Post-Apocalyptic War
From FABT
- "I was glad to be captured when I was. Retrospectively, I mean. I no longer had to fight, but more importantly, it put a stop to the possiblity that I would one day find Garrus or Liara or Wrex down my sights. I got to sit out the rest of the war. In the end, we won the war...or so they tell us. But we didn't. Only Prometheus won that war, no one else. If only you were there...you might have been able to stop them before they tore our galaxy apart."
- — A wounded Tali'Shepard to Marcus L. Shepard regarding the conflict.
The Post-Apocalyptic War, also known widely as the Dominion-Council-Covenant War and the Great Galactic War, to the Covenant as the Restoration Crusade, and sometimes in some circles as the War of the Four Empires, was a galaxy-wide major three-way conflict between the New Council, Galactic Dominion and the Covenant-led Terminus Powers military coalition with the Omega Republic that broke out on the 16 August 2205 CE and lasted until 8 November 2215 CE. The war was a product of just under twenty years of post-Reaper War disunity, distrust and disparate military alliances that finally culminated in the creation of new nation-states and galactic borders that redefined the galaxy as it had once been known. The destruction of the Reaper War, and the lessons learnt from it, had reshaped the galaxy, with once powerful nation-states greatly diminished in their strength and influence, while lesser states rose to power in the vacuum. Sowing the first seeds for the conflict was the Terra-Rannochian Pact, a treaty signed between the Systems Alliance (and later upheld by the Systems Coalition, its successor) and the then-newborn Republic of Rannoch that promised mutual economic, military and political aid in reconstruction efforts in the direct aftermath of the war. This pact is often colloquially referred to as the "Shepard Pact", as Marcus L. Shepard and his wife Tali'Shepard, a human and quarian respectively, were often used as symbols of the pact and were its main inspiration. This alliance only grew stronger in the coming years, as Rannoch grew in strength, with Earth using it as a crutch for itself to recover from the war: as a result, the Systems Coalition was able to recover a lot faster than its neighbours, allowing it to join Rannoch as one of many sweeping new powers to rise on the galactic stage.
Elsewhere, the Titan Covenant rose to power, the seeds of which had been sown during the Border War, where the batarian ambassador Ocrolya Khabcass had used his power and influence to trick the Batarian Hegemony into war with humanity, which ultimately resulted in the Hegemony's final destruction and occupation by Coalition forces. This led to a massive refugee crisis in the final years of the 22nd Century CE, which Khabcass took advantage of to lead the majority of his people to a new land, a new government, and a new leader. In actuality, Khabcass was merely a pawn of the Leviathans, who, with the Reapers now gone, had designs of restoring their sovereignty over the entire galaxy and rebuilding their former empire. Khabcass formed a religion around the Leviathans, leading to the birth of the Titan Covenant, with the abandoned Cerberus space station of Titan as its capital. It wasn't long before the "virtual aliens" joined the alliance, and eventually even the yahg, who had then just recently achieved spaceflight. The Covenant grew in power and size, its military becoming virtually unstoppable, the superstate annexing system after system until half of the Terminus Systems was effectively theirs: even Illium, despite receiving backing from the New Council in a war with the Covenant, fell to the power hungry theocracy, leaving the New Council worried as to their intentions. This was made only worse when a New Council attempt to negotiate a non-aggression pact with the Covenant was thwarted by a Coalition warship firing upon the Covenant envoy vessel, mistaking it for a trespasser. This further weakened relations between the New Council and the humans and quarians, and grew worser still when both Earth and Rannoch seceded from the New Council in 2200 CE, forming their own separate nation-state known as the Galactic Dominion.
On Omega, Aria T'Loak's post-war ambitions only continued to grow in secret, the Ruler of Omega remaining largely unconcerned by the Covenant's expansion through the Terminus. Instead, in answer to the Titan Covenant being established, Aria proclaimed the creation of the Omega Republic, declaring the now fractured and broken Terminus Systems to be obsolete. From her seat of power, Aria expanded her army and navy, utilizing resources she had gathered during the Reaper War as a foundational basis. Soon, the Omega Republic had carved out the eastern half of the Terminus for itself, and on January 2205 CE, Aria ratified an alliance with Khabcass, forming the Terminus Powers, promising Omega's military backing if Covenant troops helped her deal with a small insurrection. The formation of this alliance left three major powers in the galaxy, each opposed to the other: the New Council, the Dominion and the Terminus Powers. Tensions only grew between these powers, but none more inclined to snap than that between the New Council and Dominion specifically. The New Council wanted to avoid a war, the Dominion wanted to be left alone (but elements of the Coalition government, secretly supporters of Prometheus, were aching for a fight to finally crush the Council), the Covenant wanted to wipe both out and establish Leviathan pan-galactic dominance, and Aria was on a power trip to expand Omega's influence, confident that the Citadel's time as the political center of the galaxy was over. The scene was ripe for conflict, and it would be the New Hellespont Blockade that finally sent relations spiralling into open war.
Discovered and settled in 2162 CE, the planet of New Hellespont was a political quagmire: the planet was in the Zeus Aluticus cluster, which placed it firmly within Council space, but the Bosporus system itself was on the outer edge of the cluster, and due to the Aluticus cluster straddling the Council-human border, this placed the system half inside Council space, half in then-Alliance space. The situation was a complex one, but it was ultimately agreed that New Hellespont would incorporate a dual-governmental system, a unique status that few other worlds had. A salarian government would rule the planet from the Council side, while the Alliance could establish control over the other half, both sides leaving each other alone. This decision was known as the New Hellespont Compromise, which remained into effect even after Alliance control switched over to the Coalition, and finally over to Dominion control. However, in direct violation of the agreement, the Dominion military crossed the border into salarian territory and announced its intentions to annex it. The salarian government sought the New Council for help, and the New Council demanded the Dominion stand down and withdraw its forces. The Dominion refused, declaring the Compromise was now irrelevant and that it would not tolerate half measures, and demanded the entire planet ceded to them. The following week, the Dominion went forward with its annexation of the planet, granting the salarians a 36-hour window to evacuate before they were kicked out. With no choice, the salarians did as they were required, and the Dominion assumed full control of the planet. Unwilling to back down from what was effectively military blustering, the New Council deployed a fleet to New Hellespont, establishing a blockade and threatening to fire upon any Dominion ship attempting to supply the planet and refusing to lift the blockade until the Dominion withdrew from their illegally occupied territory. While the Dominion was outraged by this, they did not want a war, and so for now they sent ambassadors back and forth with their own demands. The New Council proposed a revised New Hellespont Compromise that would cede the Dominion substantial control of the planet's rich palladium and helium-3 reserves, but the Dominion refused and insisted on full control. So the blockade continued.
Finally, a few weeks into the blockade, the Dominion decide to call the New Council's bluff and deploy blockade runners, equipped with stealth tech, to airlift relief supplies and materials to the Dominion citizens planetside. Due to this technology, the New Council doesn't initially pick up on the deployments, but when they finally did, they did not know how to respond. Warning shots were fired, but the transports were instructed to ignore them. Believing New Council capitulation would be imminent once they realized their blockade was now useless, the Dominion increased political pressure. However, in a clever political maneveur, the New Council turned to the Krogan Confederacy, who the Dominion had been in talks with for the possibility of the krogan joining the Dominion: until then, Urdnot Wrex had insisted on keeping the krogan neutral in the Council and Dominion's political disputes. Sweetening their side with the promise of further cessation of territory to the krogan to expand, along with them being granted significant political power on the Citadel, the New Council successfully convinced the krogan to deploy warships to reinforce their blockade. Wrex kept his promise, and krogan warships strenghtened the blockade, and when transports ignored their warnings to back off, a krogan cruiser opened fire on one of them, doing just enough damage to penetrate its shields, warning that it would finish it off if they did not back off immediately. The Dominion hastily recalled its transports, knowing that the krogan did not bluff, thus ending its relief efforts. In response, the Dominion answered by deploying warships of its own to face off against the New Council: the Citadel did the same by deploying more of its own. The blockade continued much like this: both sides deploying tougher and more intimidating warships, attempting to strongarm and scare their opponent into withdrawing. But it was clear neither side was going to give in, and both sides were growing more and more concerned by having so many of their warships facing off against each other in the one area: all it would take was one trigger-happy captain to start a war. However, in the end, it was not a captain who started the war: but a single gunnery officer. The first shot came from the Dominion's side, with gunnery officer George Severance on the CSV Ganymede, a Normandy II-class heavy stealth frigate, seizing control of the frigate's thanix cannon and firing a blast at an asari frigate. Severance would later be arrested and placed in the brig for the act, which he had done without authorization: however, he was later found with his head bashed against a wall after the following battle he had started, and it wouldn't be until after the Dominion Civil War and the declassification of Prometheus documents that it was found out he was a Prometheus agent tasked with starting a war they wanted.
The asari frigate in question had been destroyed instantly by the attack, its shields down due to the crew's complacency and the New Council admiral not expecting an attack. The admiral was still asleep when the New Council fleet hastily returned fire, panicked by the sudden and unprovoked attack. The Dominion fleet also returned fire, and within minutes, both sides were locked in battle: the Battle of New Hellespont saw both the New Council and the Dominion at war. While the Dominion were the ultimate victors of the battle, with their superiority in stealth tech and firepower seizing the day, the New Council made it a costly one as they retreated, with the salarians deploying bioweapons into New Hellespont's atmosphere: this ensured the Dominion forces would not pursue them, as they would be stuck trying to quickly evacuate the planet, and also denied them the planet they had fought over for months. As such, the Dominion had secured a costly tactical victory, and the war was now on. For a year, the war raged between the Dominion and New Council, with the Terminus Powers remaining conspicuously quiet. In 2206 CE, the Covenant launched surprise attacks against quarian colonies in the eastern Terminus, with the intent of laying siege to Rannoch itself, which was just within their reach. The quarians and geth put up stiff resistance however, surprising the Covenant forces with their tenacity and ferociousness. Despite this, the Covenant eventually opened up a path towards Rannoch, but are engaged just on the outer edge of the Tikkun system by a massive quarian-geth naval force led by Tali'Shepard herself, and beaten back. The Dominion subsequently declares war on the Covenant, and plans are made for a counteroffensive into the Terminus, with the intention of striking deep towards Omega. Now fighting a war on two fronts, the Dominion attempts to strike a quick and decisive blow against the New Council to take them out of the war in mid 2206 CE, and muster a bold assault against the Citadel, hoping to capture it and force the New Council to negotiate. The First Battle of the Citadel ended in a New Council victory, dashing any Dominion hopes of bringing a quick end to the war. A few months later, in retaliation, the New Council launch a covert strike against Epitaph Station, hoping to capture key Dominion personnel and force the Dominion to the negotiating table, as the New Council had just recently been invaded by the Covenant as well, declaring war on them in turn. While stunned and initially overwhelmed by the attack, the Dominion forces rally and additional reinforcements eventually force the New Council to give up the operation and withdraw.
The war would continue for a decade, with many notable and significant battles being fought. The CSV Sparta, a significantly upgraded Normandy-class stealth frigate, would be responsible for raids on numerous strategically important New Council military installations, the most devastating of which was a classified STG shipyard that had been covertly developing a fleet of salarian stealth ships, with the intention of them being used to deploy dirty bombs on cities across Earth and Rannoch. The facility was destroyed, with a single vessel surviving. After a week and a half of tailing each other in a gas giant, the CSV Sparta finally engages the Riser, destroying it after sustaining heavy damage, and then limping out the system towards the safety of Dominion territory. However, on the Dominion-Covenant theater of the conflict, the most significant battle of the war took place: the Siege of New Constantinople. Breaking through Dominion lines along a wide front, Khabcass, and his bodyguard-commander Sacrosanct, personally led the elite Second Crusader Force, a veteran army of 50,000 of the Covenant's finest warriors and infamously known as the "Thunder of the Leviathans", to attack the strategically important Coalition colony world of New Constantinople. If captured, New Constantinople would have granted the Covenant unparalleled access to the Dominion's interior, and would have seriously jeopardized their ability to defend their own territory. Khabcass knew this and committed his veteran army to capturing it, assured of his victory due to his reputation as being the Undefeated, as every battle where he was the commander always ended in victory. At the time, the crew of the RNS Revengeance, captained by Lord Admiral Tali'Shepard, was on shore leave on the planet, and the planet was garrisoned by a small force of around 9-12,000 men. Khabcass laid siege to the planet, overwhelming its meagre naval defenses and deploying his army to conquer New Byzantium, the capital city. Tali took command of the outnumbered Dominion garrison, and instead of heeding Khabcass' calls for them to surrender, she began reorganizing the Dominion army into a guerrilla force. The battle lasted weeks, but Tali made the most of it: she sent out daily raiding parties in the dead of night to raid and hamper Covenant supply lines, cut lines of communication, destroy foraging parties, shoot down dropships and damage the cohesion of the army. She waged a desperate misinformation campaign, forging communications between her and the Dominion High Command that put forth the lie that the Dominion were on their way to retake the planet with a huge fleet. All of this was to buy time, as Tali was using the city's resources to retrain the garrison into a professional fighting force. Tali would often organize discussions with Khabcass in a neutral setting, pretending to be weak and intimidated by Khabcass while secretly learning more about her enemy. This allowed her to stage her plan of attack impeccably, focusing on what she knew Khabcass would be weak towards. Noticing his arrogance, self-assuredness and belief in the superiority of his forces, Tali's plan consisted of a hammer-and-anvil strategy when battle was joined.
When battle finally came, it was during a final parley. Records differ as to what was said, but as they were leaving for their camps, Tali was reported to have said, "Look for me for when the sirens sound." Tali had said she would sound the sirens when the time came for the battle to be over, and Khabcass took this as meaning the sirens meant surrender. As such, Khabcass and his army lowered their guard, posting only 10,000 of his usually 30,000 strong vanguard at the siege lines in preparation to take in the surrendering Dominion troops. Instead, when the sirens sounded, a massive artillery bombardment pounded the Covenant lines, and 5,000 Dominion soldiers, accompanied by heavy armor, slammed into the Covenant lines. The Revengeance simultaneously launched from the city itself, revealing its presence as it launched air strikes against the Covenant's back ranks. Tali rightfully predicted Khabcass would then, in confusion, rush the rest of his army forward without giving proper consideration to the terrain or his position, relying entirely on his army's reputation as being invincible. Once all his forces were committed, Tali launched her trap: 30,000 Dominion troops suddenly appeared on the Covenant's right flank, twice the amount of troops Tali should have had: she had been training the civilian population, and her quarian engineers had put together a hasty force of mechs to supplement their numbers. Caught in the trap, Khabcass and his men had nowhere to run, and were forced to stand and fight. Despite this, the Covenant were beginning to turn the tide, with their superior forces and use of yahg proving to be a game changer as they began to win out against inferior civilian training. The Dominion suffered heavy losses, the battle having long since degenerated into a brutal melee as soldiers who ran out of ammunition began using their weapons as clubs. But Tali had never intended to win a field battle: only to get herself close enough to Khabcass. Moses and Kaidan Alenko kept Sacrosanct busy while Tali engaged Khabcass personally in a long winded duel. Both sides incurred injuries, Tali suffering a broken arm and several lacerations across her body and legs, but Tali managed to land the killing blow that killed Khabcass, detonating a flashbang inside his mouth before gutting him with her omni-blade. Witnessing the death of their leader, word spread throughout their army: their prophet had been slain by a quarian. Whatever cohesion the army had fell apart, and they routed from the field. The Dominion subsequently laid siege to their camp, with the Dominion naval reinforcements chasing off their only hope of escape. The Covenant offered to surrender, but when Dominion troops went in to secure their imprisonment, they found that the entire camp had committed suicide, driven to do so by their Leviathan masters.
The battle was a massive Dominion victory, and a catastrophic Covenant defeat. The battle rose Tali from the fame she already enjoyed being the wife of Commander Shepard to becoming a legend in her own right. Her name was used in Dominion propaganda for the rest of the war, and she was slapped with a shoot-to-kill by all Covenant forces, enforced by Khabcass' successor, Eluam Ran'perah. The battle also saw a complete change in Covenant tactics, with Ran'perah sticking to a more defensive strategy with the Dominion, focusing all of his efforts on the New Council, which inevitably put him at odds with his "ally", Aria T'Loak, who relied upon Covenant offensives to keep the Dominion off her own lands. However, in 2210 CE, the Revengeance is detected to be separated from its fleet and the STG attack the vessel as part of Operation Zorah, a New Council operation to capture Tali and remove her from the war. The Revengeance successfully manages to evade the STG, with krogan warships under Wrex himself pursuing the vessel across New Council space. The Revengeance is eventually disabled and boarded, with Tali ordering the ship to be scuttled. The krogan successfully stop the scuttling attempt, and Tali and her crew are taken as POWs back to Tuchanka, with Wrex refusing turian demands that she be handed over for interrogation. The Revengeance is handed over to the STG for research and development, and Tali and her crew, despite being prisoners, are treated kindly, largely due to Wrex's kinship with Tali. Regardless, Tali and her crew are forced to sit out the rest of the war. Despite this significant New Council victory, it would not be enough to turn the tide. The Dominion successfully captured the Citadel only months before in the Second Battle of the Citadel, and Operation Hoodwink saw New Council supply lines between their respective allies strained to breaking point as they are constantly harassed by stealth ships. Their cohesion further collapses when the Covenant begin to turn the tide against them on the Western Front, forcing the turians to withdraw a substantial amount of their forces to push them back and reclaim lost territory. The Dominion seizes the initiatve on this, seeing that the salarians had been left to defend themselves. After a devastating new offensive, the New Council suffers its first massive defeat in 2211 CE when the Salarian Union formally surrenders to the Dominion. A salarian government in-exile is established on Thessia, with Councilor Esheel Pelise leading it, and some salarian military forces continue to fight on, but for all intents and purposes, the salarians had fallen, and it was only going to get worse.
The Dominion gains more and more ground as the war continues, beating back a Council attempt to retake the Citadel and conquering the elcor. It's not long before the volus and hanar are forced to surrender as well, and the turians soon find themselves firmly in the crosshairs of the Dominion. For two years, the Dominion gradually ground down the Turian Hierarchy, until they are finally cornered to their homeworld of Palaven in 2214 CE. In the ensuing battle that lasted seven months, Primarch Adrien Victus was finally killed in his famous last stand. Following the campaign, the Turian Hierarchy is demolished, its remaining colonies pounded into submission, and the Systems Coalition occupy the planet. With the fall of the turians, the New Council is on the verge of defeat. A turian government in-exile makes plans for a reconquest of their territory, but they never come to fruition. In the same year, war officially breaks out between the OFA and Aria's forces, beginning the Third War for Omega, and the Omega Republic's exit from the war. The Covenant dissolve the Terminus Powers, cutting off its alliance with Aria and leaving her to fend for herself. The Covenant begin to overwhelm New Council forces, now primarily composed of asari troops, and push them back towards Thessia: meanwhile, the Dominion do the same from the east, keeping the krogan contained while they push for asari space. In 2215 CE, Dominion forces reach Thessia first, and in quite possibly the greatest atrocity committed in Dominion history, the Dominion fleet deploys nuclear weapons across the planet, totally obliterating the surface population and rendering the planet uninhabitable. The entire New Council were present on Thessia and were killed in the nuclear bombardment, wiping out the entire New Council leadership. The destruction of the beautiful planet was broadcasted across all of former New Council space as propaganda, and the result was the final surrender of the Thessian Republics and all remaining New Council forces. With the New Council utterly annihilated, the Krogan Confederacy is forced to the negotiating table, refusing to officially surrender, insisting instead on calling it "a truce". This allows the Dominion to mop up remaining New Council resistance and push back the Covenant forces who had invaded, pushing them completely out of former Council space. Both sides launch probing attacks, but neither is willing to press any further, completely exhausted by the war. An armistice is negotiated on the 8th of November, bringing a final end to the war.
The Post-Apocalyptic War was significant for a multitude of reasons, most important of which was a conclusive end to thousands of years of Council rule. The Council races became subservient races of the Galactic Dominion, their worlds occupied by the Dominion military. They were allowed to enjoy the personal freedoms they previously had, but were now ruled by humans, quarians, geth and, eventually, krogan. Urdnot Wrex argued for full membership within the Dominion, with Tali'Shepard personally supporting the idea. It was granted, and after the Cipritine Uprising, the Coalition ceded control of Palaven to the krogan. The Dominion became the dominant galactic superpower following the war, with its territory stretching from the ruins of Thessia to as far as Rannoch. They had negotiated an armistice with the Covenant, but this armistice was broken just over a year later in 2217 CE and led to the outbreak of the Terra-Rannochian War, although this conflict was largely sporadic, enduring for three decades with nowhere near the scale of the war before it. The PA war is often called the last great galactic war before the Dominion Civil War in 2253 CE, with the period between the 8 November 2215 CE and 1 January 2253 CE being called the Pax Dominia, or the "Dominion Golden Age".