Act II

As the year AE 241 nears its end, the war between the USC, the Union Bloc, and the free peoples continues to burn across the globe. On the eastern front constructionist troops fight a war of maneuver with the unionists, slowly closing the noose around Xiamen by isolating smaller bloc nations. In Undas all sides fight in proxy wars for tribal support and natural resources. And in the bloody north the USC has reinvigorated its stalled offensive against the fractured nation of Agathos. With the recent formation of the Agathos Reform Coalition, however, many free people finally see a possibility to end the civil war, and to halt the USC invasion of Polus.

Leading that effort is the Federation's Department of the Great Cause of Liberty - also called RANGECOM. The rangers of the DGCL have all sworn their lives to the defense of free people everywhere, but the means to this oath are a matter of much debate.

Loyalists under Ranger-Commander Paladin see forming broad alliances as the surest way to victory. They hold friendly relations with the army and coalition partners as paramount.

Others have been drawn to the bold actions of the Ranger Lion and his Wings of Liberty Reborn. These Pteros are radical, uncompromissing individualists with a flare for the theatrical, and a private army outside the Ranger Corps.

Still other call themselves Kingslayers, and take orders from the Ranger Nocturne to covertly implement her master plan. While her operations border on treasonous, few doubt her hatred of the USC or her influence over Federation Intelligence.

But with the USC now fielding two MARCS-class ships, and with defense lines overrun daily, the efforts of the rangers seem to have been for naught. Even in public, the Federation President acknowledges that military victory is impossible. An already war-weary public now looks at capitulation not as a question of if, but a question of when and how. The concept of a free Agathos may only have weeks to live.

To these rangers, though, there can be no surrender. The old republic may never return, but its promise of Liberty with Law dies only when free men abandon those ideals for the comfort of obedience. Many conquerors have come before the USC, and have all been brought low when the people united around the defense of each others sacred rights. Today, they need only be reminded that their shared beliefs are stronger than any weapon of war or bond of servitude.

It is with this goal in mind that Reiko Eleythos makes her desperate gamble - to travel to the mysterious Kingdom of Anthegalia and invoke ancient treaties. The High Men of the North are rumored to hold technology powerful enough to destroy a MARCS ship, but whether the proud and insular group will share it is uncertain. She hand-picks the rangers of Seraphim Squad to accompany her, relying on her instincts that the group's victories thus far have been more than just luck.

And so with the fate of Agathos standing on a precipice, the journey commences. By all odds it is set on a course of defeat and ruin, by every calculation the war is already over. Centria boasts that it has defeated death itself, and needs only time to end resistance from the selfish and ignorant. The passions of the world have become a stampede that rushes towards a hundred million people, and it seems the only thing left to do is decide who gets trampled first. But moving to the front of the line, the rangers of the DGCL plant their feet, standing athwart the oncoming onslaught. Now is the time they decide whether to stand together, and when providence decides whether that will be enough.