In-Depth Look: Hellvetics
SHIFT CHANGE
Darkness. The change from sleeping to waking happens mechanically and abruptly. He swings his legs from the cot, feels cold concrete under his feet. The ventilator cranks awake, moving air that reeks of sweat. The Hellvetic runs his hands through his hair, reaches for his weapon under the cot, takes it out of its holster and puts it in his lap. The cold metal makes him shiver. A Trailblazer. His Trailblazer. An assault rifle with three barrels, uniquely numbered and given to him to protect the Alpine Fortress’s safety. It’s still dark, but he closes his eyes and breathes deeply. He removes the weapon’s cover, unlocks the barrel, disassembles the piece completely, feels every part and cleans it. He knows all the movements by heart.
While his hands work, his thoughts wander into the past. Deep down to the beginning: the day he received his weapon. It was a few days after his fifteenth birthday, barely able to hold the Trailblazer let alone use it. The feeling of pride he had that day reaches through the decades, it feels like only yesterday. He smiles. He was sixteen when he fired his first shot and dislocated his shoulder. A few years later, they encountered illegal crossers above the Timmelsjoch. Five shots, three hits, one dead. Praise: given extra rations by the Forager. They said the first one was always the hardest one. They had lied. The first twenty were hard. His face hardened, and his lids blinked when the images of the failed rescue mission at the Gotthard came to his mind: red snow, magazine after magazine rattled through the Trailblazer, the barrels glowed. Shouting, a hard hit against the shoulder, blue sky above, someone tore him away. The poor assessment was worse than the shot through the shoulder. Wounds heal more quickly than respect can be restored. Then he was punished by ammunition reduction and scorn. He had that coming. He had endangered his comrades and left one of them behind. They put recruit Tillis’ bloodsoaked, torn undershirt onto his pillow, a little gift. Then he understood what it meant to confront a common enemy, to have his comrades’ back. What it meant to be responsible. Responsibility is the foundation of a soldier’s coexistence.
The last bolt is locked, the magazine slides into its bracket with a metallic click. The Trailblazer is now warm from his work.
A speaker crackles to life and sounds a synthetic bell. Shift change. Glow wires change from red and white to headache blue.
The Hellvetic steps out of the crew quarters. His Harness is skintight, its weight reassuring. Alone, he marches through gray corridors. The lights ahead awaken with a flicker, while the corridors behind him drown in darkness again. He’s deep within the mountains. His steps become determined, he walks more upright. Now, he encounters comrades, saluting as he passes them by. He climbs through ancient tubes, becomes part of the increasingly bigger stream of Hellvetics. They march through hangars and between vehicles that wait for eternity under wraps. The gates are sealed, leading nowhere.
A surge of hot air hits him. They walk out onto the bridge. Here the first Hellvetics once confronted the Reaper’s Blow’s flames, bridged it with stone and steel. Today, this is where they defend Doctrine and home.
SANCTUARY
In 2072, the Swiss confederates first considered a failure of the asteroid defenses. No one knew for sure where the rocks would come down if the Paladin satellites missed them, or only shot them into smaller fragments. Switzerland was in danger, and thus, they needed a Plan B.
The Alpine Fortress’s bunker complexes were the obvious choice for storing cultural treasures, but they could also guarantee the survival of the Swiss – Swiss who would be able to retake control after the collapse of all public order. Aided by artisans, scientists, sociologists and psychologists, Switzerland should survive culturally and socially even in the event of a total collapse. Alongside civilians, the government sent a contingent of career soldiers to the bunkers, over 2000 men and women. They would take care with an orderly takeover and protect Switzerland’s borders.
For more than a year, army vehicles transported food, computers, miles of cables and installations into the Alpine Fortress. The selection process began. In the last phase, the government emptied museums and libraries and brought Switzerland’s cultural heritage into the bunkers.
The national effort was almost done when the Swiss people realized how far the exodus went – and that the mountain would close in front of them while the asteroids glared in the sky.
The cantons’ protocols recorded the demonstrations and the way they grew into riots. The Swiss Stream was aglow with applications for acceptance into the Alpine Fortress. A fully automated expert system compared skills and checked and sorted by ranking. It made no difference. There was no more room.
ISOLATION
When the gates between the chosen representatives of Switzerland and their people finally closed, something broke on both sides. Those left behind felt cheated and angry against the supposed betrayers, driven by their own fear, while the bunker crew had to resign in helplessness. Out there were relatives and acquaintances, many left partners and children to an uncertain fate. Isolation had just begun when the inmates already wanted it to end. However, the catastrophe became the apocalypse. The Reaper’s Blow split the Alps like a divine axe blow. The mountains broke open, stone avalanches splintered from the breaking point, crashed down with a deafening noise and buried rising magma under millions of tons of stone, a fragile seal on Pandora’s Box. The Alpine Fortress was mortally wounded. The great access gates caved in or were buried under rubble. Tunnels that had led into hangars and barracks only yesterday now ended in dizzying heights and opened onto newly formed valleys. Deep black, toxic columns of smoke curled skywards, searing heat welled up. The mountain had become a prison.
Complete sections were cut off from the core, the fate of the Swiss living there was unknown. Most of the castaways belonged to the civilian branch and were responsible for the reconstruction. Without them…
The military fought on, unwilling to give up on comrades and civilians. They had already had to leave behind their relatives. The survivors devised a rescue plan so absurd it could have only been conceived in that time of flamboyant gestures and actions: they wanted to build a bridge across the Reaper’s Blow, across Purgatory itself.
Men and women worked hard day by day, only protected from the heat of the magma bubble below them by flimsy asbestos suits. They went through hell, and what started as a grim joke soon became commonly used.
They called themselves the “Hellvetics”.
The first of six bridges was finished in 2076. A year before, recon specialists had first managed to cross the Reaper’s Blow. However, their expectations were not met. Two sections in which the Hellvetics had hoped to find their high command and the government’s representatives had caved in. Not even ashes remained. Should all the sweat, all the blood have been in vain? The military apparatus teetered. Throughout these years, it had clung to this single goal, now its heart and its brain had been ripped from its body. Empty and burnt-out, it stared into a bleak future.
The Hellvetic Leonhard Gboy managed to save the day. A rationing plan and several improvised leadership institutions caught the survivors in a net of bureaucracy and new goals. A Corps Commander who had to guarantee the area’s safety autonomously was assigned to all of the Swiss Territorial Regions. He commanded smaller units of a few dozen soldiers that were supposed to be constantly checked for quality by an independent section commission. The chain of command was restored, and the Hellvetics felt like they were part of a Swiss clockwork machine again. One thing remained to be done. They drew a line under the past and almost unanimously voted for proudly carrying the name Hellvetics from now on.
FROM HELL TO HELL
Before the fall, they went into the mountain convinced they would have to confront the Eshaton’s suffering and destruction only weeks later with joint forces. However, it would take years for the gates to the Swiss heartland to be cleared and be negotiable again. The Hellvetics were too late. When they escaped the mountain in winter 2080 and stepped out into their old, snow-ridden home, they found metropolises like Bern and Zurich empty. Everywhere they went they only saw signs of riots and looting. The few survivors fled their old military because bitter experience with armed and organized units had taught them to exercise extreme caution.
Although the Hellvetics were unwanted, the Doctrine commanded them to protect the original population, whether it wanted protection or not. Following their internal orders, the Hellvetics thus stormed the armed bandits’ camps, obliterated all resistance in the devastatingly accurate fire from their Sagur 11 assault rifles and vanquished the enemy leaders. They granted them quick trials that ended in the choice between death or exile. Many a war criminal and bandit fled into Northern Borca in those days and continued their reign of terror there. That was acceptable to the Hellvetics, for they were never interested in a better world. For them, it was the Doctrine that mattered. They did not give up quickly on goals once found.
The resistance was smashed, the people crawled from their hideaways and celebrated the Hellvetics as their saviors. The reconstruction could start. The Sagur 11 assault rifles had been the Trailblazer of this new age and thus were called just that in the future, in memory of those dark days.
FAST FORWARD
The cantons blossomed. The villagers were united under the Hellvetics’ flag. Bridge by bridge, the wounds of the Reaper’s Blow were healed, and the divided Alpine Fortress grew back together. The simple asbestos suits of the early days had developed into tight-fitting, multifunctional body armor, becoming Harnesses that stood up to the boiling heat of the Reaper’s Blow as well as the violent fury of battle. Additional tunnels, corridors, and halls were drilled into the mountain as the influence of the Hellvetics spread.
These transfer tunnels allowed strangers to pass under the Alps and the Reaper’s Blow, for a fee. Anabaptists could cross the Alpine passes from Borca to Purgare. The Chroniclers sent a group of Fragments into East Borca. The Spitalians used the safe route to reach their eastern outposts in Pollen without sustaining any losses. And before anyone noticed, the Neolibyans had managed to become one of the Hellvetics’ most valued partners. Their gifts of Petro guaranteed functional generators and turned old tunnels claimed by wild Clans into a flaming hell before the soldiers thundered back in to reclaim their territory.
With time, Hellvetica became the eye of the European needle. Many Cults and Clans offered the Hellvetics pacts, promising untold riches and trade agreements, but they were all turned down. The Hellvetics refused to give up their neutrality.
DOCTRINE AND ETHOS
What is an army without a government it will obey? Without goals and leadership, the military becomes an end in itself, and the Hellvetics’ enormous firepower would have threatened all of Borca. Only strong solidarity coupled with a strict code of honor and worthwhile goals could domesticate these hellhounds. The Doctrine has done just that. It offered protection to the Swiss heartland and its inhabitants and taught the soldiers to respect life. However, time has left its mark, and new passages reflect the changed global situation. Today, the Hellvetic worships no god who controls him and to whom he can ask forgiveness for his sins. His conscience must measure up only to himself and the Hellvetic Doctrine. To it and to nothing else he pledges allegiance. It empowers him and yet can strip him of all power.
RELAPSE
Maybe some saw this as a weakness on the Hellvetics’ part. Maybe the people recalled the fact that before the Eshaton the military was there to serve them, not the other way around. Reduced to a mere protective force, orders disguised as advice were no longer followed. Old animosities between the cantons flared up again. There was no open fighting, but embargoes, aggressive customs fees, and the spreading of foul rumors turned the Alpine realm into a hotbed of childish conflicts no longer controlled by the Hellvetics.
Many spoke out, saying what Corps Command was not even permitted to think. The cantons were faring too well. Thanks to the protection offered by Trailblazers and Harnesses, they feared no influences from the outside and played their games in the Hellvetics’ slipstream.
Finally, the Territorial Regions’ Commanders were fed up. They called their units back into the Alps, locked the barracks and left the advance fortresses. They went back into the mountain. Do as you please.
It was in these times that Praha fell. The Clans of the Black Lung rose up, and Exalt’s ruins seemed to teem with new life. The torch of independence was passed around and reached the Swiss heartland, too. The ancient mountain tribes were fed up with the Hellvetics’ bullying, fed up with the valley dwellers’ ways. They descended, and at the same time, the Clans broke through the Hellvetics’ unmanned barricades from the north. Villages burned, but the Hellvetics did not falter.
While the inhabitants of Torino fled back under the Hellvetics’ protection again in the end, presumably purged, the other Territorial Regions’ inhabitants learned what fighting for survival meant. In the future, everyone would have to earn the Hellvetics’ protection.
TERRITORIAL REGIONS
The Hellvetics’ area of influence covered all of the Alps, from Franka to the Swiss heartland and the Balkhan. Early on it was divided into four Territorial Regions – two on each side of the Reaper’s Blow. From this arose various responsibilities, jobs and goals for the respective Hellvetics of each Region.
While Territorial Region I in the Frankan Alps only has to guarantee the passes’ safety and the protection of Torino, Territorial Region II is responsible for the former cantons. They were considered under military occupation for a long time – an interim solution in force for many centuries. According to the Doctrine, the heartland was to be supported by a democratic government after the ancient Swiss fashion, but this development was rejected by the Hellvetics as anarchistic and non-democratic, along with not being suitable for the current situation. Only in Bern was there an independent representation of the people that was not allowed to raise a militia.
Now the Hellvetics have left the cantons to their own devices. Their city fortresses are manned by Swiss with old-fashioned rifles and pikes. Only the roads and way stations are still guarded by the Hellvetics. They say the transfer tunnels and passes are safe.
Territorial Region III with its vast territory covering all of former Austria needs a far more offensive approach than the heartland. Genie squads have been tunneling through the mountains for centuries, laying subterranean rails in an attempt to make up for the Hellvetics’ relatively small numbers with maximum mobility. The chances of passing through the Alps in this area without being noticed are decreasing with every passing year.
Territorial Region IV is mainly unchartered territory encompassing Purgare and the Balkhan. The Hellvetics’ fortresses are unfinished buildings, tunnels carved into the rock without camouflage or security mechanisms. They are only sparsely manned.
On the Alps’ Purgan side, the known passes and transfer tunnels are constantly watched by Anabaptists and Jehammedans. In the Balkhan, on the other hand, the Voivodes are in control. They stop those that are unwanted in their realm at the exits to the passages.
DESERTED
The Hellvetics are fearsome fighters, but also ingenious builders of bridges. Still, not everyone finds a place within their ranks. Those who give up on themselves or cannot match their unit’s demands give their Trailblazers to their section Commander and are led outside by the Alpine Fortress’ troops. They are Hellvetics no longer. However, except for scorn, they have nothing to fear from their former comrades. But not all who leave want to give up their Trailblazer and Harness. They have become far too used to the firearm, which would certainly bring some Chronicler Drafts out in the wasteland in a pinch. Those who leave the Fortress with Hellvetic gear without checking back regularly to be assessed are considered deserters. They have much to fear from their former comrades. They will be hunted down, relentlessly.
THE SOLDIER AND HIS WEAPON
Hellvetics are exclusively recruited from their own ranks or from the former Swiss population. The drills start at the age of fourteen, boys and girls are equal. If the recruits prove themselves, they get a Trailblazer the year after. This weapon is at the center of their thoughts and actions until they die. If their weapon is stolen, they are expelled from the army. The same happens if the weapon is irreparably damaged. If they sell the weapon – Off they go! Repeat: what happens if you lose your weapon?
CUTS
The Reaper’s Blow south of the Alps is a highly active volcanic area. Boiling puddles of mud, methane bubbles and superficially crusted magma streams are not prone to instilling confidence. This is the realm of the Psychokinetics, and no one has ever tried to take it away from them.
Maybe that was a mistake – for here was where it began.
When the sun sinks, a vague glow caresses the Rifts and ravines. Only by getting close do you notice that this glow emanates from the tenderest of threads that resemble cotton wool. Except this wool is hard as glass and cuts your foot if you step into it. The Spitalians call these structures Filaments. They speak about condensed or self-contained force fields. So they also don’t really know what they are dealing with. Only that the Filaments are spun by Psychokinetics and that they can move among them unharmed. They expand: growing through the Reaper’s Blow towards the Alpine Fortress. The southern slopes close to the passages are afflicted: the Filaments eat into the rock as if it was made of warm fat. With them, hosts of lice and ticks come pouring into the fortress, obliterated in the hellfire but still coming. The Hellvetics are used to having human enemies. Something that can be riddled with bullets. Against the Psychokinetic plague, they are like children. Therefore, they have called Spitalians into the fortress. The doctors are said to be knowledgeable about the Aberrants. We’ll see.
AUSTERITY
Every Hellvetic in the Alpine Fortress must swear to austerity. In spite of their own workshops and profits from the transit fees on the Alpine passes and transfer tunnels, Central storage claims that it is challenging to keep a military apparatus of several thousand men and women at an operational level. They may be right, for there are no mass production facilities for the Trailblazers’ precision ammo. In fact, the amount of ammo given to soldiers has been strictly regulated for decades. But this is not restricted to war gear alone. Any equipment is considered property of the Hellvetic army, so using it thoughtlessly and unnecessarily is theft.
To spread the resources evenly and effectively, the four Territorial Regions have been further divided into 20 sections. Each of them is entitled to a percentage of a monthly storage output. The amounts also depend on the effectiveness of the Hellvetics stationed in a section. If one of them botches a mission or they cannot meet Central storage’s demands with regards to profits from transit fees, drastic cutbacks ensue. The section gets less ammo, and special support weapons and vehicles are suddenly not available anymore. If the soldiers cannot discipline the comrade responsible and get him up to speed again, the whole section’s survival is placed in danger.
MERITS Documents from the Hellvetics’ first years prove that the ancient army’s grade structure was mostly preserved. What has changed, though, is how to climb the hierarchical ladder as a Hellvetic. Central storage needed a simple assessment system for soldiers to optimize the use of ammo and gear. Ever since then, Hellvetics have been graded on their combat performance based on being awarded and penalised merit points. This score, together with workshops they have taken and skills they have acquired and demonstrated, determines a soldier’s grade.
After every tour, all Hellvetics involved must face a public assessment and judgment in their section. To this end, their Trailblazers have a socket at the base of their receiver so that they can be accessed via a computer port in front of the drill hall’s plasma screen. The number of shots fired is recorded, as well as the rate of fire or any overheating by continuous fire.
Once the weapon has been checked, the soldier turns to his comrades and awaits their judgment. Behind him, his data flickers across the wall-sized display, accompanied by his combat statistics and his commander’s effectiveness assessment. The reactions vary from respectful silence to scornful humiliation.
At the end of these assessment ceremonies, the section computer determines how much ammo is left for this month and creates a new ranking of the most efficient sections. This shows if the unit needs to undertake dangerous outdoor missions to gain ground.
BUNKER FEVER
The Alps near Laibach, Slovenia have always been considered a mysterious area. Sightings of opalescent lights are one source of this reputation, just like spells of sudden dizziness and balding experienced by patrolling Hellvetics. Much of that could be attributed to bunker fever if it weren’t for the dozens of independent testimonies and assessments of external doctors.
One legend has been told throughout the centuries: Triglaw. Ancient records tell of a grotesquely stunted man in billowing layers of white fabrics who roams the Hellvetics’ tunnels. He is extraordinarily cunning, takes whatever he wants from stores, and, if you believe the first sighting, must be at least 400 years old. Many of the tales concerning him are more than absurd. He is said to have supplied the Swiss with the asbestos suits for building the bridges. His decaying body is said to be the soulless husk of one of the first Hellvetics. He is even said to be the original protector of the Alps and a last relic of the Bygone people.
If even a few of the rumors about Triglaw are true, the history of Hellvetica itself will have to be rewritten.
GRADES
The first grades, Soldier, Private and Lance Corporal, are the beginning. They are quickly left behind as the soldier proves that they are capable of aiming and firing a Trailblazer, along with basic principles of austerity. Next are the non-commissioned, or noncom, grades of Corporal, Constable, and Field Officer, the first to involve leadership responsibilities. Autonomous guard duty on the passes or in tunnels in the periphery as well as commanding very small groups are typical jobs. An intense training in group tactics is mandatory.
As soon as the Hellvetic is promoted to be a higherranking noncom, he needs to specialize. As a Grenadier, Sapper, Genie, Radio Beam Unit or in other armed services branches he goes through the grades of Sergeant, First Sergeant, Adjutant, Staff Adjutant, First Adjutant and Chief Adjutant. The responsibilities grow. He has to prove himself by leading platoons made up of several Hellvetic squads. The Subaltern officers of the Lieutenant and Senior Lieutenant grade are allowed to command whole units consisting of several platoons. The Captain is responsible for all of a section’s formations.
He is only outranked by the Field Officer grades of Major, Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel. They assist the Corps Commander in managing his Territorial Region.
TERRITORIAL SERVICE The Hellvetics have neither a functioning agriculture system nor any natural resources to exploit or trade. Their principal value comes from their fighting power and the Alpine Fortress’s central location. If a section suffers from lack of food, parts of the troop are rented out as mercenaries.
They are extremely respected in Borca and Pollen for their martial prowess, but their strict code of honor restricts their utility. They question every attack order from their clients and refuse to obey if they have even the smallest doubts, while on the other hand defending an endangered settlement is almost always considered morally faultless.
The Hellvetics generally do not interfere with largescale conflicts like wars between city-states as well as with open conflicts between Cults.
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