like the cog version of the Illuminati and the government and the leadership. This thing was built during the pendulum wars, this maelstrom device was developed during that time, and basically had the cog started to lose, this is where all the leadership would have gone to, it's the fear of bunker is kind of what it is. Except it is a fucking island paradise resort. They funneled so much money. The living area looks like the most elaborate hotel you could ever see. And that's where all of these like when Ede happened, there was a bunch of disappearances for prominent, rich people, political figures, leaders where they just ended up dying in accidents and stuff.

They were all sent to this place. When that whole thing with Adam happened and Prescott ended up kidnapping him, he went to Azura. They sent him there as a prisoner to begin working on a way to beat the locust. And that's how Prescott knew to go down and get the CD from him to bring it to Marcus. Okay. Now going back a little bit more, there was a time frame where Adam knew five years, before Emergency Day about the locust.

He had met with Mira. When Marcus's mom, Elaine, went down there to take samples, she ran into the locust. They killed her on site. Adam found the research, put two and two together and said, this is where she must have went where she disappeared, went down there, found remains of her, like clothing, stuff like that, knew it was her, was then captured by the locust and brought before Mira.

She was like, oh, what a coincidence and everything. I'm dealing with this. What you're going to do is you're going to help me fix this lambent issue. I got with my people getting infected to this organism. Or the alternative is I'm going to go ahead and invade the surface and kill all the humans. So you're going to help me? And he's like, I don't really have a choice. So he's continually trying to help her this entire time.

He just can't do it quickly enough before the lambent pushed them to do emergency day. Now, when she takes the island, she sees him there. and she's like, now you're going to develop something to kill the lambent, but it's going to keep all the locusts safe. Because he was working on doing something that'll kill emulsion. Yeah. Which includes the locusts that were living close to it. It wouldn't hurt humans yet because it had barely just jumped.

So the only survivors would be the humans. Yeah. But now that she's got him, she's like, you're going to modify it to where it only just kills the lambent. And so they're fighting their way through. crew, Azura, and she's trying to stop them. They shut down the maelstrom barriers, so then any of the other gears that are trying to help them can actually get to the island. And they're able to get to the top of it where the broadcast thing for the countermeasure can actually, it's a radiation pulse is basically what it is that's going to cause any infected or emulsion infected cells to basically break apart and collapse.

And while they're on top of this structure, mirrors trying to stop it on top of this. giant like it looks like a bumblebee almost cross with like a globlah or a beetle it's called the tempest and you're having to kind of like hit it with the hammer of dawn do a video game shit you know final boss fight type stuff uh you kill her or you killed it and it like kind of collapses on top of her you go over and all of a sudden the device goes off and as it's going off it's sending the shockwave around the world and um adam is like i got to tell you tell you something. I'm, you know, live your lives to the fulls and everything. He's like, what's going? He's like, I'm not going to

make it. Mark. He's like, I'll carry you out of here. Like, you don't seem injured. He's like, no, I had to understand the life cycle of this stuff. So I've been experimenting on myself and I've been injecting the emotion into myself because I couldn't design something to kill it unless I could be constantly reviewing how it processes. So he's like, as the pulses keep hitting, he kind of like keeps weakening until the last pulse. He's like, go on and live for me. I'm sorry about Don. And as it hits him, he just crumbles to dust. And his cog tag just kind of lands in Marcus's hand.

So like within the same like day and a half, two days, Marcus was like, my dad's alive. Then Dom's dead. Then I got my dad. Now my dad's dead. I don't want to say you don't get high on your own supply because that's not exactly what he was doing. But I guess it had to be done to create the device.

There's got to be some accountability, man. The guy knew about this shit for a long time. I mean kind of, yeah. Fair. I'm not protecting him just because of his name, but. So at this opportune time is when Mirr decides to crawl her way out from beneath her dead toasted bug mount. And as she's singing there, she starts kind of mocking Mark or Marcus. And she's like, oh, his hubris finally came to Roos, like he thought he had all of the answers.

And Marcus just kind of walks up to her and takes out Dom's commando knife and just sticks it right in her fucking chest. and it's like you feel that bitch that's for Dom and for everybody else you killed and then just fucking rips it out and then she ends up dying so this is where the end of like there's some you know this series

takes a little bit of like a break in the rebuild of society yeah and the rest of the episode is going to go through I've still probably got a little bit left not a ton so sorry folks you're in for a long one this is Lord of the Rings type shit for length anyway so rebuilding society

So 17 after emergence is the end of the war. So between 17 AE, 42 after emergence, there's like a few hundred thousand people left. Societies have rebuilt with maximum survival in mind. And when Adam Phoenix's countermeasure destroyed the emulsion, it saved humanity, but it completely destroyed the emulsion. It's no longer a power source. Now you're often to go back to squirrel around about shit.

It also, with the destruction of the... that and that being such a vital part of like the, I guess, the ecosphere, like the environment and everything, it caused like this violent reaction of like atmospheric storms on Sarah to where you would have these things called wind flares, which were like hurricane force tornadoes that had lightning swirling around inside them. They look cool as shit, but you don't want to get hit with one. So to basically kind of protect people from that, you start having. cities that are built within like walled settlements to where the walls can actually move and surround the city and then at different times of day the walls would just kind of rotate around

like half of it to keep sunshine on the city so you didn't always feel like you were surrounded at all times so the survivors they end up returning to tyrus um they elect anna as like the inaugural first minister of this reestablished coalition of order governments she's always been the one to facilitate things, the one that's always kind of maintained being cool under pressure. So does Marcus become the first husband? He does. Yep. They end up marrying. Anya, one of the reasons she also didn't have to go to like one of the birthing farms is she was sterile. She couldn't have kids. Well, one of the first thing that happens is because you still have scientists available. They're looking for ways to creepily enough just like the locust did increase the populations.

so you have this you know birthing program that is fucking again this it's complex it's wild that I was sitting there thinking okay they're gonna have to rebuild society

just by doing it the old fashioned way I completely forgot about the birthing ideas and that was these people still so because they were doing that the whole time during the Locust War to keep up there there are some comics that cover that I chose not to discuss that but they actually go in

and have to liberate one of these places because the locust take it over and all the women that are there band together and are able to get guns from the guards that like abandon them and basically hold off these locust and then when the cock shop they're like get the fuck out of here.

Hell yeah. So Anya and Marcus Mary, Anya is the first chairman. He is the first mister of this. Marcus retires, he's like honestly you can be the first minister because I think you'll do a good job. I want no fucking part of this. I'm going

to the old Stroud estate. I'm going to fix it up that's where we're going to go and live. So with the population again, like just catastrophically low, flesh and blood workers are deemed too valuable to risk for construction, security details, anything like that. So Baird steps up and being the genius that he is, founds this thing called Baird Industries and creates these things called D.Bs. And they're basically just robotic workers.

So he designs them to run security to keep the settlement safe and to actually do all the constructions while humanity just tries to recover. Anya takes part in a fertility study to try to bleed by example of like women that can't have kids. They're these studies. She feels like it's her responsibility to try to be the one that does it. And it works for their first kids. So her and Marcus

have a son. It is James Dominic Phoenix. So J.D. Phoenix. And the they start building these new settlements kind of all in the exact same mold. So it's going to be the first settlement is new Afira and then there's settlement two, settlement three. And they all are very cookie cutter.

They create this thing called the fabricator that's basically like a large scale 3D printer that these places are able to use for all this machinery to try to rebuild these things kind of in mass for these settlements for people. During an attempt to have their second child, Anya actually dies due to the medical complications while going through kind of those fertility treatments. Marcus has completely shattered, completely isolates himself at his estate.

And then following her death, the political landscape shifts toward like full authoritarianism again under the new leadership, which is first minister. Her name is Mina Jin and the Cogginforce mandatory fertility laws tracking its citizens. to make sure they keep their numbers up. And then in response to that, like thousands of Cog citizens are like, you know what, we're not going to go and do this. We had to do this for long enough. We're going to go live out in the wild.

They're not stranded anymore. They're called the outsiders. They've already developed certain settlements and everything like that. And some of the outsider groups survive not by hurting people, but they'll go into settlements that are under construction and they'll raid supplies.

They'll raid construction materials. they'll take a fabricator because one of those can keep a whole village running or something like that for like power sources, things like that. So I don't blame the outsiders. I feel like that's logical. So the new cog conduct these massive battlefield cleanups where all of these locusts were when they died. Because when the Lambent died, they just kind of turned to like mush or sludge. When the locust died, they had these weird Christixt. crystalline cocoons that formed, it was like almost the emulsion in their body got to the surface and then crystallized. So it formed them into like these cocoon type things. But they were so fucking strong that they couldn't really be like burned or destroyed or anything. So they basically just had to take these and they're like, what do we do with them? And they would take old mines that they used to mine for metal. One of the materials is called like osmium or anything. And they just filled these mines with these like dead locust like cocoons or shells.

So that was a huge cleanup effort within like this 25 year period. You know, you can't have a bunch of that shit just laying around areas. No, and you probably don't want to be looking at it regardless just based upon the last shit that you've been through. Yeah, exactly. Kids are out in the woods taking a walkney trip over a dead locust show or whatever it is. Not to mention I don't want to take a chance. Just because they died didn't mean that they're completely gone. So during a outsider raid on an under construction place called Settlement 2, it leads to this massive civilian protest against the cog.

And Jin basically orders the automated security force, the DBs to fire on the undercover crowd. That'll happen. Yep. And so horrified by this, J.D., who had joined the cog against Marcus's advice, his best friend Dell, who Marcus also told don't fucking join the cod. they end up defecting and running away to join an outsider village not before going to Marcus and be like, hey, we just quit because we saw this

and Marcus is like, you realize they're going to fucking track you down. They're going to hunt you down. They just killed civilians. They think you're just going to be able to go. And so that's why they went to live with this outsider village. Marcus was like, I told you not to fucking join

and now you can't fucking quit. So, weirdly enough, the outsider village they go to is led by a woman named Rainia Diaz. So Raina also has a daughter named Kate. Now, Raina ended up getting married to Nate. Yeah. They had Kate.

So outsider villages have started to get attacked and people have been getting abducted. And it's also been happening at certain settlements. People have been getting abducted. Jin thinks the outsiders are abducting her people. The outsiders really don't know what's going on at this point. they think it might be the cog kind of fucking with them as well. So, J.D.

Dell and Kate go to a settlement that's under construction. They end up stealing a fabricator and bringing it back because they need it to restore power to their village. He's like, we've been out of power for a week. I know Damon Baird. He was my dad's fucking friend. I know these things are easy to build.

We're taking this one. And Jin appears to them basically like in a robotic projection form. Uh-oh. while they're raiding the settlement, but they're able to escape. But she's like, no, you're under arrest. They end up escaping and everything. So as they take this back to their village,

Jin has one of these like robots, these DBs show up. And it's got like a screen on the face of it to where she can talk through it. And so she's talking to Raina and she's like, what are you doing here? She's like, we stole her. Like you guys have a shit ton of those.

What are you hassling us for? And she's like, I'm not here about the fabricator. You're taking my people. And she's like, we're not taking your fucking people. And she's like, you're taking our people. And she's like, no, we're not. So Raina ends up getting pissed off and, like, slicing the head off this robot.

Nice. Good choice. And so that's when Jin then sends a bunch of forces to attack. They knock out those forces. And after that, during that night, all of a sudden, like, there's another attack. And they think it's the cog for a second. But then all of a sudden, people start getting snatched up by these creatures. and Raina locks

JD, Dell, and Kate inside like they were working with the fabricator and it's like a reinforced, I don't know we did like a work shed. She shuts the door and she's like, be quiet, don't make any noise. And they see her get knocked out by like a large locust

and then get wrapped up by this weird looking like four-legged thing that sucks her up into like its rib cage and take off with her. And so they're like what the fuck was that? they end up getting out of where she had locked them in. And like the only person that can help us figure out what this thing was is Marcus.

So they end up going to back to Marcus. They're like, what's happening here? Jen tracks them to Marcus's estate. Does the same thing where she's like, you're going to turn the kids in and everything. And then you are going to, if you're part of this, you're going to explain. Marcus is like, get the fuck out of my house. He chainsaws the shit out of her robot. just like whips up a lancer and does that.

And then basically Marcus is looking at, they took a hand from one of the creatures that had got like its hand, ran it sliced one of its hands off. So that's what they took to Marcus. The one that enveloped her or one of the locusts? The one that knocked her out, big one.

And then after it knocked her out, the thing came in and snatched shirt while she was unconscious. And so Marcus is looking at the hand. It's got weird crystals on it because like, this is a fucking locust hand. He's like, I would know this.

I've had these things like around my throat and shit. So he's like, we can't go to gin, obviously. He's like, let's, here's what we can do. I know one of the burial sites, let's go and check it out. And as they go check it out on their, on their way there, they start to see like weird growth and shit like that and like pods and all of this stuff. That stuff wasn't there. It looks like bioorganic mass has been growing on things.

They get into another fight against these weird little scorpion creatures. And Marcus gets tagged with like a dart and gets tranquilized. and one of these other creatures, they're called snatchers, grabs him in its rib cage and actually escapes with Marcus. So, J.D. Dell, and Kate are trying to follow this thing to track him down. They follow him into this old mine and find him secured in like this pod thing. And as they get him out, he's non-responsive. He's not breathing. And finally, like, they get him turned over and knock all the shit out of his lungs and he comes back.

And he's like, when you're in there, you're getting. processed basically into like your genetic fluid. That's what they're doing. They're melting us down and using us to create other things. And he's like, what's using us? He's like it the fucking, it's the locust. Like while they were in these cocoon things, it's like a butterfly. The emulsion was breaking down their genetic structure and then reforming them into

something else. So here's the thing. There's not a ton of lore I'm going to go into on the fourth and fifth because they're not as good as all the stuff beforehand. There's a lot there in the beginning. There is. But what this ends up coming down to is Marcus and all them knowing about this, getting back and trying to convince people to help them. Because at this point, this is all, you know, all secretive.

So he gets a hold of Baird and gets a hold of coal. And they come help them bust into this huge nest where what's going to be known as the swarm has basically taken Rana and integrated her in. into part of the swarm as like the hive. And so like she's connected biologically to like these strands and everything. And the reason that she was picked is because they know that's Mira's daughter. DNA. So they use these bear drops off these two like mech suits that Kate and J.D. used to break through like this dried up dam and ended up fighting this thing.

They get to Raina. She's already been too integrated. guess into this network, but she's like, kill me. She's like, cut me loose and let me, I don't want to live like this. So like Kate's like, I'll be the one to do it. So she cuts her loose. And as Kate comes out, Kay has no idea. First of all, Raina has no idea that she's Mira's daughter.

Ah, fuck. And then Kate's Raina's daughter. Mm-hmm. So Mirra's granddaughter. So she severs the like tendrils and stuff like that. It ends up killing Raina. And they end up, that's kind of toward the end of that like portion of it. They try to, um, notify like the cog that of what's going on and that there's basically

kind of this like new war. Later on, the cog kind of comes around to play after hearing Baird talk about it, after hearing cold, basically all the people to witnesses are like, this is a major issue. You need to kind of maybe set aside the petty bullshit and refocus on this. And so in order to. to basically enact the change they needed to, JD, Dell, and Kate, and Marcus also all reenlist in the cog, just to be able to have control to be able to do stuff.

So one of the things they first do is disobeying orders, they go back to Azura, and they find a hammer of Don's satellite that was there, because the network has degraded so much that this is a weapon they can use against the swarm. So they're able to kind of launch this thing. It partially restores the network, but it's going to be super spotty.

spotty enough to wear during a mission the hammer of dawn goes haywire and everything JD almost gets like his arm blown off it gets severely burnt he's got to wear like this weird ass sleeve on it that keeps like lubric I don't know it's just a weird looking thing but um so

during this time frame while they're still serving Kate starts having these visions of like being in the point of view of certain like locust or swarm and they're happening at night, but she has one that's so vivid because what ends up happening is it attacks someplace that she's familiar with.

And then she goes and she finds out that that happens. So she starts telling Marcus about this information. And she had gotten this, her mom, Raina, had been wearing this pendant that she got from Mira. And after she cut her loose from being connected to the swarm, and Rita died, Kate took that.

And she takes it and she's showing it to Marcus and she's like, I don't know why I'm having these visions. This was my mom's. She said she got it from her mother and as she shows Marcus, she flips it over it and it's the fucking locust symbol. It's like a remote

viewing device kind of? It's just a medallion. It's just a pendant is all it is. But Marcus is looking and he's like, that's a locus symbol and you're saying you got it from your grandmother. He's like, I can't give you answer. but there's a place called New Hope that we discovered during the war and everything

you can go try to find some answers there and be very, very careful. So as they go there to New Hope, they're able to get additional information that Marcus and them didn't get because they were in a hurry. Kate and Dell go together. It's just those two.

JD stays to work with the cog and all that kind of stuff. And they find the location of where they actually went to when New Hope got shut down. They find the location of the lab that they all went to in the mountains. They break into it and they find the whole history about the matriarch and how the locust busted out and Mira and Raina and how Kay's there.

And when they get in there, I don't know if you're going to get this reference, but there's a Marvel villain called Dr. Zola and he was a person but then transferred his mind into a computer. Too far. So when he died. Okay. Nile Sampson did the same thing at this facility. Remember the TV that they used to bring out during school on subdays?

He basically looks like that. His face is on the screen, but then he's on wheels and he's boxing, he can move around. So he's telling them all this information when they're in the facility about what had happened. And he's like, oh, you're Raina's, you have the same because he has them check their DNA. Yeah. And he's like, oh, you're Raina's daughter. And so he's like, there is a way actually for you to kind of sever right now. because Raina had it and the reason that they took her

is because she had this hive mind telepathy that she could connect with the whole swarm. You have the same thing and it's starting to kick in. But we can sever you from that. So they hook her up to this machine and basically perform a type of like, very fine lobotomy on this section that's connecting it to the hive.

And when that happens, when Raina was hooked up, her consciousness was also in the hive. And when Kate severs that, it somehow reawakens Raina's consciousness, but in a very mirror-esque way. So it almost combines hers and mirrors consciousnesses. Those aren't two people you want.

No. Consciousness. No. So as they end up leaving this lab, with all of this information, they get information, because this isn't going to help them defeat the locust. this is just about Kate's past.

They get information that there was an old UIR base that had functional proto-hammer-of-dawn satellites, the ones that the UIR was going to use and launch when they had 66% of this shit done. So Kate and Dell go and partner up and the guy down there, the beared nose is paddock still, and he meets them down there, and he's like, there was an old UIR cosmodrome. Do you know what cosmodrome is? Okay, I love this word. Cosmodrome is something that... This is come from cosmonaut?

Kind of. It comes from the fact that in Russia, instead of having like Cape Canaveral or like that area, they would have a cosmodrome where it would be all where they would do their launches and everything like that. So it was like a buildings and area dedicated just to the launching of like spacecraft. Okay. So this place was a secret cosmodrome that the UIR had used and was going to use to launch their Hammer of Dawn satellites. So they had one like ready and loaded up in the chamber. They just never got to use it.

So you have to start this huge automated process of launching it to the launch pad and they end up getting it into orbit. So after they do that, they end up traveling back to New Jacinto and being able to save it from like a huge like locust incursion basically that's being commanded by this newly awakened. And again, this is why the other part of the series is bad because it's getting in a little weird stuff by this newly awakened like Queen Raina. And there's a moment within or within the end of that last game that Raina like corners or basically comes face to face with Kate and she has like a tentacle wrapped around JD's neck

and one wrapped around Dell's neck. And you have to make a choice and everything. And it's a real dilemma because do you save Dell? Because it kills whoever you don't save. So you either save Del who has been with you for like the whole game and was the one that went with you on this like journey to find yourself and was there. Or do you save J.D. who's Marcus's son. I saved Del because he was my ride or die. And then I had to explain to Markets at the end of the JD.

He didn't blame me. Everything. He was just very upset. But yeah, they end up being able to use the hammer to end up saving, you know, the city and everything. But the story at this point has been left that Queen Raina has yet to be defeated. Oh. And the new game that's coming out, rightfully so, is Ede taking place in the past. But that's definitely the best place to explore because the last couple games were a little bit lacking in the originality.

Department. They're still good. Time before we continue the story by doing a prequel first. Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't. That makes sense. You never cease to amaze me the amount of material of these things that you can soak up. Does your nerdery know no, no bounds? It's so incredible.

It's very fascinating. This is, these are the episodes that make me just absolutely love this podcast because it's, I mean, this is us. It's storytelling. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, purely you and your interests in a niche that doesn't quite cross, but at the same time, through a shared passion of playing video games and things like that. I mean, they're right there. I totally understand why it happens.

And I love the fact that we have enough trust in each other. We're going to record another episode. I'm not going to give any spoilers, but this is going to be an Adam teaching episode, and I'm looking forward to it so much because it is so different from anything that we've ever done. but it opens up so much and I have so much trust in him after all these years that I know that this topic while on the surface may

just be like, huh? It's going to be amazing. So keep a lookout for that one as well. All right, man. I got nothing else. Thank you. It was incredible. You're welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed it. And I hope you guys all enjoyed it too and we'll catch on the next one. Peace.