An new miniseries that is pretty much my very early Halloween project:
Even years after the beginning of the Undead Wars, no one is sure as to when exactly the first four Necromancers arose from their graves although experts have reached a consensus that their first activities in raising the dead occurred sometime in June of 2011 with desecration of various graveyards in what is now the former Central African Republic and what was thought to be an insurgency rising out of the blue in eastern Angola being noticed by several news outlets within the two countries.
The first reports of the Angolan and Central African governments fighting against undead forces were suppressed by officials or were covered up as otherwise mundane terrorist attacks. What was the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the time was fraught with ethnic conflicts and loose government control of the Congo Rainforests, considering King Leopold's own war against the Congolese government began in those very rainforests, it is considered one of the primary reasons for the "Dead King's" initial success in the country before the mass use of Behemoths and other monstrosities that became synonymous with the Undead Wars.
By mid July the same year, news of the undead rising in Africa (and by then Venezuela) to fight against government forces had spread across the world despite initial skepticism, social media (despite being in its infancy during this period) proved invaluable in spreading news of the rising undead including the now infamous video of Necromancer King Leopold II revealing his existence to the world and his newfound powers as his soldiers executed captured Congolese soldiers and rebels, only to resurrect them from the beyond and subsequently ordering the recently deceased to "bow to their king".
What made the undead armies of King Leopold, Emperor Bokassa I, and Jonas Savimbi effective in the early days of the Undead Wars were not only their complete control of soldiers that had died during the long history of their respective countries (which, in the case of UNITA for example, had the odd sight of SADF officers that died during the South African Border War giving orders in either English or Afrikaans to undead Portuguese colonial troops and Cuban soldiers that spoke only Portuguese or Spanish respectively) who could use modern day firearms and technology with little difficulty, the long dead soldiers even first being sighted in battle using weapons commonly issued during their time of death (i.e undead French colonial troops fighting for Emperor Bokassa at first being armed with MAS-36 rifles). The undead's ability to speak in human languages (in this case it would be whatever primary language they spoke at time of death though could understand their fellow undead perfectly no matter their language) and use of firearms in general went against the common conception of undead or "zombies" held in the Western world at the time, which had been only been reinforced by the then recent television show The Walking Dead (which had debuted on American TV a year prior) only growing in popularity as the show prepared to enter its second season on October 19th.
The utilization of the aforementioned
Behemoths was a major game changer in the early days of the Wars. The Behemoths were large (often around 18ft tall), skeletal abominations with immense levels of strength that were unlike anything seen by Humanity before the Wars that could shrug off small arms fire and even survive multiple rounds fired by the guns of T-55 and T-72 tanks before finally dying a permanent death. At the time, Behemoths were used to spearhead advances by the forces of the Three Necromancers, the monsters being responsible in battles across the Congo and the CAR for the creatures would be more commonly sighted among King Leopold and Emperor Bokassa's forces during the early stages of the Wars than in UNITA's front in Angola. How the Behemoths were made were unknown to the world, Humanity not learning until several months later that they were made with the Necromancer's "black magic" being used on skeletons and even fresher bodies found in looted graves in order to create these hulking monsters and when the dead bodies began to run out, human sacrifices of men, women, and even children would be killed en masse so their corpses could be used to craft Behemoths. Research and reports gathered throughout the months following this discovery would put the number of bodies required to make one Behemoth anywhere from five to twenty.
While the forces of Simon Bolivar lacked Behemoths due to Simon refusing to create them despite knowing full well how to do so (as shown during the first months after the Bolivar Coup), he made up for in popular support from mortal Venezuelans for the regime of Hugo Chavez having seen dissent beginning to grow in the country as the beginning of the 2010s marked the economic downturn continuing and repression of opposition to the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela was becoming more harsh, Bolivar's last straw was learning that Chavez had named his dictatorship after him. The Fall of Caracas (or more accurately the Bolivar Coup, which is would become known as later in the 2010s) occurred on July 19th at midnight and would see the undead forces (which composed of undead Gran Colombian soldiers, Spanish colonial troops, and Venezuelan soldiers that have died during the country's many coups) victorious after the sudden appearance of the undead overwhelming the mortal defenders although Bolivar failed to capture Chavez, who was hastily evacuated from Miraflores Palace following a frantic but determined stand to hold off the undead forces and their Behemoths. Caracas falling to Simon Bolivar's forces (which now had undead members of both the Venezuelan Army and even the National Bolivarian Militia among their ranks) would mark the commencement of the Venezuelan Civil War, where Bolivar would go on to gain popular support among mortals and by the time the world had truly come the terms with the undead walking among us, what remained of Venezuela was already engaged in a full on civil uprising.
Humanity was not defenseless in the first days of the War for while mundane bullets would be effective against the undead armies, it would more often than not take far more rounds to put down an undead soldier than it would on a mortal combatant. It was discovered (it's unclear as to who exactly thought of it first, Angolan Army soldiers claimed to have first thought of having bullets blessed by a Catholic priest while Chavez loyalists claim to have been the first to use blessed bullets) that bullets blessed by an ordained member of the Catholic church have more of an effect on undead soldiers often to the point where four 5.56mm rounds would be enough to kill the soldier in contrast to 15 non-blessed bullets, testing done with ammunition blessed by Imams and even Rabbis would later prove the bullets having similar effects as well. In addition, the undead were and still are very effected by fire and other incendiary weapons which would see napalm, Molotov cocktails, and even flamethrowers that had not been used since Iwo Jima being deployed on the battlefield in the later days of the Wars.
By October 31st 2011, Central Africa was in utter turmoil and the United Nations had declared it a humanitarian crisis. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, now under the full control of a military junta, is a rump state only controlling the western portions of the country as the Kivu provinces and the southern part of the Congo, now calling itself from Katanga, has split off from the government still in Kinshasha. Only the fear of King Leopold's approaching undead armies have kept the rump nation from completely disintegrating, even with military aid from the rest of the African Union pouring in. The Central African Republic was not as lucky, having fractured into three pieces with a rump government located in the north after the Fall of Bangui with the Christian extremist Anti-balaka and the Islamist Seleka gaining more popular support with the rise of the undead and the government's complete failure in defeating the "unholy" armies of the Dead Emperor. Angola was doing the best out of the Congo and the CAR, the territory held by Savimbi's UNITA was not densely populated in comparison to the western portion of the country, allowing the Angolan Army to establish a heavily defended frontline that split the country in half, however Angola's total military focus being on UNITA had allowed the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda to be able to establish de-facto control over the enclave and publicly declared independence. The African Union and even Angola were in favor of simply ignoring the situation in Cabinda until the War for Liberation from the Undead (what the Undead Wars is called in Central Africa) was contained.
Despite the success of his undead armies (now called the New Public Force or
Nouvelle Force Publique) on the frontlines, King Leopold's Congo Empire was facing massive insurgencies across the country as various groups were more determined to resist becoming another addition to the hordes or die trying, the actions of these partisans only resulting in the Undead King enacting harsh reprisals against the mortals he held captive which included the decimation of entire villages, sending mortals to work on constructing his palace in the "temporary capital" of Boende where they're likely to die from the harsh conditions, and the return of the infamous practice of severing hands from random innocents. Thanks to testimony from escaped mortals along with daring infiltration done by several special forces, intelligence agencies, and international news agencies (Anderson Cooper and his team gained international attention after recording the execution and subsequent resurrection of captured Congolese rebels live to horrified viewers), the world had become more than aware that the horrors of the Congo Free State had returned in the 21st century in the worse way imaginable.
Bokassa's New Central African Empire was having a considerably easier time following the collapse of the CAR, although his Imperial Army has been stalled after the Anti-balaka, the Seleka, and the rump CAR government had formed a united front with reinforcements coming in from the rest of the African Union, primarily from Egypt and Nigeria. Much like in life, Bokassa regularly takes parts in the beatings, torture, and executions of partisans and mortal slaves that just happen to act out or otherwise catch him on a bad day.
The current stalemate displeases Savimbi and his undead generals for even with the Behemoths they have, the "MPLA bastards" are still proving able to hold his forces at a standstill and the new front Leopold's asked him to open up in the Congo has somewhat agitated him for those are forces that could be used to break the stalemate in his own country. The Angolans have been able to deploy their Brigada de Forças Especiais or BRIFE into his territory in order to supply remaining resistance and gather more intelligence on the capabilities of both his own forces and his allies.
Several Western media outlets had coined the alliance of King Leopold, Emperor Bokassa, and Jonas Savimbi as the "Undying Axis" and the name had stuck for the original three Necromancers. Overtime the trio would gain monikers reflective of their newfound statuses from the "imaginative" Lich King and Undead Emperor to refer to Leopold and Bokassa respectively while Savimbi would become known as the "Mad Hyena" for whats left of his decaying face often displaying what could almost be described as a smile along with laughing while leading his own soldiers in the field, even in the face of heavy Angolan resistance.
Back in Venezuela the country had fractured into three separate sides with Bolivar leading Neuvo Gran Colombia out of Caracas who shocks the world in that he's actually very humane in comparison to his counterparts in Africa (for starters he actually treats Prisoners of War humanly rather than having them killed en masse like Leopold to have more troops) and even decommissioned the Behemoths after his forces had "found" a "hidden cache" of American anti-air and anti-armor weapons. The People's Republic of Venezuela is heavily backed by Colombia, fearful of chaos such as in Africa being brought to their borders and the rest of the continent is beginning to agree. Finally there is the rump Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, now ruled by Nicolas Maduro after Chavez had a stroke after coming to terms that the real Simon Bolivar was back from the dead and was coming for him.
Bolivar got his audience with the Americans after asking repeatedly, meeting with the CIA at a classified site somewhere in the Caribbean and only got his wish since the Obama administration wanted as much information as they could gather on the undead threat before one or more Necromancers arose in the United States, the Americans get what they asked for. Bolivar revealed about what he remembered during his time in "The Void", the being that he remembered only as "
Overlord"[1] who comes from a world where magic and the supernatural were a real, existing force[2] and is the real perpetrator behind the current situation regarding the resurrections of the Axis, himself included. Bolivar also informed the Americans not to bother trying to kill any of the three Necromancers for while they are capable of dying (if requiring a lot of firepower), it will not cause their armies to collapse for not only will they pass command to the next in line but they all obey the will of Overlord, who in turn ordered them to obey his "Under-Lords" as they carry out his will, rewarding them with territorial and/or power ambitions they held while they were alive in exchange for their service and loyalty.
The undead troops used by the Axis could simply be described as slaves, just as much victims as the mortals who died because of them. According to Bolivar, the souls of the undead soldiers were bounded to the wills of the Under-Lords by dark magic, forced to obey the orders (which sounds similar to a one being under a geas) given to them without any free will to disobey. There is no hope for rescuing the undead for only a permanent death (by either killing the body with holy munitions along with burning or completely destroying the body) will free them from their torment. Testing done later during the Undead Wars would prove him right for captured undead would not only prove unaffected by interrogation techniques but would not respond to loved ones undead or mortal, only speaking of their desire to further serve the Overlord and his Under-Lords.
As for when the world could expect this Overlord to make his next move through his proxies, Bolivar admitted to having no idea as to when that could be. For he admitted it could be anywhere from next week to next year.
Overlord's next move would come far sooner than Bolivar thought, the massive attack that forever went down in history that sent Humanity into a war where its freedom and very way of life were at risk of being destroyed by a mad Necromancer who, according to Bolivar, fancied himself as a "Lord of Life & Death" with the power to back up his claims. The Undead Wars had only just begun.
[1] For anyone who recognizes the character I used, not the same guy. Just borrowing the design.
[2] Not from any established fiction, just your bog standard high fantasy setting until otherwise stated.
