Rise of The Colonies

"This isn't how it ends, General..."

- Duke Horacio to General Alfred Gomez after the fall of Lumbridge

Rise of the Colonies, or ROTC, is an unfinished novel written by Phalanx Actual and is available in the New Lumbridge International Library located in Silverside Port, Eleswyr.

Rise of the Colonies is also featured as the main quest for the multiplayer version of Runescape 3 and is the base for all future multiplayer quests.

Prologue
Lumbridge, outer walls

~3E 563 Autumn

"Don't worry sir, we'll get you outta here alive!" Only blackness remains, I've failed, My country has fallen...

"Do you really think he's gonna make it? He's cut up real bad." There's no escape, I'll die in this wretched place.

"Sir! Wake up damn it we need you!" But I won't go without a fight...

"Ease up soldier" I groan as they drag me into the inside of the subterranean wooden bunker. Pain races up and down my body, mud pools inside my fatigues. The hardleather straps that hold the armour against my body have been seared, as I look at the no-mans land all I can remember is my defeat.

The sun sets over the seared landscape, the wind produces an updraft that I can feel inside my waterlogged combat fatigues. I can see a thousand Varrockians upon the city walls in the distance, I breath in and all I can smell is the sickeningly sweet scent of burnt human flesh. I can feel the watery soil in my combat boots as Pvt. Samson helps me up. Overwhelming pain surges through my left leg as the deep, infected wounds gush blood that I can feel running down my covered legs.

The sun creates an eerie glimmer on the edges of the Lumbridge walls, a golden reflection upon the bloodstained no mans land outside of those thick, stone walls.

"It's gone... Lumbridge's gone"

Memories violently race through my head, overlapping one another as the proud city walls are broken down, memories of my childhood in the slums, my graduation... my conscription...

Memories of those bittersweet moments, I wish it hadn't been so soon, I didn't realize how much I loved my country until now...

My name, is Jackson Rosevelt and I'm a soldier now.

Chapter One
Port Sarim

~Winter, 3E 563

There's hundreds of us lined at the ports, all our remaining vessels lined up at our only remaining ally's port, it's a damned exodus out here. I join my family, or what's left of it... They weren't at the capitol when it was attacked, thank God.

"Are we gonna go home?" Saria, my youngest, sole surviving daughter asks me, the one question I don't know how to answer.

"We'll go home soon honey, daddy's going to take us to a safer place for a while" I say, she probably doesn't understand.

My wife Erica's silent, my heart broke when she found her family was missing presumed dead, her family was kind to me when my parents died - I was never able to repay them.

The fluttery snow surrounds us, it's bitterly cold, the Colonel's organizing our evacuation from this wretched place, I can hear him yelling into what looks like a metal cone. He made a list of names of people that were cleared to evacuate, it's god damned small. I can't help but feel sorry for the poor bastards that have to stay, not sure where they're taking us but I'm sure it's better than here.

I'm in the shortest line, the Military VIP line, there's literally hundreds of people waiting to get on the ships, there's about one thousand casevac red cross tents, tending to the thousands of casualties from the fall of Lumbridge.

As the line moves forward I can see the deadly cold, black waters of the eastern sea, crashing onto the equally deadly shores of Sarim, some say if you look past your own reflection, into the blackness - you can see your own soul... I don't believe in that superstitious crap, all you see are tiny bits of debris from the damned war.

"Identification please," says the man at the barricade to the evac ships, I flash him my dogtags and he nods. "Thank you Lieutenant Commander, you're free to go."

He unlatches the gate and lets me through, I hear it close again quickly, way too quick...

"Dad!" Saria screams,

"Saria!" I yell back, "Erica it's gonna be fine I promise you."

I turn to look at the soldier that let me through the gate, my squadmates pass me by as he opens the gate for them. "Let them through!" I bellow.

"Commander I can't do that... I've got orders straight from the top, I'm sorry." The man tells me,

"Let them through, private!"

"Soldier, do you have any God-friggen-damned idea of what my family, everyone here's been through!?" I scream, I clench my fist and pain flows into my nerves as I re-open wounds from the fall.

"Sir I-"

"Do you!?" my blood boils as he begins to reach for the alarm, I grab the cold-hearted man by the collar and pull his face closer. "Do you asshole!? Let these ******* people through before I pull rank on you and send you back to the ******** front lines, you hear me?"

The man's fist impacts my face, a dull pain pulses through my nerves and veins, though my blood boils like nothing I've ever felt before.

"Mother****! I can't let my own family through you stupid sunova****, yet you expect me to let yours through? I told you I've got orders against it!" He yells, I throw him into the fence, the cold wrought iron makes a rusty 'clang' and the man falls to the floor, "Just because you can't let your won ****ing family through doesn't mean you should condemn everyone else's, don't you have a damned heart?" I let the man stay on the ground and unlatch the gate, I've had enough.

"Jack, your daughter's here," Erica tells me as she removes her hands from Saria's ears,

"I'm sorry, let's go."

Chapter unfinished