Barren History, Part Two
As mankind realized the overpowering need for unity, five clans congregated at the doors of the ruins of a once magnificient city whose name had been swept into the winds since the dark age. The hunters of Talos; the nomadic Archael; the smiths of Baleon; the scholars of Gamma; and the rangers of Morim joined hands, and formed the Confederacy. Their success soon brought four more minor clans into the fold - Lormade of the North, Saber of the Gloomy Canals, Elchon of the High Mounts and Candor of Tar City.
The confederacy grew and soon they occupied the only standing monument in the ruins - the twin towers. As they raised their flag to signify the formation of a new dawn, they gave the ruins a fitting name - Gauntlet.
In the beginnings, there was true unity, and they shared unique skills from each clan for the sole purpose of survival. It took them two weeks to clear out and secure the twin towers, killing many dozens of mutants and vicious creatures in the process, and as their numbers grew in the following years, so did their stockpiles of resources and supplies.
And like a beacon in the darkest of nights, they attracted the attention of the greedy.
The Krissen Crisis
It began with sporadic raids, which were often repelled due to the confederates’ numerically superior and battle-seasoned militia, with the Talos hunters and Morim rangers forming the bulk of the security forces. Then as the raids began to grow in intensity, they started training their own dedicated sentinels in response.
Yet their competency in defense only served to unite the normally divided raider groups, and for once since the dark ages the raiders banded together under the charismatic leader Kriss, and together as the Krissens they launched coordinated assaults on the Confederacy’s outposts.
The confederate sentinels found themselves to be hopelessly outnumbered. They were driven into the towers where they had nowhere to run, and for two weeks countless skirmishes were fought in the tight corridors of the towers with the confederates pushed higher and higher into the tower. With their supplies running low and their forces split in half, holed up in each tower respectively with no access to each other, they knew it was only a matter of time before their morale broke.
The Talos hunters in the north tower then decided on a brash course of action. They waited for a moonless night, and when the entire land was plunged into darkness they slipped out of the tower and into the south tower to rally the rest of their clan. With the clan reunited, their spirits soared, and from the south tower they began fighting their way through the unprepared Krissen ranks and managed to cleave a bloodied path into the Outlands. The south tower confederates followed in their wake, and when the Krissens finally recovered from the shock of the attack, the south tower confederates had already escaped the entrapment.
Furious, Kriss ordered a full-scale attack on the north tower as retribution. The north tower confederates, who saw their south tower comrades flee into the night, braced themselves for the terrible massacre to come. Cursing their comrades for cowardice and the Talos hunters for defection, they dug in and fought bitterly against the seemingly unending waves of Krissen raiders, and within two days they had lost more than half of their strength. Yet the Krissens still outnumbered them seven to one.
As the dawn broke on the third day, they said their final prayers and waited for the battle to begin.
Except that it didn’t.
The Rout
On that morning they heard the call for battle - a shrill whistle that penetrated the silence of the dawn calling for the Krissens to gather for another day of fighting - they heard several loud cracks of high-powered rifle shots that silenced the whistler abruptly. The fearsome snipers of Morim had struck.
The first to die were the raider leaders, with Kriss having the honor of being the very first. Within a second the Krissens were rendered leaderless, and as chaos began to brew in the massive army, a terrible howl of a battle horn sounded in the horizon heralded the rampage of the fearsome Talos warriors, each fully armed with assault rifles and full body armor. Supported by the snipers, they tore into the Krissen ranks mercilessly, mowing down the raiders like a hot knife through butter.
Almost on cue, the north tower confederates launched their counter-attack, and the Krissens were slaughtered on both fronts. Three hours later close to a hundred Krissens lay dead upon the courtyards with the rest fleeing into the Outlands.
In one fell swoop, the Krissen crisis was over.
The Betrayal
But the turmoil would not end here. The crisis took a heavy toll on the Confederacy, taking away more than half of their numbers and a titanic portion of their carefully stored supplies. It took them two more weeks of cleaning up to get back on track, but peace would not come as inter-clan tensions began to rear its ugly head.
The Archaels, who made up the majority of the north tower confederates, condemned the Talos for defecting. While the other clans stood firm with the Talos, the Archaels were not so quick to forgive. Thus the terrible fued between the Archaels and the Talos began.
The routed Krissens took their time to recover their ranks, and secretly surveyed the Confederacy, waiting for a ripe chance to strike again. When they got wind of the developments of the feud, they decided to utilize it to their best interest.
It did not take long for their manipulations to bear fruit.
A string of events eventually led to the ejection of the Talos from the Confederacy, who returned to the Outlands in search of their own frontiers.
Two Years Later
Two years later, the Krissens, having recovered their numbers, struck again. Employing stealth this time, they infiltrated the Confederacy ranks beforehand and launched a coordinated assault that resulted in a downright rout of the confederates. They were funneled into the Red Sands and a terrible massacre began.
Surrounded in the open fields, they had nowhere to hide, and in two days of fighting they had lost more than three quarters of their troops. The confederates nevertheless fought on, stubbornly refusing to give up their cache of resources until every last one of them are dead.
But the Krissens were instead taken by surprise. From the desolated Outlands, in marched an army clad in powered armor and armed with heavy gattling guns. As the Krissens and Confederates looked on in awe, the metal army opened fire.
A storm of lead and tracers stitched the Krissen ranks with uncanny accuracy. The merciless Outland soldiers gunned down every single Krissen on the field that day, soaking the ground red with their filthy blood. Once again the confederates were sparred a footstep from the doors of doom, but they could not contain their surprise when the metal army took off their helmets.
The Talos hunters had come to their rescue.
Powered Armor and the Combine
Dumbstruck, the confederates had no words for their exiled comrades, for the ejection was still fresh in everybody’s minds - even-more-so in the memories of the Talos. But the Talos made it easy for them.
They cast off their powered armor and guns, and left without uttering a single word.
Perhaps that was their ploy at humiliating the Archaels as vindication of their innocence; perhaps that was their gift for their beliefs of a united human front; or perhaps that was their repayment of the comradeship of their time in the Confederacy - nobody knew why they came and left. But one thing was certain - they were people of honor, and the powered armor they left behind were indeed powerful gifts.
Jason Morim - leader of the Confederacy at that time - then decided to disband the confederacy and created the Combine from its ashes. Understanding that clan segregation and discrimination is a great hindrance to the unity that they sought, he ordered all clans to drop all forms of identity, including their last names.
They managed to reverse engineer the exoskeleton technology in the powered armors and put it to good use to rebuild the ruins of Gauntlet, and within five years they managed to build a stronghold for humanity. For the first time since the Great Exodus, there was a safe haven for mankind.