[Lauchenoiria]

Sand Crunched - A Prequel to Have I Got Coups For You

Spoilers for Have I Got Coups For You ahead. It is highly recommended that you read, at minimum, the first post of HIGCFY before proceeding.

Contents
1. We Didn't Start The Fire

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We Didn't Start The Fire
February 2018

Suleman Chaher was ambitious. It was his greatest flaw, and the one his parents were most ashamed of instilling in him, back when they believed it to be a virtue. Accordingly, he had been in many political parties in his time, which he now justified as a mere survival strategy to get himself through the Communist regime. It was all spin, of course. Suleman Chaher had not much cared one way or the other about communism, except regarding how it could help or hinder his rise to the top.

His most principled position, however, was that of opposing foreign interference in a nation's domestic affairs. This is why it annoyed him so much that Leanna Walker and Laura Moore were so willing to just allow armed Skodenians to freely wander around Melissa City because they were so afraid of a few anarchist rioters. In his position as Home Secretary (which would be renamed to Domestic Affairs Secretary in 2019 due to the stain on the office he himself left), he was expected to play nice with the Skodenians too.

Any fool could see that it would not end well. Lauchenoiria was a relatively poor, relatively pacifistic nation; while Skoden was wealthy, militarised, and clearly in possession of an imperialistic streak. Support for democracy? Pull the other one. If Walker and Moore thought they would manage to get rid of the Skodenians after the Anarcho-Communist Collective of Lauchenoiria had been handled, they were lacking a few brain cells. There would always be another ACCL around the corner to justify their continued presence.

Suleman Chaher did not make his distaste for the presence of Skodenian Peacekeepers unknown. It was obvious to anyone watching that there was a weak link in Moore's cabinet loyalty; and exactly who it was. This fact would set off an uncontrollable chain of events, the ending of which one can still only guess at.

This is how the fire started.

[Lauchenoiria]

Who WAS That Guy?

After the war, analysts would look upon the vote of no confidence as the start; as opposed to the landing of Skodenian troops which was considered the start among people living through the event. Decades later, future historians would trace the beginning to a meeting with Keitha Noguera of Aeluria, a scandalous revelation which would rock the world for the length of a news cycle, as people reevaluated their views of the sides of the conflict.

Nobody would ever discover how it really began. Perhaps you think it began on a beach, in the dark of night, an illegal cigarette crunched under the heel of a mysterious figure. But how did Suleman Chaher and the still-unidentified cigarette man come to be on the beach in the first place? The true beginning is shrouded in mystery. Can we even call it the beginning? Every event in history is an effect of some prior cause. But that is too philosophical for this story.

Instead, let us begin this story in Melissa City, where a Kerlian spy is lurking on a nondescript corner of a street, listening to a bug planted in the office of the chief of the Melissa City Police Department via an earpiece. Home Secretary Suleman Chaher is yelling at Prime Minister Laura Moore over a phone line. The Kerlian spy, whose name is immaterial as she will not feature again in this tale, cannot hear Moore's side of the conversation, but from the context, she does not need to. She makes note of Chaher's anger, and later lodges a report with her superiors.

It is a normal day for this Kerlian spy. She listens to important people in meetings all the time, sending their words and emotions to her superiors without another thought. Without knowing how important her actions this day would be, she lodges her report and then goes about her business. She does not even remember this day as particularly important. If she had been asked later, she would not even recall that it was she who made the report.

Her superiors get the message, of course. The easier part of this story is what happened there. Someone took note of Chaher's dissent; it wormed its way through the chain of command until it reached the Aurora Programme, and one Charissa Clarke received an email which set off a million different things in motion.

This is how the real story remained hidden. Everything was explained, in the end. In fact, it was true. Events may even have proceeded in the exact same way if the hidden layer of the matter had not been present. It was so subtle, that it may not even have left its mark on history. So, perhaps “real story” is a misnomer. Perhaps it is just an… alternative.

As the report on the bugged meeting wormed its way through the Kerlian chain of command, it was intercepted. The identity of the interceptor will remain hidden for now, but suffice to say that they were affiliated with the cigarette man who would stand on a beach some months later. The interceptor would also intercept certain further plans of the Kerlian government, and would resolve to assist in these plans… for the time being.

Hence sending the cigarette man to meet with Chaher after obtaining a false confession from the one remaining ACCL member that he was part of a false flag operation. The video of said false confession was given to Chaher as proof of usefulness and loyalty, just in case it was later needed. The extraction of the “confession” was a trivial matter; there were Kerlians involved after all. Nobody we know; they did not survive this operation. A secret is no longer a secret if more than one person knows.

Cigarette man also gained from this meeting; and not just in impressions. If an impartial observer, let’s say an oddly-intelligent seagull perched on a rock on that beach, was to recall that night they would notice that Chaher handed a USB stick to the man.

Now, there were a number of USB sticks floating around during the war, so it would be easy to confuse them with each other. This was not the one which would later come into the possession of Jae Chung, which revealed the existence of the Aurora Programme; nor was it the one which contained Chaher’s deathbed bloodwork (that would be somewhat difficult, given that Chaher was still alive at this point). No, this was something entirely different.

And so it began.